Review of Land of the Lustrous

The strongest points of this show are the visuals, music, and tone. The audiovisuals speak for themselves, but I should note that the tone avoids your standard cute-girls-doing-cute-things tone because of the lack of exaggerated chibi expressions and excessive cuteness. Just by letting the jokes play out with natural body language, expressions, and a moderate speaking volume, the humor is better than that of most anime. The characters are certainly cute, but they're not moe. I'm also a lot more forgiving of any cuteness that bleeds over my usual tolerance level because the gems are not human, which makes it OK to enjoy their innocence.In particular, Phosphophylite definitely falls into the huge pool of quirky, klutzy girls but again, the difference here is that she's not designed or written to be cute. She comes off as a real person who might actually be a little annoying to hang around with. Her quirkiness and clumsiness don't serve to fetishize her and make you want to protect her--- they're entertaining, but it is clear that they're entertaining because these they're serious character flaws that happen to lead to humorous situations. These flaws are an integral part of her arc. Moreover, once again, she stands out from others in her archetype because not only her dialogue but her movements are so well written. Her voice actress really helps sell it too. Speaking of voice acting, it's so refreshing to see low voices for the female characters instead of the usual annoying high pitch.

While it's true that most other characters besides Phos don't get much development or exploration, they're still highly entertaining to watch because of their collective chemistry and they're at least memorable.

As for the story, it's a rather linear story about Phos's self development with Buddhist ideas woven in. There are ideas about self worth, staying true to yourself, changing yourself, sacrificing parts of yourself, taking on responsibility, and finding purpose.This is where it gets contentious. It would seem like the plot is messy, disjointed, and lacking in focus because many of the events that happen to Phos don't seem to carry much significance and then one big event happens that causes her to do a heel-face turn. These are fair criticisms and even for me the ambiguity of meaning in the plot means it doesn't quite carry the emotional weight that it could have. However, it's important to note that all the ambiguity comes from the fact that it's an incomplete story, and the ideas are set up in the first twelve episodes and the series doesn't have the opportunity to show the outcome of those ideas. I just don't care as much because I like everything else. However, I am extremely cautious about the real spirit of this story because in the latter half there were already signs that the author tried to make Phos undergo development by experiencing trauma, and everyone who's read the manga tells you that there's a lot more of that to come. Usually this is a sign of immature writing; the author masochistically revels in the emotional pain of the characters, isn't skilled enough to handle trauma tastefully, has no intention of using the trauma to write a comeback story, and can't write meaningful character development without resorting to trauma. Usually the tone of a series betrays this to me, but I could be wrong. The fact that there are buddhist ideas gives me a bit of hope, though, as the author could be serious in exploring cycles of suffering and not just using suffering to make emotional porn.

For now, though, if you don't like the superficial technical aspects and find the characters shallow, that's fine, but I think critiquing the story for being unfocused and the character development for being abrupt is premature, even if those are legitimate criticisms. We'll have to wait and see when the manga ends if these elements were either expertly woven into a greater story and greater themes or if it was all just the author indulging in misery porn.