Review of Land of the Lustrous

There’s a reason that when people talk about this show, it’s almost entirely about how beautiful the show it. I’ve seen this show compared to (the philosophically empty) Haibane Renmei, and they are very similar - Land of the Lustrous leans more into a Buddhist aesthetic than Haibane Renmei’s Christianity aesthetic. I don’t generally talk about the content of shows so that people can experience them for themselves, but the actual show demonstrated what I thought better than I can articulate it. The main character, Phosphophyllite (Phos for short) is incredibly soft gem who cracks and shatters at the drop of a hat. Every othergem in the same… academy (?) as them literally hates them. They think Phos is annoying or useless, and Phos does very little to make the audience think any differently for it. Now, in episode 3 (after Phos has gone between screwing things up or being annoying), they get swallowed by a giant snail and become shards in the snail’s shell. After this, literally everyone in the cast is like, “Is it even worth putting Phos back together? Should we even bother? Phos sucks.” and I ABSOLUTELY agreed. The next time the plot happens to Phos, everyone goes back to hating Phos. What was the point? It seems like even the author agrees, because Phos loses their memories and gets a character rewrite to be a quiet badass not even 3 episodes later. “Mysterious” master of the realm who decides the rules for no known reason, “how did we get here?”, main character that is as dull as they come, “why are we here?”, and side characters who do little but distract from the plot are both trends in this and the slightly better Haibane Renmei. The soundtrack and visuals are both absolutely stunning, but I can’t recommend it based on how pretty it is.