Review of Big Order (TV)

tl;dr: A hint of some good aspects shine through a bit at times, but overall complete nonsensical garbage. This anime starts out with interesting concepts, and seems to be going in an interesting direction for the first 4 or so episodes with some cool moments. But as things build up it becomes clear that the show has no direction whatsoever. There are too many characters to properly develop any of them over the course of the series. Furthermore, the characters personalities and motivations are random, or at least the actions they take are completely random and not aligned with what their original personalities/motivations would suggest theydo. The relationships are also completely arbitrary. Orders are also completely random and arbitrary. It is never completely clear what most of them do at all, let alone having precise limits and restrictions that the story can use for interesting encounters. For example, there are two characters that have the power to completely control people, and all the main characters know they have said power. But it just doesn't play a part at all despite it being something that could completely change things, except when the story randomly decided it will. So it just seems stupid when it actually does.

Similarly, every conflict involving the use of the powers which ultimately ends in some sort of twist to the powers being used just feels dumb. The plot makes no sense. It's not an issue of plot holes or inconsistencies. Rather, the whole thing is too much of a mess to point out any particular plot holes or inconsistencies. It just all around doesn't make a lick of sense. The twists have no build up or anything and just seem dumb. The melodrama especially just seems dull or cringe worthy. The thing though, looking at it in hindsight from a far away view, there are elements to all of these aspects that are pretty great and I could see if used well making a pretty great show. However, to say they weren't used well is a massive understatement. How they're used is a complete mess and at the best of times the best way to describe the use of these aspects would be superficially.

I attribute part of these problems to the anime adaptation being not very good, in that they adapted 10 volumes to 10 episodes so its impossible for them to have put everything in that they needed to. But it also feels like there are major issues with how the story is structured and told that feel like they're more ingrained than something an anime adaptation could introduce. How everything comes together in the ending is pretty solid and the ending when looked at from really far away is satisfying, but the story leading up to it was so badly told and did not provide the proper level of built up so it has no impact.

The art and animation in general are pretty good. Most of the usage of Orders involves CG though, which is not good at all. The soundtrack is pretty good. The OP is great both visually and in terms of audio. The ED is decent.