Review of Land of the Lustrous

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW Houseki no Kuni (Eng: Land of the Lustrous) is a series that takes place in a world where our main characters, based on a variety of jewels/gems, are fighting angel-like enemies known as the Moon People who pursue the gems simply for collective purposes. The story follow Phosphophyllite, commonly referred as Phos, a fragile yet lustrous Jewel that hopes to be as strong as their peers so they can fight off their enemies as well. It's a unique anime with its own lore and a well written protagonist. While the main character has great character development, I feel like some of the other charactersare a bit underdeveloped. That being said, I feel like most of the characters all have their own unique quirks and characterization that makes them a bit more appealing than your generic anime. I just wish we got a little bit more from them, and not just the main character. I also like the fact that the series addresses the fact that these are gems and not humans, so they use gender-neutral pronouns like they/them.

As for the animation, I think it might be one of the best computer-generated (CGI) anime I've seen. It has an interesting mix of hand-drawn backgrounds and 3D characters that just works really well. Some people get turned away when they hear of a 3D anime but it's really not that bad. The colors are bright and just really fit the tone of the story. The soundtrack is amazing as well. The songs aren't those generic, overused ones you hear in most anime; instead, it's more classical and it fits the tone of the anime well.

Now, I'm gonna get this out of the way since this is probably my biggest gripe with this anime. The general plot is simple yet very compelling; HOWEVER, there's no clearly-defined goal in the series. There's some major arcs, but we don't really know the purpose of anything that's really going on in the series. They hint a bit at some major points of the story like: Where did the Moon People come from? What happened to all the living creatures in the world? What's the connection between [redacted] and the Moon People? However, you get nothing more than unanswered questions that are hardly addressed again. I feel like this anime focused so much on world-building and the development of Phos (which they did a great job at doing) that they completely forgot that they didn't really have a central plot for the first season. They had a bit of a plot in the beginning, but I feel like it was just scrapped or completely forgotten (which they ironically kind of addressed towards the end). From what I've heard, the manga is finally addressing the main points I referred to, so I suppose the ending was just setting itself up for the possible second season. Hopefully, we get more of a plot next season.

Overall, this is probably one of the best NEW anime to premiere this year. It's only 12 episodes, so it's not too long. Definitely check it out if you have the chance.