Review of Land of the Lustrous

Land of the Lustrous comes with a strange premise, and I feel like your likeness of this has to do with one element. The main character. Story and Characters: Land of the Lustrous starts us out in a land where crystal-like beings exist. They are headed up by their father figure, Kongou, who acts basically like a superpowered monk. The crystals themselves are named after various gems such as Diamond, Emerald and Alexandrite. They have a nice distribution of personalities, along with different hardness, something they are judged on a few times in the early going. Phosphophyllitte (or Phos, forshort), finds it hard to find their place in life because their body is made up of a relatively brittle material and they are incredibly clumsy. One day, Phos is tasked with creating an encyclopedia of their world. During this task, they stumble upon Cinnabar, a crystal who never goes near their homebase because everyone fears their power. Along with the encyclopedia, one of the early storylines is if Phos can find a job in which they can spend more time with their fellow crystals.

One of the very likely deciding factors on if you’ll like this series is if you enjoy watching Phos. They badly want to find a role among the crystal allies and feel alienated when they can’t manage to do anything right. For someone who isn’t involved much with the others, Phos has a surprisingly chippy attitude. They always want to find something they can do and, even if Phos doesn’t necessarily prove people wrong, they want to show them that they are more than useless. I like this mindset quite a bit in a show that maintains a ‘light’ feel like this one does for prolonged periods of time. As we carry on with the series, they find more and more ways to be helpful. They become much more level-headed as Phos learns more and more about the body that is constantly evolving. This can feel like a bit of a cheat code because of how they go about the growth, but they rarely get carried away, and that makes for a mostly enjoyable watch.

An issue with this series’ story is that it can be hard to follow the main objective of the episode. The encyclopedia idea feels like it hangs around for a little too long and the entire saga of finding a job for Cinnibar could have been shored up much earlier than it was. It’s unfortunate because Cinnibar seems like a decent character and where they leave them off makes it seem like there’s some real emotion in there. Their sensei, Kongou, doesn’t seem to mind leaving Phos to learn on their own, and aside from being incredibly strong, you can tell he doesn’t try and be too strict with any of his crystal-children.

Another storyline that is contained within this series is that of the Lunarians, a race of cloud people who seek to capture the crystals in an apparent attempt to use their bodies as visual ornaments. There’s a lot more to them than that, but their place as the series antagonists doesn’t feel too out of place. I always appreciate when series give a race of people plenty of different forms and they mostly do that here – outside of the garden variety soldier anyway.

Outside of the handful of characters explained about, there are a lot of side characters to make up this race of crystal children. Most of them are just there to add to the plethora of personalities, but there are a few more standouts. Bort has an extremely short temper but is one of the most skilled fighters among their ranks. They clearly have an attachment to Diamond, who isn’t the strongest fighter. Rutile acts as the crystal’s doctor, which was desperately needed consider how much of few of our characters limbs would chip or break. They have a part, but aside from this, they aren’t terrible significant. Ventricosus is a bit of an unknown character but provides a nice mix in the early going. While none of these characters are standouts, some of them do prevent the plot from dragging too much.

As a whole, the story was a bit of a mixed bag because of how uneven the pacing was and how much they jumped between storylines. Phos is a strong character, even if annoying sometimes, and I could see audiences not attaching themselves to that character too much. (Story: 6/10, Characters: 7/10)

Art: Land of the Lustrous does something that basically no other series can do – make full CG work. Because of the nature of this series, full CG actually wasn’t a bad idea. It allows the crystals colours to pop and shine and it makes for a fantastic experience as a result. Shapes never really look off and the quality is maintained throughout the entire series. This simply never happens in other CG shows (partial, or full), and Orange should be applauded for their work here. (10/10)

Sound: A lot of the OST were very light tunes, but faster pieces were very apparently during the fighting sequences. I wasn’t overly attached to the OP or ED, but they match well here. Voice cast was very strong, with Sarah Widenheft (Phos) being the main stand. She’s exceptional and doing younger-looking character voices and I’m glad she pulled it off here. Everyone was very strong, which is good to see considering I’m not familiar with a lot of them. Standouts include Genevieve Simmons (Bort), Shelley Calene-Black (Rutile), Brian Mathis (Kongou) and Luci Christian (Ventricosus). (9/10)

Overall: Land of the Lustrous is a decent watch for a strong main character and some okay side characters. The production value here is exceptional and I’m curious if this happens more in the future. Ultimately, I couldn’t buy into the story itself as too much of it felt incomplete. (7/10)