Review of Earl and Fairy

Look, I'll be brief: this is a bad adaptation. I haven't read the novels, and I probably never will, but I can clearly see there's a lot missing from them. There are several scenes that seemed to have been omitted, perhaps for the benefit of time constraints or budgetary reasons, but their absence harms the experience overall severely. A lot of context and lore are also not there, so the world building ends up being a huge confusing mess, can't even be inferred. A lot of scenes start out of nowhere, skipping important parts and choosing to summarize them in a few words or justexpecting us to invent something happening to connect them with what came before. Also, they cut the episode near the end, play the credits, and then finish the episode which is very annoying and I hated that so much.

Characters:
Let me preface this by saying I hate age gap relationships, but even ignoring that the chemistry between the leads is... annoying. The main character suffers a lot from a lack of agency the plot chooses to pretend isn't there. She has the illusion of choice, but is forced to go along with whatever everyone around her wants or tells her to do, and even when refusing and protesting this doesn't change. The back story of the male lead is also a big mess, never clear, and they keep mentioning this burn scar on his tongue but never once show it. I imagine animating a tongue scar wouldn't be that hard, but they just didn't. The supporting cast is also underdeveloped, with details sometimes mentioned, but never explored.

Plot:
The plot isn't bad, it's just badly executed. This is why I imagine the books are better. The world seems to hold a lot of promise, but its mechanics are never clarified or are very inconsistent.

The animation:
Lowest budget and no talent. I've been watching anime since the year this show was released, so I understand the industry standards have increased, but even then it's bad. I don't think Lydia's face was ever drawn correctly, she never gets to look cute. It features some action scenes, but they're also lackluster. It's not embarrassing or unwatchable, but it's mediocre and not nice to look at.

The voice acting is fine, they all do a good job.

I'm surprised this has this high a rating, but since most reviews are from back then I imagine they just hadn't had better and thought this was acceptable. Idk read the books and let me know if they're better.