Review of Big Order (TV)

I don't often write reviews for anime, but this series pissed me off so much that I felt the burning need to write about it. The premise of Big Order is life after the apocalypse. An event known as the Great Destruction ruined the world, half of the human population was wiped out in an instant, and many hundreds of thousands continued to die after in the following strife. It all happened because the wishes and supernatural powers (known in this anime as Orders) of a single man, Hoshimia Eiji. In the world that survives after the Great Destructiion, Eiji lives a quiet life with his sister.Eiji spends his time hiding from the world, for if the survivors learned of his part in the world ending, surely something horrible would befall him, or his sickly sister. However, when his sister is one day kidnapped, Eiji is drawn into a plot that will change the world.

On paper, the introduction is good. This anime gets even better in the first four episodes where the focus is on world domination starting from a single country. It can be viewed as one giant strategy game. But the writers decide to drop this interesting story in favour of a plot driven by trite sister complex garbage, and shoe horned pseudo philosophy.

While the story is garbage, at least this anime is very pretty to look at. Like with Future Diary, the art blends more traditional animation styles with 3D CG effects when any Order (people with special powers) use their abilities. Again, very similar to Future Diary in that regard.

This series has pretty introductions and endings. The opening theme grew on me a little as the show went on and certainly fits the setting of the show. "Disorder". by Yui, is still a pretty horrible song, aiming for a heavy rock theme with plenty of synthesized voice effects, but at least the lyrics work. I cannot talk about the ending theme because it was so bad I never fully watched it all the way through. The insert music for this show is pretty good, however. Especially the battle music in the first four episodes. However, while this show has quite a bit of alright music, almost none of it is memorable.

Characters are very hit and miss. The one defining character trait for our hero is "SENA!". Seriously, anything this guy does he only does to make his sister happy. Expect to see this play heavily into how the show ends. Sena herself seems like she could have been an interesting character had she been given more screen time that went beyond her being a stereotypical soft spoken female character who does little to anything. She does have one or two interesting scenes where we see how cunning she can be, but that gets dropped in a hurry. We also have a yandere chick with a sword, Yuno Gas -- I mean, Rin, who the writers largely forget about after the first half of the series. Rin's motivation is to kill Eiji for causing her parents to die when the world ended, but as she spends more time with Eiji she starts to show some form of inner conflict regarding this, which is never fully explored until the writers decide to force the issue over the span of three minutes in the last episode. There are a few other interesting characters, but its hard to get excited about anybody in this show after the first half.

All told, I would rate this anime as a skip. This show had huge initial potential, but Big Order fails to deliver in a big way.