Review of Mecha-Ude: Mechanical Arms
TLDR: Slightly above average anime. As long as you are the type that will enjoy the journey even if the destination ends up leaving you frustrated, I think you could enjoy it. If you are the type to watch 5+ anime in a given season, then I would say give Mecha-Ude a watch. You will probably be left a bit frustrated at the end, but the journey there is enjoyable. Otherwise, I would pass this anime for others. The characters are entertaining, action isn't anything to write home about but it is still fun, and the build-up of what the Mecha-Udes are and what happened inthe past is definitely interesting. A personal highlight for me is the character Meru who is determined to make her polyamorous ships to set sail. I would probably raise the score a whole point if she took part in the plot more.
The struggle is in the story telling. In the moment everything seems fine. There is some great intrigue in what is going on and you are unsure of the motives of many different characters, both enemy and ally. But when everything is revealed and you look back on the show there is a lot of "What was the point of them doing that?" "Wait, this thing they did before seems contradictory to their goal." "Who even is this character? They just said a few mysterious things in one episode and didn't do anything else for the rest of the series!" The more you start thinking about the plot the more the show just starts to fall apart.
They also did the Promised Neverland Season 2 thing where the series ends with a 2 minute long collage of future events that could probably fill up an entire season and in some ways seem like they could be more promising events than what we just got. I know there is also a manga that is finished, but from the very bare minimum research I did, it appears that the anime covers the entirety of the manga so I have no idea what they were thinking teasing us with that crap. Maybe they wanted to create excitement so they could potentially get funded for a season 2. I personally wouldn't object to a season 2, but I wont lose any sleep if we don't get it.