Review of Absolute Duo

I might not be the only one, but... I still have no idea what this "Absolute Duo" thing is. For a show that repeatedly uses that tagline and dozens of exposition. One would imagine that I would know what the most important aspect of the anime is. However, Absolute Duo is absolutely garbage. I'm someone who is very keen on Romantic-Comedy, Battle-Harems because I grew up around the harem genre, and love how cliche it can be. Absolute Duo literally checks all the boxes: Beach Episode, Battling Girlfriends, Non-Dense MC, Mall Episode. There literally is nothing more that I could want, but the anime is horrendous. Thestory takes place in an unknown universe where people get injected with various "serums" (?) chemicals (?)... I don't even know. Nevertheless, they gain superhuman capabilities to crystallize their soul into equipment called "Blazes". It's nearly as bad as Hundred's naming for various pieces of equipment.

Nothing really happens in this beyond the first couple of episodes. There is a bad guy that appears way too much after the 4 episode, and isn't given a proper backstory until he's unfortunately gutted. The story lacks any sort of build up or character motivations. The writers seem to have forgotten that motivations aren't only created through memories. The MCs get their melancholic, deeply rooted motivations from traumatizing events as a child. This would be a common vehicle to build motivations, but it doesn't work because IT'S ONLY A FLASHBACK. No explanations beyond what can be seen in the flashback because that would make too much sense.

From the lack of storytelling, it severely degrades the characters and world-building (just kidding there is no world-building) within the show. Everything about the world and its people are just cookie-cutter afterthoughts. The only love and care that was put into this show was lillith, but that's only because she showed some fire and tenacity to try to acheive things that she wanted. She was reactive. She felt like a human being I could meet. Unfortunate that she wasn't given a lot of screen.

The sound and art are nothing to write home about either. The piano interludes while cutesy aren't special. It's the basic A-B-A movements that can be heard in every single anime created in the 2014-2016 of the same genre. It can be very repetitive and disheartening. The OPs and EDs aren't stellar either. The animation quality is interesting to say the least, but get old after the 2nd and 3rd watch. The only thing I cannot dismiss in this anime art-wise is K's character in the last episode of the show. That CG was mindblowingly horrific. It was only there for 6 seconds, but it looks like a clay monster that was painted with watercolors was in the frames. NOPE. Not good enough.

Absolute Duo is a shallow, mixed bag of emotions. Most of those emotions being quite negative. There really isn't much to say. It started off like almost every battle harem between 2012-2016, and it ended very poorly like many of them did as well. Shallow characters. Poor writing. Middling execution make for a show that is absolute garbage. SKIP please.