Review of Land of the Lustrous

There's a great deal to love about this series. The CGI on this one really is great, partly because the characters themselves aren't human, making the sometimes strange movements feel normal for them. As usual for Studio Orange, it's at its best when these models are in motion, with some of the sakuga standing out as very impressive. I think for the most part the characters are interesting, with each type of crystal having its own distinct nature and, in several cases, fighting style. Not all of them get the kind of attention that I would want, but in a 12 episode run, some characterswill end up feeling a little underbaked. The series certainly did more of them than I expected, so it gets points from me in that department. I like the setting, too, as well as the worldbuilding for the series. It consistently drew me in with a bunch of questions that some of the characters eventually started asking, challenging a number of basic assumptions that seem baked into these characters from the start.

However, I still don't think this series quite lives up to the hype. There's a smaller problem and a bigger problem. The smaller one is the worldbuilding. I do like it, but it's still strange. They try to explain why there are distinct forms of "life" (the crystals, organic life on the planet and Lunarians), but it never seems to come together. I almost would have preferred if they just left their origins vague and stopped introducing more intrigue as various characters try to come to grips with it.

The big problem is just how strangely aimless the plot seems to be. There are all these little arcs that are connected to subsequent arcs by various elements of the previous one, but so many of them don't go anywhere. They're just plot threads left dangling. And much as I don't have a problem with the series not being able to explore all of its characters in detail, I do find it strange that it decides to introduce some new characters so late in the game, or, in some cases, largely cut certain characters out of the story for large swaths of time before returning to early plot elements they were involved in. The former wastes precious time on characters who are barely in the story for reasons I don't really get, and the latter just makes it seem like the writers forgot about those elements until they realized they had to finish wrapping things up before the end of the 12th episode.

And that's maybe where I'm having the most trouble with this show. There are a number of mysteries that are never solved, but there's a mystery that starts at the beginning of the series, is revealed not to be a mystery (at least, not to most of the characters) later in, and then just never gets an answer by the end. I think the goal is to leave a certain character feeling largely enigmatic, but it also just makes it that much harder for me to appreciate him after the fact. He's a major force in the story, but he just kind of leaves me empty. Meanwhile, Phos and those directly around her/him are far more interesting for how they deal with loss and their struggles with their identities, jobs, and the way they face the world. That's more of the draw of this series, it's something both human and inhuman in so many ways because they just don't (and can't) think about death and lifespans the same way we do. I think that's very effective.

This series is great in many of its elements, but that lack of narrative drive and dangling plot threads drag it down for me. It's still a series I'd recommend, even if it doesn't come together as neatly as I'd like.