High Guardian Spice (2021) User Reviews

Poor and problematic

[Channeleven · 1/10 · 11 November 2021]

I won't go into the controversy surrounding this series during its earlier stage of production. As far as anyone should be concerned, we just have a new series on an anime streaming service. It will be judged as such.

The issue here is a lack of true innovation, or at the very least innovation that seems natural. Characters are one note or adhere to traits already used in other shows, the plot is just as flat and basic, the animation... I'm not gonna complain about a western cartoon being featured on an anime service, but this animation is pretty subpar.

Basic movement, mediocre art direction, often lazy backgrounds.

The writing suggests the writers are out of touch with the world or have no grasp on natural progression or presentation. It feels more like meeting a quota than providing true representation. Not all LGBTQ+ individuals have garish hairstyles or a punk look, it's a borderline caricature.

It's less "A lesbian character" and more. "Look, it's a lesbian character, are you satisfied?" I'm all for representation, but I fear it will always be handled in the worst possible way.

If these characters are based on the writers, then it's less about representation and more of a warped interpretation of it.

Either the wrong people are representing diversity, or this is just a poorly written show that was not worth the delays and vague initial details, plagued with cliches, bland characters and stories and low quality animation.

Both. It's both.

Garbage

[devin-80592 · 1/10 · 12 November 2021]

Please don't waste your time watching this series. There are plenty of other things that you can do with your time.

If you're looking for a similar series, please just watch Little Witch Academia instead. It is honestly one million times better.

Absolutely appalling

[dianabolic · 1/10 · 2 November 2021]

The artists are so lazy. Didn't anyone see how they blatantly copied and pasted textures onto light posts and breads? The voice acting sounds like a group of teens recorded themselves on the phone, not to mention, they don't fit the characters very well. And don't get me started with the script. What are they? Tumblrinas?

Trash

[settersbrianna-33224 · 2/10 · 4 November 2021]

You can tell the people who created this nonsense had no passion put into this whatsoever. The animation is God awful, diluted and awkward. The voice acting is even more awkward. The character designs are bland and uninteresting. The theme song is annoying and sounds like a stereotypical song from a barbie movie. Trying to target a certain audience by putting gay characters in the show. I wouldn't be against that, except for the fact that they're totally doing this to just get more people to watch which is just sad.

I give this a 2. I would rate it lower but I want to give at least one thing. It is bright and colorful. Other than that a complete fail. I don't recommend watching this, it has zero substance.

Our expectations for this were low but oh my god

[blukirby · 16 November 2021]

Oh boy, I remember all the hate this show got when it was announced. Well, that was years ago, let's have ourselves a looksie 3 years later.

As a member of the LGBTQ+ community who is not cis or het, I was personally offended and outraged when these people advertised their show using the terms "diversity" and "representation." I mean, seriously? We are not ad campaign fodder; we are human beings; don't exploit our culture for Good Boy Points. But, hey, this could be a good show. Perhaps their focus was in the wrong place when they advertised this.

Well, no.

All representation of trans and gay people feels... stiff. Unnatural. Forced, even. Our protagonist finds pictures of a male character pre-transition, and wants to understand why he is a SHE in these photos. She even asks the most appropriate question to prompt a response from him - "You were a girl?" Now, this is a world full of magic and monsters, anything is possible with magic, even transing your gender! A simple explanation like, "I used my magic to transform into the real me" would have been just fine! But the moment the words "I'm transgender" left his lips, I knew it would just go downhill. He gives the most textbook definition of transgender possible, you know, "I was born in the wrong body" and all. And that's all he is; a coined transgender character (and I use "character" loosely. We all recognize he's only there to be pretty representation).

I for one would rather have a good story and no representation instead of a bad story and great representation. But, High Guardian Spice doesn't offer much in the story department either. It takes from Steven Universe, She-Ra, Voltron, and Madoka in presentation and story, but chooses the worst aspects from all the aforementioned and the end result is a dumpster fire covered in glitter and pride flags.

Animation wise, the presentation is just... okay. Character designs are kinda cute, but the animation is stiff and feels bland. The art style is generic and leaves much to be desired, but, I feel that people are overreacting when they say this looks like a "how to draw anime" book. It's just a plain artstyle that I've seen in both the professional and freelance world time and time again. It's pleasing to the eyes if you can keep them open long enough to get a good look.

Voice acting? Again, just lackluster and so very disappointing. Their voices fall flat, and I wonder how many of these people have actually voice acted before? And for whatever reason, all the male voice actors sound like their microphones are out of whack. Poorly compressed voices come out of the men's mouths, while the women sound smooth and fluid.

But then again, the people making this show are hateful misandrists that refused to let male writers onto their team, for the sake of a diverse all-female team. I wouldn't be surprised if the men got the short end of the stick in terms of recording equipment for this sole reason alone.

No, men are not shown in a positive light here. Most of the men in this show are feminine or androgynous, which I don't mind, but the few masculine ones are so full of toxic masculinity and immaturity that I'm surprised they aren't overflowing with it- oh, wait, they are. They attempted to address this by depicting a masculine character struggling with expressing his feelings solely because he's a guy and is expected to be strong. And that's fine... except the show went on to equate "showing feelings" with "crossdressing"... yeah. I'm not opposed to men wearing feminine clothing; in fact, I believe it should be normalized for men to wear girl clothes if they so desire.. But this is NOT how you do it. In fact, lots of guys don't express themselves for this exact reason - they're afraid of being seen as "girly" and "less manly" because their whole lives, they've been told to suck it up and be a man whenever they show any hint of sadness. So showing a male character becoming more open with his feelings by dressing like a girl would just confirm that belief (though lets be honest, who is taking life advice from THIS show?) Just snap this poor boy in two, give the emotional constipation to one and crossdressing to the other, and boom, two good characters right there.

And one final note, who is this show for exactly..? The art style and story says "children's show" but occasional swearing shoves it into adult territory. Is this the kind of thing an adult would watch, though? The LGBTQ+ community hates this show and refuses to associate with it, and cishet people, whether allies or not, will notice the gay rep wedged in so awkwardly that they'll cringe with us. Boys will be upset at how the male characters are treated, and girls won't even look at it because there are so many better shows for them already. Anime fans are laughing at this western cartoon in an overcoat trying to pretend to be an anime, and cartoon fans, again, have better things to be watching right now. Somehow, these people have made a show that appeals to nobody.

In conclusion, if your show rides on representation alone with no tasteful story to be found, it's time to get back to the drawing board.

Why this show stinks

[matt-93065 · 1/10 · 3 November 2021]

1. While High Guardian Spice was initially made to promote diversity the only thing that was diverse are the witches are different races and also one trans male and that's it. With only two male characters in it which makes it come off as pandering due to this.

2. It was clearly rushed due to it just coming out of nowhere for the release and this leads to problems shown here.

3. The dialogue is absolutely cringeworthy and looks like a first drift script they used.

4. Bad voice acting; The voices don't fit the characters at all and sound like they are speaking into a vacuum.

5. Very laggy animation and lazily copied and pasted props in the background due to the animator had a hard time doing their job right due to pressure from time and executive meddling.

6. Most of the characters designs look like Tumblr OCs or at best, a western cartoon not something out of a anime due to being too colourful and also everyone looks the same.

7. Completely unoriginal plot.

If i could rate it 0 I would

[auloni-22574 · 1/10 · 5 November 2021]

Heck even 0 is too generous for this abomination.

I saw the announcement form Cunchyroll 3 damn years ago and I knew it was gonna be trash, but for it to be THIS BAD, like bruh it's not just bad it's straight up offensive.

Very poorly written, animated, and voice acted

[fegamer · 1/10 · 28 November 2021]

Now imagine Steven Universe, Little Witch Academia, My Hero Academia, and She Ra, were blended together with D&D and Madoka Magica but instead of being something cool, IT FALLS FLAT ON ITS FACE.

When it was first advertised, High Guardian Spice tried to be a D&D version of Little Witch Academia. But it was advertised for its diversity instead of its plot. I'm all for women being in charge of a show, but you can't make that your main marketing point. If we know nothing about the plot we're most likely going to assume it will be bad. And guess what? It was that bad.

First the voice acting and sound mixing, most of the time the voice acting was done by amateurs and the could only hire 5 professional actors. Yes only 5 voice actors I can literally count the professionals hired for this show on one hand. Heck most of the people in the show aren't even voiced by actors they're voiced by artists, cartoonists, and illustrators for comics and webtoons. Even the character, Slime Boy talks with a bad microphone you can literally hear it every time he talks. And the sound quality of the show is so bad you can barely hear what's being said.

Then there's the animation while it may look very cute and nice to look at, there are so many animation errors it's like watching an Ed Wood movie. You can even see that items used in the show were found on google images like food on the table. And when objects move you can see the frames glitch constantly. But that's not the worst part of it. The worst part of HGS is the writing.

Yes representation for LGBTQA+ people does matter but it breaks the biggest cardinal rule of writing, SHOW DON'T TELL! We're constantly being told oh look this character is a lesbian, oh look at the transgender character, blah blah blah, it's shoved in our faces so much that we don't even know what these characters do or their personalities. Being LGBTQ is considered a personallity in this show which is not how representation is done. Instead you need to give these characters personalities of their own and they just happen to be LGBTQ.

Speaking of characters, many of these characters are as bland as stale white bread and as cliche as the oldest trick in the book. The male characters are written as straw misogynists, and the female characters are so poorly done that the bully character, Amaryllis is actually likable. One of the worst written characters in the entire show believe it or not is Sage. Throughout the entire show she just complains and cries when things don't go her way rather than talk about them in a civil manner.

In one episode, when Sage is in a group project with Amaryllis and Thyme but when Amaryllis speeds up the project Sage gets offended because old magic isn't being used. All she says about old magic is that it's sacred. But it's never explained why. However, it's shown that old magic takes a lot of time to master and uses lengthy rituals. While new Magic is instant. All Amaryllis did was use new magic because she and Thyme wanted to go to lunch and were tired of being stuck in class. Then she treats Thyme like the bad guy and cries out of the room for agreeing with Amaryllis on one thing. Later on, Sage still demands an apology from her for "siding with the school bully" even though she didn't. Then in the Fall Festival episode, Sage gets dramatic over Rosemary signing up to do a different activity and almost ruins her friendship. In the same episode, when most of the crowd is turned into statues, and the cat girl, Olive threatens to shatter them, she tells Rosemary don't go after Olive. You're seriously telling her not to defeat the bad guy when one of your friends needs help? What are you even thinking Sage?

Oh and the main bad guy, Mandrake is extremely poorly written possibly the laziest written antagonist ever. The biggest problem with Mandrake in the show, HE'S AN IDIOT! Mandrake can shapeshift into anyone and is assigned to kill anyone who knew too much information about his side. He even disguises himself as Lavender, (Rosemary's missing mom who is assumed to be dead, Steven Universe Rip off anyone?) in an attempt to kill Rosemary. He literally has her in his arms and was about to kill her but as soon as professor Caraway is mentioned, he runs away to his office. What was stopping him from killing her? He could've killed her and hid the body and then gone to Caraway's office. What the hell is stopping him from killing her? And then when Olive offers to kill Thyme for him, he somehow trusts her to do it despite knowing that she has mixed feelings about killing. And in a not so surprising twist she stabs Mandrake instead. How can you write a bad guy who's this dumb?

And not to mention the plot holes, let us talk about the plot holes.

In one episode the students have to get a magic healing potion from a cave only to find that the wells are dried up but they find a well at the bottom of the caverns and get stuck, but after making an exit thanks to a dragon friend, the big hole is still there and there's no implication that it closed up again. So when Olive breaks their only vial of potion, Thyme acts like it's the end of the world. The cave was still there and not closed off, and Sage can fly on a broom, why couldn't they just go back into the cave and get some more? It makes no sense.

But is there any positive in the show? Yes, one character and one only, Snapdragon. When we first meet her (Yes she/her pronouns) she comes off as a boy who's a bully because she was raised by a very masculine father who expects his sons to be tough. But instead, Snapdragon goes through emotional rollercoasters and confesses after beating up another student that she wants to be a girl. Her story is relatable for young transgender teenagers and it's very emotional. But even the writers managed to mess it up.

When they first mention a trans character it comes from the creator's self insert character, Professor Caraway. When he and Rosemary are talking about Lavender, he goes through this 30 second dialogue with her about how he's trans. Plot hole: In a world of magic, how does Rosemary not know what trans people are? Sage's cousins are lesbians and she's okay with it. So how would she not know what trans people are? Also, what can she do with this information if she had almost no interactions with Snapdragon after she beat up another student? The trans conversation should've been saved for Snapdragon and Snapdragon alone. Which brings me back to the cardinal rule of writing that was broken in the first trans scene, SHOW DON'T TELL! Nearly every LGBTQ+ scene is telling and not showing.

Steven Universe did it a lot better in terms of representation because everything was SHOWN not told. Ruby and Sapphire didn't constantly say that they were a lesbian couple, they showed it and their characters were not defined by being lesbians. They were defined by how despite being opposites in personality, they can still make Garnet. Even in a more recent online show called HelIuva boss, we see so many LGBTQ characters in the show but it's not shoved in our faces that they're LGBTQ through dialogue it's shown the entire time and it's subtle.

TBH if you want a decent show to watch with LGBTQA+ representation just go watch Steven Universe, the Owl house, HelIuva Boss (for adults only) or She Ra. If you want a good anime with a similar plot check out little witch Academia, or my Hero Academia. Because High Guardian Spice is now in its first, last, and only season.

High

[josephmayes · 2/10 · 13 November 2021]

You know that High Guardian Spice is off to a bad start when you realize that the title is dishonest. *None* of the characters are named after spices. Nor do we actually know what they're guarding against. So the only thing that is accurate between the series and the title is "High." Because that's the only thing you'll feel after you finish watching the first (and likely the last) season of Crunchyroll's feverish, incoherent DoA nightmare, High Guardian Spice.

2/10 (it could've been 1/10 if it wasn't for Slime Boy)

What is there to like about this?

[Castrum-doloris-ad-astra · 1/10 · 17 November 2021]

When I saw the High Guardian Spice trailer for the first time, my reaction was a bit different from most people's.

While most people complained about the ugly artstyle and the self-insert characters (which are valid), my focus was on the aesthetic. It seemed so uninspired. This show's whole schtick is that it takes place in a world of magic and the main character goes to a school where she can learn how to master the world's magic. Which isn't bad a idea, but so many shows have already done that - RWBY, Little Witch Academia and My Hero Academia - so if you're going to make a show with that premise, you have to make it stand out, and you have to make sure it can be on par with aforementioned shows. This show's character designs and artstyle looked like it was drawn in one day, based on the most generic European medival fantasy background ever and no one decided to do a second take.

And thats my first problem with High Guardian Spice. It doesn't stand out - not in terms of characters, plots, character arcs or anything. Which begs the question, if you're going to copy everythig from another show or make it generic, why even make the show in the first place?

Rose is a vanilla protagonist, what we know about her is that she acts like a child, she misses her mom, she looks like an ugly Chibiusa from Sailor Moon and she likes fighting. These traits are never developed or used in an interesting way, she's not particularly witty or outstanding compared to her peers, and whenever she is the focus of an episode, it's easy to predict what'll happen next. Her character isn't charming, unique or relatable, or even likeable despite her flaws, and there is nothing to set her apart from the vast sea of self insert characters from fanfiction. Despite her genericness, according to other characters, she apparently "has a penchant for justice" (said by Wyverna Dretch in Episode 2 - because other characters shilling up how good your character is good writing). She's also so qUIrKy because she's a ditz, she almsot hit Thyme with her sword and she finds Professor Caroway's dangerous adventures "cool".

This lack of development and singular trait thing is something present in the rest of the characters too. It's like the writers decided to pull up a checklist, assign a few similar ones to a different character, and call it a day. Sage is a crybaby, sensetive and bashful about her skills. Parsely is motherly and overprotective. Thyme is sarcastic and distant. Amaryllis is rude and snotty. Not once are these traits expanded upon, challenged, explored or deconstructed - they're the status quo. The villains are thrice as flat, we're given no information on them except "they're just bad, okay". If you want us to be interested in these characters, at least give us information about them.

That's not the only lack of information, we don't know anything about the lore of this world. What is a "guardian"? Why are literal children being sent to become them? Why are literal children tasked with jobs like handling scypeths? If being a guardian is such a honorable job in society, why are there only like 20 people in the whole school? Why are creatures like mermaids peaceful but creatures like dragons aren't? Why don't they have their owm guardians? How hasn't humanity been wiped out from handling dangerous monsters and missions? If this society is advanced enough to use magic as a way to shapeshift why didn't they use the magic to invent surveillance cameras and catch any spies? If Caroway is such a good guardian that he became a headmaster, why did the spies slip right under his nose? Why is Lavender hailed as a great guardian? Where does the magic come from and how did the humans mold it under their control? What will the villains gain from killing the students/teachers of High Guardian Academy? The show doesn't handle these questions, but you wanna know what it does handle? It spends all of episode 10 exploring if Rose likes Sage and going through flashbacks that don't add anything to the plot.

The few times the main characters are called out for their flaws, it's usually resolved in the span of five minutes. Any time there's a hero/villain conflict the heroes always win by displaying little to no effort, hell in episode 9 a villain runs away because she gets stabbed ONCE, like god, you do realize thats a normal part of fighting right? Why are you running away? WHO HIRED YOU? And if the villains are so intent on killing the main characters, why did they hire someone who said more than once THAT SHE DIDN'T WANT TO KILL PEOPLE?

If you're going to have unoriginal characters, the least you can do is add an original plot, but that's too much for the staff at Crunchyroll, so they went back to their checklist of cliches and used them for plot points. Yes there's an episode when they go to the beach, an episode where they go to a costume party, an episode where the bad guy decides to join the good guys for no reason (if Olive was so against killing why didn't she leave earlier) and an episode where the main character tells spooky stories.

The voice acting is off-key, for some reason they hired complete newbies to voice the characters, except Slime Boy, and he has the worst voice acting. The music is like if someone added a BGM to a Skype call. The animation is like a powerpoint presentation.

After I was done watching all 12 episodes I couldn't even remember what happened accurately because my brain was so numbed.

I'm 99% sure this show only happened because the creator of it had connections. It saddens me that instead of investing money in actual original and entertaining shows, instead the time and effort to garbage like this that nobody asked for, or wanted. This was made to validate the creator himself, it has no love, effort or heart in it. It makes me happy to see that this is getting backlash, as it should, and hopefully this backlash will lead to us getting better cartoons in the future. But with the state of how terrible most cartoons of this year are (sans Centaurworld, The Ghost and Molly McGee, Pibby, Kid Cosmic and Invincible)...its not hard to see why anime is beating comics and western media in terms of sales and fandom.

Not the way to go.

[Concerned_person · 1/10 · 5 November 2021]

Ok, I liked shows like SPOP, because it integrated LGBTQ ideas and acceptance causally. Moreover, shows such as Owl House had convincing plot lines and fit into their cartoon category. However, in this show they just shove the representation down your throat while yelling at you that this is actually an anime. Don't get me wrong I love seeing more positive LGBT representation, but this is NOT the way to go.

This is a masterpiece lol

[FireGlitch-303 · 10/10 · 3 January 2022]

The animation, writing, story and voice acting was so good that it can compared to such masterpieces such as Sharkboy and Lavagirl and Cool Cat Saves the Kids! :D

(This is sarcasm by the way, I dislike this show if I'm being serious.)

Overhated

[SwitchSwitch366 · 6/10 · 15 July 2023]

High Guardian Spice has been a show that was on my mind for months and now that I've finally watched it I've gotta say it's pretty decent I was fully expecting this show to suck hard right at the first episode since people were making such a big deal out of it but as I watched it to me it felt more like an ordinary cartoon you'd see on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon but more on that later. I personally really like the idea about young girls going to an academy so they can become strong guardians however it could've been better told but I guess there's only so much you can do with just 12 episodes. The characters are pretty entertaining especially the main ones, though I especially like the relationship between Rosemary and Sage. The voices for some of the characters seem out of place like was Crunchyroll too lazy to hire voice actors who could properly voice the appropriate ages? The early episodes aren't really that good but around episode 7 is when I was starting to enjoy it but episode 9 in particular is my favorite. I especially appreciate how violent HGS is though I never expected it considering how lighthearted it was in the beginning. Going back to what I said earlier I think this is more of a cartoon than an anime an if it were just that maybe it wouldn't get dragged on so much. Honestly I want to see HGS return for a second season especially after that end credits scene of the last episode of season one hopefully this time it'll have a better writing team that's not sexist....but who am I kidding this show's reputation has been driven into the ground thanks to constant hate it got but hey I could dream at least.

It's even worse than I thought

[ShiggyWerbenYagermanJohnson · 1/10 · 2 November 2021]

Don't let these other 10 star reviews fool you. High Guardian Spice has bad voice acting, they sound like wannabe Steven Universe characters, poor writing from the girls demonizing an innocent boy to the professor explaining what transgender is when all he could have said something as simple and move on, but too bad Rosemary is a complete ditz and kept asking questions like she's a 3 year old, and the plot is too weak for an adventure series. This makes the 4Kids dubbing company look like the God of anime distribution. We shall not be silenced by the defenders of this series.

Garbage

[korcoson · 4 November 2021]

This show is so bad i bad my soul hurts from that i thought i didn't have by now. And the creators were advocating to kill all men on twitter which is on its own enough not to ever watch it!

Cringe

[kenhaytplays · 1/10 · 6 November 2021]

Just really cringe. Bad product. Everything around it stinks. Bad dialogue. Mediocre Animation. Horrible backgrounds. Cringe story.

The story its just bad, boring and stupid. The dialogue its funny if taken out of context, you're drunk and have a poor sense of humor. From the start of production to the finish it had a bad mindset around it that was enhanced by the criticism that came with the original announcement. It probably could have been better if it didnt received so much hate from the start but even without it the quality of the anime wouldnt be great. Just a little bit less horrible.

You can see very clearly that the creators were in a bubble. Didnt understand the world around it and therefore their audience. After the release i hope it popped.

Losin' it

[camrynsinnwell · 1/10 · 17 November 2021]

The legit could not get past the first ep it is so terrible. Nearly every box of what makes a good show is left unmarked. Not only is the animation terrible and choppy, but the designs don't even fit the backgrounds. There is a difference between characters popping off the background to stand out then them just straight up not fitting.

But the worst part is the story and how they introduce it. There is no setup, no world building, they just- leave. Their gone and now we need to make sense of a very confusing story due to lack of world and character building before hand. We just assume things and hope for the best.

The only somewhat decent thing this show has is it's voice acting. But even then some delivers come off as flat and don't fit the tone.

It's just- not good. Please god do not watch this show. It's all about fluff and terrible foreshadowing.

The trans rep is transphobic

[spama-32489 · 1/10 · 26 November 2021]

This has some of the worst writing I've ever seen in a show, it's boring and never made me smile. There's no character development or reason to care about these characters and the trans rep is SO BAD. It's insulting and makes it seem like a choice, which it's not. This show was boring, insulting and a joke to artist everywhere. Do not recommend watching unless you want to be bored out of your mind. Waste of time.

And here I thought Ex-Arm was bad!

[taraditchbaugh · 1/10 · 1 November 2021]

They didn't even try with this. The voice acting sounds like the idea was proposed by a bunch of 13 year old Star Vs. The Forces of Evil fans. The plot was boring as heck. God forbid if this ever gains an ironic cult following, I'm going to scream. How can people tolerate the audio that's 10 times worse than nails scratching on a blackboard? As an Asian teenage girl, I'm disappointed!

What the heck is this?

[donkeyslept · 1/10 · 2 November 2021]

I remember when the trailer first came out and the show's staff advertised it so poorly. Boom, it came out, and oh boy, it's worse than I thought! The voice acting is annoying and emotionless. And people say The Nutshack has bad voice acting? Nah, son, this show takes the cake for bad voice acting. The plot of the show obviously copies that of other Western "Anime" shows. And don't get me started with the character designs. It's so cringeworthy how hard they tried to make an "anime", yet it ended up looking like a bootleg She-ra mixed with Teen Titans Go!. I don't recommend this to anyone! No! Crunchyroll should stop eating so much crunchy rolls while they're at it. Hands down!

Feels more like a fan animation than an actual anime

[annie-hawks · 1/10 · 31 October 2021]

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with fans making their own clips using characters from their favorite anime. The point is that not only was it branded as an "original anime", it feels like the producers of this show didn't really try hard enough to make their own original plot. A young girl trying to find her mother? Check. A group of girlfriends going to school to practice magic together? Sound familiar? We all knew how bad this was going to be when first announced, mainly because the staff didn't advertise it very well, and boy did it meet our expectations. From a bland plot, to pointless dialogue, to out-of-place voice acting, this feels like a slap in the face to anime and manga, if that's the way it was supposed to be branded as.

The Incredible Generic Content Generator 9000

[bewentzecl · 1/10 · 28 October 2021]

It's honestly hard to remember the last time I saw a show that was simultaneously so boring, embarrassing, and confusing. This isn't a kid's show, so I struggle to understand why most of the dialogue is so condescendingly-delivered, clunky, and oversimplified. It's about as subtle as an ax to the face and the writing never once stands out as clever or witty. The animation is incredibly dull, flat, and lifeless, not to mention the abysmal voice acting. All the praise for this show coasts on the buzz about "representation", but I think it does a massive disservice to the communities you try to represent when all the characters are thoroughly unlikable and hard to listen to. Raye, I understand that you wanted to do something good here, but you didn't. I'm sorry. It sucks. It sucks hard and you should feel bad that you made it.

Unfortunate

[zacharyriemermann · 10/10 · 24 January 2022]

I really like the core of the show - what this needed was a second season and more money, it's unfortunate. The characters are really likable, and the only real complaint I have is about the sound - there are some bits where the audio is scaled confusingly, but I honestly wish that they committed to that harder! I would love it if every character had sounded more like Slime Boy, and spoken like that - a lot of the other voice direction was much more traditional, and while I understand that it's safer and probably a smarter business decision, I'm always a big fan of interesting audio like that. I would love to watch more!

I don't get the hate.

[sumchubbybloke-09061 · 6/10 · 5 July 2022]

It's not brilliant, but it's pretty ok.

It does anime things, and western cartoon things.

Neither super originally, but honestly it's not really much more or less tropey than a lot of either.

The animation's a bit low-budget and kinda chibi, but it's not awful, and where they spent the money is visibly better and nicely done.

The LGTBQI stuff isn't particularly obtrusive, not perfectly done but seemingly well intentioned and certainly not just queerbaiting, it's not nearly as good as Shera and the Princesses of Power but it's not awful.

One thing I could say is I'm not sure if the creators' knew what audience this was for.

It's got a really kidsy vibe, but also enough swearing, adult subject references (booze, drugs, gambling, etc.) and/or blood content that would mean it gets a mature rating.

My one gripe is the music, any music with lyrics is awful. The ambient is mostly fine.

stock photo

[sisedofficial · 1/10 · 11 November 2021]

A multi-billion dollar company used a stock photo for the animation. Everything about the animation is just lazy.

On top of that its made to promote twitter culture which is a red flag for me.