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Wasn't that bad, I quite enjoyed it for what it was. A lot less action than the first season and a lot of technobabble but at least they wrapped up the story in the end.

Buried somewhere within this show was a somewhat interesting story about the semi permanents, the prejudice surrounding them, and the general fallout of the end of the first season in the vein of the way Chaos;Child tackles the aftermath of the Shibuya Earthquake from Chaos;Head. But basically none of the season's early setup is actually paid off (poor Ryo getting pingponged the most by the show's erratic priorities), even before you get to the climax where it's clear that none of it actually mattered and it was just a way to fill time before the twist.

I feel this review is harsh.

Yes, the CGI does suck, and admittedly just for that I usually skip a show, but the only reason I stuck around was Yoko Taro's name.

And... it turned out to be interesting, and not the mess the reviewer describes. Yes, the back story set up is complex and it is a leap of logic for someone to come up with a battle royale death match just to have candidates for godhood that isn't sold well other than what tend to be typical Taro themes of nihilist perspectives wher character fall into despair and hopelessness therefore lashing out in desperation, and therefore this method was chosen, but I don't see where the reviewer is necessarily getting messages of cell phones are bad or bullying is good?

The show does have an interesting perspective when you assume it's premise of what the world might mean if the god it depicts was like this. And ultimately it cannot give hard answers, just raise interesting questions that we might also ponder about in reality.

The characters are interesting and are designed and written to undermine the usual anime tropes, and as Taro likes, they are deliberately awkward, weird, scarred, brutal and troubled.

I had an interesting time, the show certainly wasn't boring. But it's kind of the thing that might appeal more to fans who like things like Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze, Boogiepop Phantom etc. rather than typical anime viewers. It's divisive, more interested in it's themes than any sophisticated detailed world building and unlike those other shows, it's color palette and cgi style is a miss. It could've fared better with a more grimdark grunge 90's visual direction.

jdnation wrote:

Yes, the CGI does suck, and admittedly just for that I usually skip a show, but the only reason I stuck around was Yoko Taro's name.

Yoko Taro is only credited with "original concept", as in he scribbled a few notes on a piece of paper and signed off on the use of his name for marketing purposes. Which is apparent from just watching it; there's nothing Yoko Taro about the show, and you stuck around for basically no reason. He couldn't even get around to retweeting the finale until like a week later, that's how not locked in he was. It was just a quick paycheck he barely had anything to do with.

And comparing this to Texhnolyze and Lain is a horrible insult to them. Which doesn't come down to a "grimdark grunge 90's visual direction" (only one of the anime you listed being from the 90s btw), but the fact that KamiErabi lacks any sort of substance. There is nothing behind its "philosophizing" beyond potboiler stuff about how being god is hard which you can see in countless other anime that also do the same tired god game premise. It doesn't speak to anything in the way that Lain speaks to an increasingly digitized world, to just use one example.

YackDe wrote:

jdnation wrote:

Yes, the CGI does suck, and admittedly just for that I usually skip a show, but the only reason I stuck around was Yoko Taro's name.

Yoko Taro is only credited with "original concept", as in he scribbled a few notes on a piece of paper and signed off on the use of his name for marketing purposes. Which is apparent from just watching it; there's nothing Yoko Taro about the show, and you stuck around for basically no reason. He couldn't even get around to retweeting the finale until like a week later, that's how not locked in he was. It was just a quick paycheck he barely had anything to do with.

And comparing this to Texhnolyze and Lain is a horrible insult to them. Which doesn't come down to a "grimdark grunge 90's visual direction" (only one of the anime you listed being from the 90s btw), but the fact that KamiErabi lacks any sort of substance. There is nothing behind its "philosophizing" beyond potboiler stuff about how being god is hard which you can see in countless other anime that also do the same tired god game premise. It doesn't speak to anything in the way that Lain speaks to an increasingly digitized world, to just use one example.

Whatever Taro's involvement, I saw his name, so I stuck around, sorry if that offends you...?

In any case the show clearly does try to imitate Taro in terms of having some hidden motives and harsh past/backgrounds to it's characters that initially present themselves in one superficial way only to subvert it, and a story where tragedy follows tragedy to move the plot along and some philosophizing over society and the human condition etc. Maybe all that was what Taro's notes quickly scribbled down for the production... do you actually know? If so, details would be nice... Unless you don't actually know... So while we can agree that the show isn't anywhere as good as Taro's game writing, there's plenty there to see where it does try to mimick his work, likely based on many of the loose ideas he gave them in the first place.

And why are you upset that I suggested that the subject matter was aiming to appeal to an audience that liked the titles I listed (failure or not), and why are you upset that I loosely categorized them under an aesthetic reminiscient of the 90's in passing? Sorry, I didn't realize I was talking to my accountant here where the dates of my viewing transactions need to be filed correctly. Like, chill out man... Kami Erabi is interesting to me even if it doesn't succeed at all it set out to be. The production certainly doesn't help it, but if it went for a visual style or direction as any of the shows I listed, it could've at least been interesting on the eyes.

I'll at least say, Kami Erabi was a more interesting show than many of the isekai/Fantasy-gimmick/game shows that come every season, if not the sad butchered speed run adaptation that was NieR Automata.