The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

#COMPASS2.0 ANIMATION PROJECT

In the combat providence analysis system, “COMPASS2.0,” heroes gather alongside human partners in a dreamlike space. The heroes have to keep fighting to produce enough energy to keep the system running. One hero named 13 is a troublemaker who refuses to find a partner. When 13 is nearly kicked out, a new player named Jin agrees to join him. Can they bring peace to the world of #COMPASS2.0?

#COMPASS2.0 ANIMATION PROJECT is based on the #Compass —Combat Providence Analysis System game by NHN PlayArt and Dwango. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

If there's a word that I've come to utterly despise over the last few years, it's “content.” I'm talking about the noun here, not the adjective. When people refer to the art they engage with as “content” that they “consume”, my stomach twists into knots. Whenever anyone I know unironically describes themselves as a “content creator,” I have to bite my tongue to keep from making some kind of snarky remark. If anyone ever mistook me as someone who would ever willingly label myself as a “content creator,” I might just scream incoherently until they decide to back away slowly and leave me alone. I genuinely believe that one of the worst trends of the 21st century is the way we've all adopted soulless corpo-speak as the daily verbiage by which we process our lives. We are meant to think, and to feel, and to share. We write, and paint, and sculpt, and film, and carve, and sing, and dance. We, as a species, are not meant to make “content,” except perhaps for that content that we fill up our toilet bowls with on a regular basis (provided your diet is in check).

All of this preamble is to make sure you understand how sharp and deep a criticism it is when I say that #COMPASS2.0 ANIMATION PROJECT feels like content for the sake of content. I hate it so, so much. It's title alone is enough to drive me up the wall, as if some executive somewhere who has never crafted so much as a greeting card's worth of genuine human expression saw the placeholder title for some theoretical tie-in to whatever video game this show is based on and said “Screw it! That's good enough to secure a copyright. Someone let the interns out of the basement so they can throw together a handful of scripts before we ship them out to the lowest bidder next week.”

The actual episode of the anime attached to that title does not give any better of an impression. It is, for all intents and purposes, incoherent noise that exists only to show off the characters and…features(?) of the COMPASS. Speaking of which, I could barely discover anything about the #Compass: Combat Providence Analysis System game that this show is ostensibly a tie-in for since barely any gameplay footage exists for it, and the title only exists overseas. What I can tell you, though, is that #COMPASS2.0 is a godawful advertisement for the product, because I am now convinced that any game that features this unholy mix of nonsensical lore, generic visuals, and awful character designs cannot possibly be worth anyone's time or money. If the COMPASS game does have a more scrutable story than “A bunch of irritating weirdos ramble incessantly with each other and occasionally fight cheap-looking monster baddies,” then I could not possibly tell you what it is, nor do I care. This is the kind of wasteful nonsense that gets dumped into the trough because the expectation is that fans will just gorge themselves on whatever slop is put in front of them. Turn up your nose and demand something better.

I have watched a surprising amount of these gatcha game anime over the years. Those based around a compelling plot (e.g., Fate/Grand Order or Magia Record) or with their own unique directorial vision (Princess Connect! Re:Dive) have turned out to be surprisingly good. It's just too bad that most of them are as bland and forgettable as #COMPASS2.0 ANIMATION PROJECT.

Honestly, what is there to say about this one? We have heroes from across space, time, and fiction fighting each other in a PVP smartphone game. Each hero is partnered with a human player and…blah blah blah. There are also some squishy monster things and robots invading that are trying to destroy the virtual world.

This episode only has three actual characters—despite the constant shots of characters from the game that only those who played it would know of. The first two are barely defined: Jeanne d'Arc is on a losing streak and is too stubborn to take some time off to rest, and the robot guide is… a robot who guides. The other is an arrogant asshole ladies man who refuses to fight or find a human partner for mysterious reasons. It's all trite, predictable, and not compelling in the slightest.

This anime doesn't look all that great, either. Often, these anime tie-ins serve as commercials for their respective games and thus have huge budgets. This one does not. Heck, the character designs (which I assume come from the game) aren't even very appealing. Jeanne d'Arc looks like a poor knockoff of her Fate series counterpart, and Justice Hancock appears to be a mix of a Starcraft Space Marine and Buzz Lightyear.

All in all, I couldn't find a single positive to this anime—and certainly nothing that would make me even want to consider playing the related game. The only joy it has brought me comes from the knowledge that I will never have to think about it ever again.

I hope you enjoy robotic voices, because you're going to hear a lot of them in #Compass2.0. Based on the RTS of the same name, the TV series attempts to hook viewers by having a squeaky-voiced escapee from WALL-E address them directly, explaining the basics of what I am forced to assume is the game. She walks us through the first five-odd minutes of the episode by narrating information about fights and partners and a lot of other game-specific information that would have served viewers unfamiliar with the game better if doled out organically rather than info-dumped. I can only assume that viewers who have played the game already know all of this and might not appreciate the how-to. Eventually, we learn that it's not us she's talking to, but Jin, a new player, who by the end of the episode will have teamed up with Hero 13, against 13's wishes. It's a fascinating combination of incomprehensible and boring.

It does have some interesting character designs, though. Characters wear a combination of bits and pieces from different places and times, like one fellow who looks like a mashup of Captain America and Buzz Lightyear. At the same time, another's grey skin/green eyes combo is visually striking. Some others are truly done to death, though, like Jeanne, who looks like, well, anime Jeanne d'Arc and the Mii-like style of the player characters, three of whom we see in this episode. There are also idols for some reason, possibly just for the sake of having idols in the show.

If there can be said to be a driving force in the plot, it's that the robogirl really wants 13 to partner up. Heroes and Players are supposed to form duos to fight…each other? Bugdolls? Probably both, with the latter being much more important. 13 has resisted forming a partnership with anyone, but he can't get out of it when a large swarm of bugbots attack, and he ends up with Jin. Jin is a blank slate right now, although we're meant to assume that he had a friend in the real world who is either no longer there or with whom he lost touch; 13 seems to remind him of that friend. Jin also may be a college student playing the game in class, based on a brief image of him in the real world, which may or may not be important.

That feels like it sums up the issues with this episode. There's no way of knowing what strictly needs to be there and what's just thrown in for style. Are the Heroes people from our world who died? Are they from a variety of other worlds? Why should we care about any of this? At the end of the episode, I'm left with no answers or a desire for them and a headache from listening to that robot.