I would love to know what happened with this show. It feels like a 24 episode show, that was cut and butchered with a dull blade down to 11 episodes. So much is missing and lost, and for once I can’t blame adaption. Somewhere buried in the mess it a good concept and enjoyable characters, and in general a unique idea I haven’t seen done before. The execution of that though is just poor.

As with many rushed shows, it starts good. The pacing in the first couple episodes work out well, and it feels like it has a chance. You are intrigued by the Financial District they build, the characters crafted, and this large impressive story. And one by one they fall apart under the stress of wrapping up all up neatly in 11 episodes.

The cast of characters fall into two camps it seems. Caring only about the present at the cost of all else, and caring only for the future at the possible cost of the present. Both sides take insane bets in hopes that things work out in their favor, and if one thing went wrong it would have completely ruined both parties. Their beliefs in the show could never function in parallel. Or, at least this is the feeling I got from the show. Because, due to the rushed nature of the show I never got a proper explanation that I would have liked. The characters will do something, you see a big number representing money go up or down, and a quick montage of things changing in the real world. And then the characters automatically know what happened following the change and react to it in real time, don’t know how.

Now outside of just goals and beliefs, I think they were fine. I don’t believe I will remember any of them, and definitely won’t remember their names or design. They did come off a tad generic and boring, and for some like Mashu they leaned heavily into tropes.

Onto the story I guess, this is a mess. And a mess of their own creation. They had a ton of content to use, so many story lines and development of the world and characters and interactions between factions and such. Just none of it gets properly developed into something I would call great, or even decent. How does the Financial District interact with the real World? What is the Financial District? Who controls all of this really? And how does this Financial District have so much power over nature, with the ability to cause World changing events. I almost want to say the entire thing is a computer simulation, none of this was real, and things just happen because some bored programmer is playing with some files.

Visually I would call the show poor. It had a decent mix of pure CGI and traditional artwork. And the split is unavoidable bad, with the CGI just looking so very dated. While also not really taking advantage of the CGI when used. I never understand why companies use CGI in this way. If you want to use CGI, have it compliment your existing artwork and style, not completely replace it. Not unless you are one of the few cutting edge CGI studios.

The strongest point of the show by far is the music. Really has a good sound track, good enough I can see adding some songs to one of my regular mixes.

Overall, a disappointing anime original. Somehow they managed to make an original rushed,, and if they had given it more time it probably would have been something amazing. But as it stands, there isn’t much here to love.