Am I the only one who watched this?
You know, I really don’t like to throw the word “Pretentious” around carelessly, but I have no other way to describe this. It tries REAL hard to set itself up as a complex story with convoluted and interesting powers, I’d say pretty much trying to be what Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night are, but it falls on its face hard.
When you finish sorting out the barrage of random religious/scientific terms it throws your way and realizing that they mean nothing, you actually realize that every goddamn plot point relies on everyone being batshit fucking stupid. Even more so, the first arc’s “plot twist”, which relies on the two pseudo-antagonists being complete morons, is also the entire foundation for the second arc’s antagonist’s motivations, which make it even worse since that guy is set up as being a genius.
Then there’s Touma’s power. You know those stories where the main guy is super-weak except for a skill that seems really useless, but there’s usually some convoluted twist that he uses to make himself super awesome with it? And I don’t mean “This looks like a job for Aquaman!” situations, where things are just suspiciously arranged so that Hero Dude’s skill is the only thing that can save the day, but rather situations that look hopeless, but get turned on their heads because the hero is awesome. You know, like Shirou from FSN. I love those.
Well, that’s not Touma. The story tries real hard to make you believe he is, but he’s just not. His power is cancelling other powers. This is revealed a couple of seconds into the first chapter. The problem is that, unlike the situations described above, there’s no other twist to it, that’s all he does. Cue the Accelerator arc. Much pomp and fanfare is done regarding Accelerator’s invincible powers and how nobody can beat him. Then the fights starts and the show tries real hard to appear suspenseful and seem like Touma is an utter underdog who has no chance. Finally, in the climatic moment, spoiler warning, Touma cancels his powers and beats him to a pulp. Yes, thank you, I KNEW THAT WOULD HAPPEN, THAT’S ALL HE DOES, yet the previous four chapters had been spent on constantly trying to make the viewer forget that Touma has only one skill and that there was only one way the battle was going to end. All the while I was confusedly staring at the screen while wondering if I was missing something, as I failed to catch what the suspense was all about. I was expecting something to happen and justify all the buildup. Nothing did. It’s like when you know that nothing is going to happen until they form the Megazord and use the sword finishing move, except the show is trying to pass itself off as brainy.
Worse then, during that battle, his enemy has many, really obvious ways to kill him that fail because of a plot armour that can’t be justified with a straight face (How the hell did all those steel beams miss, are you shitting me?).
And then there’s Angel Fall. There is no goddamn way to take that arc seriously, much as it tries.
But the cherry-on-top is Touma’s amnesia. Let’s skip over the fact that the thing that caused it is explicitly mentioned seconds before to be lethal, yet it only fries his brain because… plot armour again I suppose. Let’s also skip over the fact that the damage caused is literally described as FRIED BRAIN CELLS, yet convenient amnesia seems to be the only damage incurred from a BURNED BRAIN. No, let’s skip all that and point out that this plot point has an amusing lack of impact on anything. It’s played as tragic at the moment, but Touma is such a perfect bullshitter that after a while you completely forget that he’s got no memory, which eventually has you wondering what the hell was the point of that plot in the first place, except to give the first arc a touching finale that was clearly not planned all the way through if the story was to continue.
I have no trouble turning off my brain to enjoy a series that embraces its own silliness, but I have serious issues doing that while the show itself is trying to pass itself off as super clever. It makes a big deal of a flame giant burning at 3000 degrees Celsius seconds after it had a guy just dodging said giant by centimetres while not even scorching his hair, it quotes Schrödinger’s cat to explain esper powers while delivering a conclusion that misses the point of the experiment completely. It’s like it just brings up random shit for the hell of it while not really understanding what any of it actually means.
