Ex-Arm

Franconator Mar 30, 2021

2

Who knows why they decided to make Ex-Arm, a CGI mess to the eyes, filled with godawful art and punctuated with dead air in between, as if the voice actors were all waiting on each other to speak before reading their lines. There’s a semblance of a story that drags Ex-Arm forward, but because the whole thing is so soulless and empty, the story is less a plot and more a list of bullet points that’s clearly meant to be run through as quickly as possible. Like your drunk uncle’s favorite C-grade action movie, Ex-Arm, a series set not even 10 years into the future, believes technology is bad and a curse to all humankind. So of course it follows that your main character has been reduced to a mere brain in a box, doomed to work alongside the Cops of Christmas Future to find the answers to his personal mystery. Or at least that’s how I remember things. I wish I could call this a train wreck, but doing so would imply it left with some dignity right out the gate. But because Ex-Arm was already doomed the moment it started airing, it’s a train that’s already burst into flames on the tracks. To watch Ex-Arm week after week is to suffer from a specific form of amnesia, where you specifically forget everything that happened before the episode you’re watching. You keep holding out for that “so bad, it’s good” factor to kick in, but instead, you get moments where you catch yourself feeling bad for making the show feel bad. Was there any effort put into this thing? There must have been, if the voice actors are still delivering their lines in only half-dead tones like zombies reanimated against their will instead of actual dead carcasses. And even if they flail when they’re meant to swing a punch, or hyperventilate on screen when they’re meant to be dodging bullets, the characters at least turn when they’re meant to turn so I suppose that should count for something. It’s hard to find something to justify the effort put into finishing all twelve shitty episodes, which I guess should be obvious in the way I’m still talking instead of finishing the review like I was supposed to about ten sentences ago. So you know, take it from me, the lousy guy who actually did put in the effort to find absolutely nothing of value: don't bother. [This review was made for the Anime Lottery Game: Winter 2021 event. Okay, I’ll stop talking now.]

SonicFan3 Apr 3, 2021

0.5

This is an excellent example of why animators are so important to... y'know, MAKING an anime. This entire anime is one long trainwreck of terrible design decisions. The awkward mix of 2D & 3D, the poor choices of people in charge of various aspects of the project (such as a director who had never worked in anime ever), the terrible 3D rigging leading to so much wonkiness they could never hope to iron it out, the fact that their animation is so incompetent that it ends up leading to Accidental Homophobia (there are kiss scenes between 2 women, each time covered by a flash to hide the fact that they... really are unable to animate a kiss)... The list goes on and on. I will say the story is alright, but it gets buried beneath the dumpsterfire that is the visuals. 0/10 for quality, but it makes for great snark material if you want to watch something straight out of the bottom of the trash can. Crunchyroll should pay all of us who sat through this.

LittleHanna Mar 2, 2021

10

uhh this is a anime from uhh a new studio not well suited for translation of media into this form, that being animation. Ex-arm is one of the mangas i read before i got into anime,and such uhh i gave this a try, am still watching since it can't beat the dumpster fire that was uhh domestic kanojo or uhh ero-manga sensei. uhh this seems to have surpassed that. uhh i'll keep watching this so others don't have to. uhh it's uh good for ages 7 and below is what i can say. at that age most of the audience tends to focus on the giant explosions and punches rather than how good they are animated.I think the staff is not at blame here,they work with what they have and what they're given to work on. uhh i think this should be a good opportunity for the studio to reflect on and try to reach better animation standards in the future.uhh i'm not spoiling since well there's very little to. for the rest of the manga readers, uhh please just read the manga instead.