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REVIEW: Beatless Final Stage




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Chaos Wings



Joined: 05 May 2015
Posts: 277
Location: Your guess is as good as mine?!
PostPosted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 9:15 am Reply with quote
I liked the series overall and there were a lot of interesting ideas thrown into the mix. My only problem was Arato, he was way too much of a wet kipper, the exact embodiment of protagonists I completely loath. Giving him more of a backbone instead of a moist tissue-paper personality wouldn't have altered the story's direction in any significant capacity.

Luckily Lacia is far more important to the story and intriguing enough to carry the show on her own. Watching her true machinations unfold was quite a delight as I always enjoy a good 'webs within webs' story.

Other than wishing MC-kun would accidentally get erased, I'd definitely say this series is worth a watch
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encrypted12345



Joined: 25 Jan 2012
Posts: 715
PostPosted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 10:20 am Reply with quote
It could have been better, but I think that it's an interesting AI focused anime that fans of the theme of AI should watch through. Something like Time of Eve is better as a form of entertainment, but Beatless put a lot more thought into AI and human relationships even if you could argue that it's focus on philosophy made the show unpalatable to a more general audience.
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EiMs



Joined: 14 Jul 2018
Posts: 50
PostPosted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 12:26 pm Reply with quote
What I can say this was very good Sci-fy from story side and I love it just because of that. Art and animation was weakest point of it. If someone like Production I.G had done animations and art, we would have had really good looking and strong from story side Sci-fy anime. Of course we have a little plot hole like Theron said we don't know if they reach their goal and change society of course they can easily fix it with OVA.
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jl07045



Joined: 30 Aug 2011
Posts: 1527
Location: Riga, Latvia
PostPosted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 3:32 pm Reply with quote
encrypted12345 wrote:
It could have been better, but I think that it's an interesting AI focused anime that fans of the theme of AI should watch through. Something like Time of Eve is better as a form of entertainment, but Beatless put a lot more thought into AI and human relationships even if you could argue that it's focus on philosophy made the show unpalatable to a more general audience.

I don't think it's the focus on philosophy. Whatever navelgazing it has is often interspersed with either action scenes or androids exhibiting archetypical anime waifu behaviour.
The bigger problem is that the execution in both storytelling and technical aspects is seriously lacking at times, so there's little that keeps the general audience around for the ai talk.
That, and the fact that the show is very deliberate at revealing its cards and the average adhd-ridden anime fan will early on start complaining about plot holes and whatnot and drop it as a consequence.


I can't give my final impressions about the show yet, because I've yet to watch those final 4 episodes, but this is a really weird show for me. It is in my experience one of extremely few anime that is very committed to being a serious science fiction instead of just an adventure story in a futuristic setting. At the same time it is often frustrating to watch. Information is revealed not it should, but when it feels convenient for the author (how many episodes did it take for some definite info on superintelligent AI after mentioning that they exist?).
Arato... is one of the dumbest characters I've seen for some time. And that includes his clearly challenged sister. He keeps trusting Lacia based purely on anthropomorphizing and the fact that he wants to fudge her. The show addresses and acknowledges his gullibility, but imho it fails to make a convincing counterpoint to Ryo's position of and that is mainly because Arato is just too dumb and naive to carry the message the show wants him to. To boot, Lacia is written in a way that downplays the threat a true superintelligence can be. Maybe some of my opinions will change after watching the ending ofc.
That being said, I can already praise this show for making me take an effort to analyze it intellectually and rethink things on the ai debate, that alone elevates it high above most seasonal offerings.
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Stampeed Valkyrie



Joined: 10 Aug 2014
Posts: 825
Location: PA
PostPosted: Wed Oct 31, 2018 7:37 am Reply with quote
Overall I thought this series was "OK" the TV ending was pretty rough to watch. The "True" ending 24-28 episodes made the ending more palatable, but still left too many threads open in my opinion to recommend it.

I don't think this series suffered as much of a had potential and flubbed it as much as Plastic Memories did but I do think the writers did not know how to get a story to mesh in 24 episodes.

And lastly the biggest detraction on this series was the lack of depth of the characters. The MC was very, vanilla and had no real personality other then treating androids poorly is bad. The other characters equally suffered lack of character depth, his friends, his insert character sister (who served no real point), even the other AI's. The only exception to this was Lacia, and Kouka (sp?).
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JustinTaco



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 118
PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:29 pm Reply with quote
Really fantastic show. I've been recommending it to as many friends as I can. While it's obviously not perfect, it's not gotten nearly the attention it deserves.
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