The First Circle

This episode changed the whole way I was watching the series. The Alluring visuals perfectly achieved the point of the whole story.

From the sudden shift of animation style to the back & forth between the backgrounds of characters at play really starts to make you question the point until, you reach the end. Then you sense a bit of uneasiness because the summery starts to creep in on our real world dilemmas. And the soundtracks, those hit hard especially the 'Afterlife'.

Not everything is black & white and I believe the director knew exactly how to bring the rabbit out of the hat (No pun intended).

Simultaneously the worst and most important episode of the whole series. I am all four alternative forms of story telling and experimenting with art styles and visual story telling, but this is like a 30 minute anime AMV in the dumbest way possible. This is one of those YouTube videos your little cousin would watch in 2011 and be like "wow it's so cool it's so deep it's so edgy". It is 30 minutes of dramatic techno/dubstep music mixed with two kids being like "wow my life sure is rough".

Conceptually I can see how this would've been been cool on paper but it was genuinely cringe inducing to watch. I literally wanted to skip it more and more as the entire thing went on. The episode then ends by explaining the main villains entire motivation and goal, which is insane that they make you sit through a 30 minute dubstep music video to get to. It's almost insulting.

"We'll tell you what his goal is, but you have to listen to our playlist first".

I was not expecting that at all. Wow. I thought the show was good so far, nothing special, just a demon slasher with an OP / comic relief main character. Had its pegged as a low 7/10. Something to watch that was good but not memorable. This turned everything around. Iv never played the games so I can't speak on the lord of the show but man this was solid. Netflix are cooking lately.

This episode was amazing. Few words spoken but the back story was incredible. Now I don't know who to root for. Who are the real devils in the story? It's like Attack on Titan all over again, there's no right answer.

First episode Iv rated as well, definitely well worth the watch.

The last two episodes started out being average, until we finally got an episode that was totally out of the ordinary, so yes it was quick but it was superbly well done with the incredible music that embellished the whole episode.

The black and white side was really a good idea for staging with a bit of color for the rest, it was really this kind of episode that I was really looking forward to because it is simply generally the best

The black and white side was really a good idea for staging with a bit of color for the rest, it was really this kind of episode that I was really looking forward to because it is simply generally the best.

No spoilers - just sharing how this episode made me feel ,This anime moved me deeply. I haven't watched any anime in a long time, but this episode made me feel truly sad. The art style-there are two distinct styles-was really impressive. The emotional weight of the story and the atmosphere completely pulled me in. The antagonist was written in such a way that I found myself understanding his actions. Everything from the pacing to the dialogue felt purposeful. It's rare to find an episode that leaves this kind of impact. Honestly, this was a beautiful and powerful experience that reminded me why I fell in love with storytelling in the first place.