WorldEnd was for me enjoyable, but I didn't like the ending.
For the first six minutes (ignoring that first minute sequence, that is) it tells you a lot about the world! After a young woman asks a would-be savior to help her find a location, the dialogue gives way to a beautiful love song (a unique rendition of "Scarborough Fair") and a sequence of their adventures in the city. WorldEnd is most definitely a love story, or at least, the anime covers the parts that could be called a love story. I haven't read the light novels or the manga, so I'll only be covering the anime.
So this is the introduction we get into this series, it's about 6 minutes of saccharin storytelling. After a brief conversation where she thanks him for a life changing experience, she says fondly that she can now easily die with peace for having shared the moment. And then our two characters part ways, not having given each other names, and the girl asking him to forget ever meeting her at all. But it is obvious to the viewer that their fates are linked. I won't go into details on that first minute sequence, and I feel like it would have been better if they hadn't even put that there. The story is about Willem, one of the last remaining humans and Cththolly the leprechaun.
This is a pretty short series at only 12 episodes in length. The music in the show is pretty good, "Scarborough Fair" for example is easily recognizable (though the lyrics are a bit different from the original, sung from a female perspective instead). When the show uses the term leprechaun they refer to the Gaelic myth of magic-wielding fairies, and not so much the American idea of a little tiny human wearing green and granting wishes.
Living a life of subsistence and mired in debt, the goblin Grick offers to Willem a job. Willem is hesitant to take the job once he finds out it's for the military, as he is incapable of fighting any longer. Though he relents when he finds out it's just a job of "watching over some weapons in a warehouse." Those weapons, as it turns out, are fairies.
The story is sweet. I enjoyed it immensely. But then the ending came and I was really left scratching my head. Is this really it? Is there no more to the story? The anime has no second season, nor is one planned. I'll probably try picking up the manga and see if something changes there, and barring that, possibly the light novel. If you're looking for a lot of intense action, you're not really going to get that here. This is about characters discovering their humanity in a world where there's very little of that left.
I certainly wanted to find out how it all ends, but you won't get that from the anime alone.
