A.I.C.O. Incarnation

This is a decent anime. Well-crafted (although one does get really tired of The Burst after about almost immediately). The story is unique and the characters, although anime-cliche, well-enough created. Some of the dialog is a little cheesy, but that's not unusual in an anime.

The real problem is toward the ending, where the plot gets somewhat confusing (as in "who is what at this point?") and is both anti-climactic and somewhat predictable. For several episodes it seems to be a repetition of "dodge the Burst kill the Burst evade the Burst shoot the Burst" ad nauseum. Still it tends to remain interesting throughout. The rather weak ending drops this down to an "above mediocre" level, but doesn't place it in my list of "good anime".

They could have had a much stronger, better and more satisfying ending (really, there were no limits to the different endings they could have used), so the somewhat dull choice they made was rather poor writing overall.

Worth a watch perhaps and not "bad anime", but just not up there with the greats.

This anime explores some moral issues with the possibilities that the future brings us. Clever, creative, and beautiful!

A.I.C.O sets forth a fairly simple story of a girl essentially trying to return home after a catastrophic event called the burst consumes a portion of Japan. The burst is a huge growth of living cells that seems to be out of control and set on destroying everything in it's path.

This review contains NO spoilers and personally I'd recommend not reading too many reviews as it's better to watch and enjoy without too much prior knowledge of what is going to happen.

The story does run fairly slow but is designed to give you chance to understand all of the main characters. There is plenty of action the whole way through and small clues are left throughout as to how the story may or may not pan out.

The animation is fluid and great and the voice acting was well done and suited to all the characters. I noticed other reviews stating the voice acting was bad (referring mainly to the dub) as I watch all anime in it's original Japanese dialect I decided to go back and watch the last episode dubbed to see. I think it's important to note that when I have got into an anime in Japanese and then see a dubbed episode I don't normally like it as I've become accustomed to the voices. However in this case I was surprised that the dub voices were well matched for the main characters. I can only assume the voice acting issues were not from the actors themselves but perhaps from needing to fill or shorten sentences to match as closely as possible to the anime visual mouth movements. For example if a sentence is long in Japanese but in English only ends up translated to ,"I want to help", then the director will need to add in words to match the visual speech aspect. This can result in a less natural flowing attribute to the language used and ultimately the anime can suffer for this.

Overall I think A.I.C.O deserves 8 stars. I couldn't help but binge watch to satisfy my craving of what happens next. It kept me interested the whole way through with the first few and last few episodes being the most interesting.

If you're looking for the best version and have no problems with reading subtitles then watch the Japanese dub.

While I agree that the english dub version, let's just say- could be improved, it had a lot good going for it. The story is enough to keep the viewers attention, and there were more than enough plot twists and story details to keep me interested. While I don't think this was a truly fantastic anime, I do think it's worth the watch. Just don't watch it in the english dub.

Pros: Moves at a fast pace. Most things are explained.

Meh: Story is nothing special. Mildly thought provoking.

Cons: None, really.

This is a basic anime with a semi-clear goal early on, and a few twists along the way that aren't too crazy. There a couple thought provoking aspects to it but nothing major. The ending is a little perplexing,, as you wonder why they are doing that, and then they wrap it up nicely for you anyway.

Decent, fast moving anime to watch, nothing terribly special though.