Ingress: The Animation

I started the series because I played Ingres back in the days. The show captures the feeling quite well and has a good "old-school" drawing style (akin to Ghost in the Shell, Akira, ...). The music is quite good and the first couple of episode are interesting and push you to watch more. And here comes the but: As the show progresses I got the feeling of watching an ad for Ingress and Android Phones at some point. The characters where just not written well enough (the good youngster, his powerful damsel-in-distress love interest, the tough support, the sadistic antagonist) to maintain an innovative story line and thus it got quite linear and predictable. Overall a series to watch if there is nothing else to watch. But otherwise again a Netflix production which overpromises. If you are looking for a good anime series on Netflix, watch Castlevania instead.

At first, I thought it was amazing. The plot starts out pretty strong, I was enjoying the mash up of matrix/ghost in the shell-ish vibes but I'd in the final quarter of the show, the plot kinda went a bit off the reservation.

Without going into details, I felt like the plot changed direction too quickly and started taking you down a road that was a bit cheesier than what I'd initially expected. The story pretty quickly wiped out a bunch of the central plot points and pretty much regrouped with something a lot more bizarre and harder to support.

They also started succumbing to cheesy gimmicks and events to drive the story forward that I felt were a bit misplaced. I know believability isn't a big deal to an anime dealing with such odd themes but there did come a point where I felt they pushed it too far. The whole world uniting to defend against evil sorta thing.

The beautiful visuals, it's really cleanly animated and I always enjoy when a show gets a soundtrack right. Quite a fun mix of edgy sounding techno and dramatic electronic.

On the whole, worth a watch. I struggled with the final few episodes but by that point my heart wasn't in it anymore.

The tale has been told many times before, and much better. I won't get into spoilers (although doing so would make this review much easier). Suffice to say the animation is mediocre, the story line done and done before, a basic "hero needs to save the world from evil overlord" type scenario (however that is accomplished). I found myself yawning halfway through, and still yawning at the end. Ho hum, yet another good guys vs bad guys gun battle-- and another-- and another. Throw in some mysticism hokum just for kicks along with some global-scale explosions. People with super powers yada yada.

Suffice to say there's nothing new here, move along, move along. Thus the "mediocre" 5-star rating. People who give such animations 10 stars are either associated with the film or don't have a clue about rating cinema. Just so it's said: 10 stars is best of the best, astounding film making. 1 star is gutter trash Z-class no-redeeming-factors slop. The extremists need to learn there are rating stars in between-- and need to learn how to better judge where a film belongs in that 10-star range. Giving this level of film 9 & 10 stars is the same as saying, "I don't have a clue how to properly examine and review a film."

In short, it was an unimpressive presentation throughout. Even adrenaline junkies likely will be giving this one a thumbs down.

The show in and of itself is entertaining, the animation and story give a "ghost in the shell" vibe. If you've played the game it's a fun anime to watch and catch back on.

I personally enjoyed the characters. It's not often you see characters portrayed as human with abilities they don't understand, and where said abilities only give a slight edge over others.

They picked a good soundtrack. Sound quality otherwise was on point.

A good show if you've played the game, a decent show if you have not.

The plot is generic urine. Same as characters. Visually it has a lot of annoying colorful particle diarrhea.

I did like the sound effects and music selection though. Honestly sound is the only part about this show that doesnt suck.