User reviews

The visuals here are bold and interesting, a mix of traditional hand-drawn backgrounds and prop art, and stylised cell shaded CGI characters, not entirely unlike Arcane.

But not very much like it either, and this suffers badly by comparison. Bold and interesting doesn't imply success: the characterisation, clumsily keyframed facial expressions and frame rate are all sub par here - this is practically a slideshow.

The other thing that you could compare the character animation to is the Sims, and again, not particularly kindly.

The plot feels gamerish too, like watching an endless cut-scene for a 2010-era survival horror, where the unexperienced but spunky young protagonist in his exo-suit battles alien tentacle-bugs.

And that really is all we're getting here, an inexplicably hyper-militarised convict mining operation versus bad-touch space tardigrades. Nothing that we haven't done seen before - many, times - and better.

At eight 20 minutes episodes, you can rip through it quickly enough, although even at that length I found myself skipping some tedious flashbacks, and cringe inducing attempts at forcing pathos and drama into later episodes.

The plot, such as it is, reveals itself fully by episode 3, but with a whopping great contradiction in it. What we're told differs from what we've just seen, and there are constant reminders of this that make our protagonists' peril more than it needs to be.

Our main protagonist Jim doesn't have an arc so much as a flipped-switch, again in episode 3. Paired with the uninvolving animation and strictly workmanlike voice acting that quickly dissolves into the tedious anime "Oh!" and "Aaargh!", it makes it hard to take any of this seriously.

Perhaps that's not a bad thing. Sometimes you just want to watch space bugs eat faces and blow up, and you get a fair amount of that here. Not really enough to justify the tedious talky bits in between though.

Watch it, or skip it and forget it, your life won't be different either way.

It's hard to write a review that doesn't cover what's been written before.

This anime, like most, suffers from typical anime issues. A young person is thrust into the spotlight to lead a group (or themselves) out of danger. They're initially shy and awkward, and then an episode later they're running around like they own the world, being impossibly awesome. It also has the same basic issue of static images with monologue look like stills, and it's hard to know whether the dubbing has been extended from the original or not, with a single frame paused to provide the additional time to bore us all with exposition. Add to that the 'surprise face' that the main character has and the 'oh, uh, ooh, waah' that we're constantly fed, makes me wonder whether this person is a newborn experiencing everything for the first time.

As many other reviewers have pointed out, the art work is great, and initially drew me into the show, however the show is let down by almost everything else. Including the basic plotline that just doesn't make sense.

Like, why is there a whole civilisation living on a barren frozen planet just to mine some special rock? If it's a penal colony, does there really need to be a whole city? How did the city get built if the air is toxic? Where do they get oxygen/nitrogen from to breathe? If it's a barren rock, why does the main building have a massive defence system? How come the tardigrades start to explode outside but not when shot hundreds of times in the mine? Why make this special mineral into little cubes that need to be fed in to machines like coins into a slot machine?

The plot conveniences are numerous and just go to show that, sadly, people can not write TV shows anymore.

If you're bored and really need something to watch, it's ok, but it's not going to win any awards for excitement nor originalism. Ah Netflix, you've done it again.

The basic premise of the show is 'big bugs discovered on an icy mining colony start eating everyone'.

The first two episodes were interesting. I thought it was some kind of animated spin off from the Lost Planet series of videogames and I was waiting to see bigger and more crazy looking bugs show up (which they never did). By episode 3 the plot had descended into badly written, non-stop, cringe inducing dialogue about emotions and how people should help each other with very little action to keep me entertained.

The bugs quickly became boring and each new character that the story introduces is more irritating than the last.

The animation is pretty good. Similar to Arcane but not as colorful and smooth.

After episodes one and two the series isn't worth watching. I watched the dubbed version because I was tired and too lazy to reach for my glasses. This was a mistake as the dubbing is possibly the worst I've ever heard. It might be slightly better with subtitles but not by much.

In summary, avoid.

Initially it looks good but after 2 episodes it is ruined! The creatures are never explained, but they float and are hungry.

If you get it in original dub, japanese, you feel like watching a drama, to much emotional, about stupid people doing a service to save a young woman giving birth to a baby. Forget the scifi context.

But... If you are watching in Brazilian dubbing, you have to hear that bad accent of Alexandre Moreno crying as dr. Boyd. Be careful, it is hateful.

This episode 7 could be cut off and nothing would be missing at the whole story.

Sometime animation get slow and tedious... Everybody is just chatting useless speech while trapped againg at some base, alone, as all others already have flied.

Then they get runing again to other place, just as before, very easy to find a truck or new ship.

Maybe the original japaneses mangá drawing is a bit more interesting...

On a frozen frontier planet, criminals sentenced to hard labor and their guards have to fight off hardy creatures who feed on their power source.

The first thing I noticed was that the art was pretty good. Then I noticed that a lot of it was in a rather stylized computer-generated style. It's not bad, but it gives faces and hair a plastic-like appearance reminiscent of older, cheaper video games. Sometimes it looks nice, but the plastic faces can be a little off-putting at times, especially when you compare them to screenshots of the newest games.

The monsters are reminiscent of tardigrades, probably to explain why they're living on a frozen wasteland with poisonous air. They're initially presented as immortal, but the protagonists soon figure out some weaknesses. There's a little more that gets done with the creatures, but that's pretty much it. The science fiction elements a bit minimal and mostly provide some quick world building.

Our protagonist, Jim, is a likeable sort though a bit of a generic everyman. He's an artist who has ignored his dreams and is too shy to tell his friend how he feels. There aren't really any surprises in his character arc, but you may be surprised at how much of a fearless and badass soldier he is. It turns out that all you really need to reach your potential is a lot of heart and maybe a training video or two.

Jim's new best friend is a criminal who repeatedly shows courage and honor. When Jim finally learns his crime, it introduces the core theme: redemption. Most characters are a bit cliched, and some don't really have any defined personality beyond "Jim's love interest". However, their flaws and redemption arcs can give them a bit more depth than you might usually see. It's a mixed bag that may work as long as you're not looking for something grimdark.

I had to fast forward through a couple scenes because they were just too long and boring, which is very rare for me. However, one of them was a scene where Jim's girlfriend, a surrogate mother, gave birth. It felt like it went on forever, though it might have just been my annoyance with having to listen to all that yelling. Overall, I thought the pacing was fine, but the series probably didn't need to be quite this long.

If you don't mind your science fiction being a bit generic and lawful good, it's pretty watchable. It's better than some of the stuff I've seen on Netflix.

Quick review, as I can t understand all the other bad reviews here.

Maybe not the most original series but it s a nice well told adventure.

The characters are also well written even though it has its cheesy moments.

Also liked the fact that it s an optimistic show, with characters that grow, learn to forgive each other s shortcomings and try to improve their situation. Everybody grows into a well oiled team and helps each other out.

That is extremely satisfying and I found myself liking them more and more and rooting for everyone to get out alive...including the robot sidekick. He s the best.

Granted, the characters don t bring anything new to the table and they aren t something that you haven t seen before, but it works and their motivations make sense.

Just one character is annoying and always a crybaby which I couldn t stand. But the writers decided to save him to and he kind of reemeds himself too by the end.

So, stop being being such harsh critics and enjoy the feel good sensation that this show spreads.

Again, not the most original or best written, but it is a well executed story with a big heart, in my opinion.

Ah where to begin. Two episodes in, I was like, oh yeah! Lots of military scifi action. Animation is bad. Not really my cup of tea. But the premise of the story/plot is interesting.

Then the next couple episodes. The main character is weak. Though has tremendous potential. As always in japanese animé. Then the huge drama that comes with the Marnie character. Boy! This girl can cry! Again, thats japan for you. Want to inject a much needed drama? Make one or more characters wail and scream as loud as she can an cry an ocean of tears in the longest possible scene. I hope she gets eaten. But nah. She's the drama.

Then the rest of the episodes. Which are just filler episodes. Not much fun for me. But if you're a fan of extended loud crying in a very dated animation style, still a big no.

I don't get why they made this into an 8 episode series. There will be no season 2, there's A LOT of filler, even in the short 20-minute episodes, and whatever air of "mistery" there is at the beginning it's gone by the third episode.

From then on it's basically a survival video game sprinkled with lots of useless, nonsensical dialogue. Half the characters are basically plot devices and mostly everthing they say is exposition.

The pacing is really, really bad. Characters stoping to have long discussions about every little thing undermines all the sense of urgency and chaos of the events going on around them. After a while you just don't care anymore, as there are no consequences from any of this.

The premise is interesting, but it gets smothered in such bad writing it's a shame.

What's the point of making an animated movie that has lower quality than every cutscene in even a low-budget game? I have no idea.

The first two episodes can be watched, apart from the wooden animation, there is some mystery. Unfortunately, the next episodes are so boring and nonsense that only rewinding with a preview helps. The characters talk terrible nonsense, act like morons. The monster attacks and the main character reminisces about his childhood and contemplates his feelings. The monster is polite and waits. The message of the film is ... stupid no one gets punished for anything even for trying to kill a toddler. The monsters themselves are another nonsense, filled with explosive gas, for the first part of the series they do not explode at all even after being hit by a cannon or rocket, then they even explode on their own. If there are two, one explodes from the other, but if there are about a million of them in one cluster, then not. Fighting them is also boring, just millions of monsters fly towards the defenders and they shoot non-stop. There's an infinite number of monsters, so shooting doesn't do anything.

Make My Day is absolutely terrible start to finish. I see reviews saying they liked the first two episodes, but those suck as well, though I think I know what they're talking about. So let's get down what I dislike about this series.

Firstly, the animation is in my opinion hideous. I get that this color scheme and these textures might appeal to some, but not to me. But even if you don't find it ugly, the movements just suck.

Secondly, the main character is a generic MC underdog that we're supposed to root for as he magically gets super competent. This trope annoys me to no end. But what makes it ten times worse here to the point of causing me physical pain is that his voice actor sounds constantly out of breath, and he is talking, or panting all the time.

Which brings me to the third point. The dialogue doesn't flow at all. They talk for what seems to be forever in the middle of every scene, slow and repetitive to the point of stating the same line three times.

On that note, the pacing absolutely sucks. The first two episodes are very fast-paced and have a lot of large-scale plot points, which is probably why some reviewers consider it good, but to me it went too fast. They kill off the entire prison and hometown like it's no big deal. The subsequent episodes in the middle and end move so slow due to the slow, long dialogues and largely feature only the established ten or so characters. It's really boring.

And to top it all off, there was barely any creativity here. The Swarm have the design of generic real-life bugs, the only twist is that they blow up. The company is barely developed and what little we get to know of them makes them seem like the bad guys in Avatar, except that they're not the main villains because the bugs want unobtanium... I mean sig. The planet has only very basic biomes/landscapes, no other fauna than the swarm, and the only flora shows up for one minute in the end.

I will echo what others have said, this show is WAY too long. It could have been half as many episodes, and still got its point across.

What is its point? Well, from what I can gather after a quick watch is that, "everyone is redeemable, and worth saving"...no matter how many times they F you over or try to kill you. This is a standard trope in a lot of these Netflix anime shows. Sometimes it works...

...but sometimes it doesn't. Like here.

The characters are mostly unlikeable. Act irrationally. Constantly have a ticking clock of doom, yet spend pointless minutes in cringe-inducing monologues or dialogue. And the lead, going from a whiny brat scaredy-cat kid, to a macho-man, in the span of 5 minutes is eye-rollingly bad.

Great premise. Horrific execution.

Animation style was very different, but I did throughly enjoy this new style despite it being fairly new.

The story was absolutely amazing! You'll experience a range of emotions from hatred, despair, victory's and joy. I'd say it's like a sci-fi apocalypse with weird a huge alien swarm. Despite me thinking this'd be a Medicare story I was simply blown away. I binged the whole thing in one sitting. With the story only being 8 episodes and with a huge open ended cliff hanger it makes me want to know more about this new universe I've stumbled across on.

The voice acting was decent, not perfect but it was doable. Some of the lines too were a little cheesy, and I didn't feel they were delivered well.

Overall I'd definitely recommend watching this show. Some parts are predictable, but the delivery of each scene was amazing.

Started to watch it as first two episodes have something to a good start. However after discovery of aliens the whole series goes nose down.

Story is totally depleted on the start and furthermore they just prolong everything as much as it can be.

Adding more and more irritating characters which are single minded or very inconsistent ( starting as crazy and in few minutes later are totally ok, then again crazy...).

Inconsistency is even in firstly impossible to kill bugs, later they are exploding to later again no explosions (as it would be quite boring when in swarm one destroyed all desteoyed at once.)

So let's say one and half episode ok, then total trash. Also nothinh new from initial discovery is shown, zero story progress or anything interesting developed till the end.

Outstanding example of how to write characters and character arcs. Professional, committed English voice acting.

A well-written original story is the big asset here. Less violence and action than most animes. The very unusual writing highlights the redemption of several unsavory characters, using forgiveness without violins or abandoning its gritty sci-fi genre track.

The eight episodes don't culminate in a tight third act. The story was designed to continue if there was a second season. Still the ending works well enuf to satisfy.

I think this is computer assisted Blender animation, nicely done. Not flashy yet not trashy in any respect.

Congratulations to all who created this.