EX-ARM

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ActionEX-ARM

REVIEWS

• 

  Nicke

  20/100
  Ex-Arm, an anime that should've never aired

  Please note that this isn't a complete review as I've only seen 5 episodes. As of now my review and thoughts correlate to what all has been shown so far. So needless to say the things brought up are current problems that I don't see changing.

  The first 5 episodes were honestly pretty bad. It had a lot of inconsistencies animation wise as it switched from 3D to 2D a lot of the times for no reason. With some 2D scenes looking as if it was a rough sketch. 

  There was a lack of expression in characters in scenes where it's obvious it should be shown. One example being when a character was about to be killed, when she yelled there wasn't any visible expression so it felt out of place and weird. Just imagine a character screaming their heart out, but with a static face.

  I think that it's important to note that the seiyuu's did an amazing job with their roles and the expression of their lines. It's just really disappointing to see the final product and the character they worked hard to portray not get executed well.

  Throughout all the episodes whenever characters talked, their mouths didn't even move. The sequencing and flow of the animation was pretty chunky. Fight scenes wise, it was really sloppy and bland. It felt as if I was watching static stick figures fight, but without any real choreography. 

  On the topic of fight scenes, they didn't really have the impact that they should've. It was the misuse of ost's & sound effects that made it lack. Along with the choreography and actions of the characters. It's just one of those things where expression and place management were little to nowhere, where it should've been.

  If I had to point out one really bad moment, among the many other's. It would have to be the part where they traveled into this virtual world to bring back Akira. In the scene there was a "creature" that had so many lagging frames and motion blur, that it honestly made me feel sick. I can't tell if it was an intentional effect to portray the world, but regardless it was a horrible scene.

  

  Story wise, it may have had something if the execution was done right. The plot just feels half assed, and really dragged out (execution wise). Some scenes really don't make sense and just look dumb. I don't see how it can redeem itself within the next couple episodes. So it's safe to say that it will go down as one of the worst animes, if not the worst.

  After reading a little of the manga, I just have to say that the anime did a horrible job with the execution. There's so many parts in the manga that helps with the characterization, as you get a deeper background with the main characters. The manga actually leads on to major plot points and makes something out of it. Not to mention the art was amazing and really deserved better. Compared to the manga, the anime really missed out on a good adaption with amazing source material.

  Overall it's a solid 2/10, the whole anime was lacking and I don't know why episodes are still being sent out. It's clear that the people involved had no real experience or it was their first time making an anime. Even if they're not new, im not sending any hate. I think that it's important for them to learn from this, along with any other studio to prevent a repeat. Again no hate, I just wish it could've been better.

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• 

  Jamiebreeze

  20/100
  It is shit. Funny, but shit nonetheless.

  -This review will contain spoilers. ( I doubt anyone even cares about what fucking happens in this show at all but alas. I don't know if profanity should be warned about either but I already cussed and it will happen again and again so there is that too.)

  -This show isn't for: the faint of heart, those with anger issues, people with drinking problems, people with expectations, people with eyes, me, everyone.

  ---

  __Everyone after watching the first episode.__ ___ When the first episode of Ex-arm dropped, I went in without remembering it was that terrible show for which Crunchyroll had dropped the trailer for in December. Needless to say, I got pissed off and then dropped it. There wasn't really a good comedy show airing at the time and The Promised Neverland kept getting worse, so I thought, "__Hey, let's watch this and lose even more brain cells I guess.__" I never expected this show to make me laugh so hard, albeit for the completely wrong reasons, and for it to actually be not a completely terrible experience. Sometimes, one is lucky enough to exist at the same time that a star is born. This is not to say that I recommend this series, however, since it is still shittily mediocre on many levels (__Crunchyroll outdid themselves this time. They are always pushing the envelope.__) and besides laughing at how bad everything looked, there really is nothing much else to enjoy. This show clearly has an Ecchi tag, but it is nonexistent since the art is ugly as hell (__In episode 3, we are in the middle of a battle and for some reason, the camera zooms in on alma's ass and camel toe and well, this just in cinematography flexes__.) Ex-arm is set in 2030 after years have passed since a big terrorist attack inflicted by these weapons called ex-arms took place. Our main protagonist, Akira, used to be your average and awkward Rom-com guy, who then got hit by a truck. In this case, though, he did not get sent to another world. He just passed away, and then got made into an ex-arm that's just a brain. There are a ton of characters whose names I cannot believe I remember, and none of them are particularly stellar but they also never did anything to particularly make me want to punch myself and most of them have a decent amount of common sense, no matter how dumb their terrible CGI model makes them look. Our main team consists of: the Miraculous Ladybug (Minami), a white-haired chick named Alma who is an android, a loli with an umbrella, the dollar store version of Hange from Attack on Titan, a big-tit blonde girl, and three other dudes who don't matter. We also have a pretty good team of villains which includes: Deadpool, Arabic Itachi, Todoroki's long-lost brother, Mewtwo, and two Russians. The show looked like it was going to mostly be monster of the week format, and similar to other cop shows but from episode five onwards, the anime launches into a big ass final arc where everyone's lives are at risk and I cannot express how much I laughed when the main antagonist turned out to be Chewbacca (__ok his real name was Beta, but the resemblance is uncanny__) from Star Wars. ___ __Come on, this DOES look like Chewbacca.__ ___ I will first talk about the hideous visuals because well, they are clear to see and I feel like shitting them out quickly to move on to the rest of the issues with this masterpiece. The director, Yoshikatsu Kimura, and the "studio", Visual Flight, that worked on this bad boy had no real experience with animation and well, it definitely shows. I have no clue why Crunchyroll decided to work on a project, that probably cost a shit ton of money, with a whole team who did not know anything about animation or how to even frame shots. (You remember how rich people sometimes buy or spend money on dumb shit? this is the same thing.) There are plenty of shows that are done in CGI and are fantastic (__Think: Beastars, Dorohedoro__), so Ex-arm being done in almost full CGI is not really an excuse for the show looking like garbage pretty much the whole run (__Believe it or not, there were actually two good fighting cuts in this series__). There is CGI, and then there is ___CGI___. The models used for our main team and other key characters are abhorrent and expressionless. Akira looks like he is shocked all the time, Minami looks high on drugs, you name it. Since the characters barely show expressions resembling a real human, many moments when something "emotional" happens just fall flat. The worst thing, and also kind of hilarious, is that they have an amazing cast of voice actors. These actors are giving out the performance of their life sometimes, and the visuals just don't help __(sometimes the audio is not even properly synced in LMFAO__), so it is inevitable to just laugh uncontrollably. Minami's VA had an amazing moment in episode seven, but since the artwork is bland, the emotion is lost into the void. Many times, there is 2D mixed in with our 3D characters and it looks dreadful. In episode one, Akira is in 3D, while his brother isn't. Plenty of civilians in the story are also 2D while the rest of the people aren't, etc. This decision probably meant to save both time or money, or maybe Crunchyroll and the animation team just didn't care anymore, but it all was a shitshow and it isn't like we haven't laughed at Crunchyroll before, especially given how the Webtoon adaptations went, but this season they really were the laughing stock of the whole community and nobody is surprised as to why. Continuing on the ___gorgeous___ visuals this show has, plenty of times we are lead to believe action happened, but it is either hilariously badly animated, the aftermath, or a still shot while a character screams. Some notable examples include: - __Episode 1__, when Akira is hit by a truck we never even see the truck in motion, much less when it hits him. All we get is a still shot of him about to be run over, then the screen cuts to black and we hear a hit. - __Episode 3__, Alma jumped and was trying to reach a helicopter, but it just looks like she was floating to it. - __Episode 5__, Kimura is running away from a monster, but the perspective is so fucked up that it looks like the monster is stuck on his back. - __Episode 6__, Alma and another dude are dressed as waiters (they are undercover) in a casino and instead of showing these two walking while holding the plates, the staff decided to just give a still shot of them carrying dishes and just move their mouths. In this same episode, we cut to a scene where Alma crashed into a woman and fell, but when we cut to this, Alma is already on the floor and we just continue with the same shit that happens all the time, which is characters talking to each other without moving any part of their bodies or changing expression. - __ Episode 10__, a doctor literally glides across the screen. There were less than three frames for his walk. It is impossible to turn one's brain off when watching this show. Your brain will be constantly working out since there are a ton of things that lack logic or are just way too stupid to not think about them. From characters having immense respect on the battlefield, and not interrupting characters while they chat, to women getting transported back to the fifties and having their kiss censored, anything goes in this show. Some of my favourite ones include: - __In episode 1__, Alma and Minami have a titanium suitcase. It works wonders when blocking bullets, but when they use it to hit a guy, there is no impact and the sound is so bad, that I kid you not, the metal front door of my house makes more noise when slamming shut. The firepower looks terrible (__and it would be odd if it wasn't__), but what is even more laughable is the fact that Alma is fighting against a shit ton of armed men, who have the shittiest aiming skills I've seen since none of them are able to even fucking scratch her. - __In episode 2__, Akira was looking at himself in a mirror, he looks away a second and boom, another man is suddenly there and talking to him. There was no sound of a door even opening, how did he get in? did he teleport? who knows. Minami takes out of her pocket a big-ass mirror. Aren't plenty of women always complaining about their pockets being too small? how in the fuck did that fit in her skirt's pocket? - __In episode 3__, Akira is controlling Alma's body and complains about her outfit being too tight. It doesn't look much different from the other ones she has been wearing and he had been controlling her body those times too so why is it a bother now? In this same episode, Alma, Minami, and the two other guys are hiding behind a car. The car is being bombarded with missiles and other robots are shooting at it, yet it doesn't look like it will go up in flames anytime soon. - __Episode 5__ introduces the idea that Kondo may be a Texan since he starts using "__Y'all__" unironically. (Probably the subtitles fault but it was funny) - __Episode 6__ has an entire mob of armed men beaten to the punch by android girls wearing playboy bunny suits. The army of Mewtwos is so kind, that they decide to attack Alma one by one so that she can fight them all off with just one arm, and two dudes are just watching the shitshow from above. - __Episode 8__ shows Alma's tits jiggle when just in episode 7, they had defied the laws of gravity and stayed in place even though she was lying on the ground. Akira and his nemesis, Beta, have a tentacle fight where the motion is zero, and the loli can tell some guy's body moved even though she is like two buildings apart and has no line of sight to that place. - __Episode 10__, the big boss Chewbacca is kind enough to wait while Alma and Akira have a heart-to-heart talk before proceeding to attack them. - __Episode 11__, was like if you were playing Halo Reach on Nintendo DS since the graphics were horrible, Akira's gun makes the same sound akin to those shitty gun games at Peter Piper Pizza (they go "pew pew"), and the backgrounds still look flat and well, shitty. The production value of the series is worse than trash (__so much that it feels like an insult to even call it production__), there is no actual soundtrack (all the music sounds like royalty-free one from Youtube and __no, the theme oddly reminiscent of a song in the Batman Lego game, that appears in one episode, doesn't count__), the fighting choreography is actually not too bad but since the animation is none, it ends up sucking ass, so what about the characters? well, they exist and that's it. There is character development, but I was not able to care about it at all since the show looks so bad that I just laugh at everything. None of these characters are memorable for any other reason than just the fact that they appear in one of Crunchyroll's shitty anime, and I doubt anyone will have them as favourites , unless it is part of a joke. I want to highlight, however, that Akira is pretty much okay as a protagonist. For one, he has enough common sense to know that he and the others, cannot coexist with the main villain ( __unlike__ [a recent one I know ](https://anilist.co/character/121725/Emma) ) and he even attempts to go in for the kill. Yes, it is unthinkable to take him seriously, but if the show had been shown even a bit of love, it wouldn't be too bad. It would be generic, but it wouldn't have made everyone and their grandmother laugh, and it wouldn't look like shit. There is no merit to watching this. I don't think anyone expected this to go well, maybe not even Crunchyroll. They have once again proved to plenty of people that they just can't produce anime and that they should stop attempting to do so. This is one of those times when I firmly believe that sometimes you just gotta accept that you suck a ton of ass and move on to just stream shows. The webtoon adaptations didn't receive particularly high praise, but Ex-arm just hurt more whatever dignity they had left. If the only reason people watch something you produced, is to laugh about how shitty it looks, you have failed, and given how this trainwreck unfolded, the losses are probably going to be insanely big. To make this even funnier, one of the episodes is titled "__Fallen Messiah__" and well, guess who astral projected a thousand miles per hour to the fucking depths of hell and mediocrity? CR. __Overall__, Ex-arm is best watched if you look at it as a comedy while you drink and eat shit, and then after it ends you can just forget about it and actually watch a decent show of your choice. To end this I just want to grieve about this potential waifu being massacred by Crunchyroll: __RIP, hot albino waifu, forever missed but not forgotten.__~~~~~~
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• 

  Groenboys

  19/100
  Is Ex-Arm just as bad as people say it is? (Yes, yes it is)

  There are so many wonderful ways to screw up an anime, and in the course of my time watching anime I have seen a lot of those ways. From anime that are completely ruined by weird directional choices, to anime that completely misunderstand how to tackle a subject, to the anime that are just plain boring. But Ex-Arm is new to me, because this anime was destined for failure since these words were uttered out:

  “What if we hired a director that has no experience in anime to make an anime?”

  

  Yoshikatsu Kimura is a director who has directed several low-budget action movies. Most of these movies range from mediocre to outright boring, but all of them at least have some impressive action scenes. Before the airing of Ex-Arm, Yoshikatsu seemed confident that he could make an anime, despite having no experience in anime whatsoever. He was so confident in fact that in the trailer of Ex-Arm he “declared war on all Sci-Fi series”, one of the many declarations of war this season. That enormous amount of confidence would come back to haunt Yoshikatsu, because Ex-Arm has now become the laughing stock of not just the anime community, but the anime industry as well. But if we look past all the weird facts, tweets trashing the show and the memes, how bad is Ex-Arm actually?

  Ex-Arm follows Akira Natsume, a highschool student who dies in a car crash in 2014. Jump 16 years later, and Akira awakes in a robot brain in a post-apocalyptic society. He is awakened by Minami and her robot AI companion Elma. Akira discovers that he is in fact an Ex-Arm, a machine type which grants the user sing its supernatural powers. The fact that Akira exists means he is a threat, but he and his new friends convince the Ex-Arm crew to let Akira join them to let Akira catch more Ex-Arms to prevent other criminals from using them.

  For a story, it is honestly not that bad. The world is detailed well and every case the Ex-Arm crew tackles goes into a different part of this post-apocalyptic world. It has a nice sense of mystery and it has quite a lot of good ideas. But the story still has major problems. The powers of Akira and other ex-arms are often not that well explained, feeling like the ex-arms do either jack shit or are overpowered. The characters also don’t really help the story. Most of them are fine and the voice actors give waaay better performances then this anime deserves, but a lof of them feel very cookie cutter. The backstory they give don’t always make sense and the “secret” villain is especially annoying, even if his backstory is fine. Overall, the story aspect has interesting aspects, but it is boring most of the time. This isn’t even mentioning the fact that the story can be called uninspired in context of series like Ghost in the Shell. But honestly, it is really hard to focus on the story or the characters of this anime, because I am constantly distracted by what is in front of my eyes.

  Ex-Arms' most infamous aspect is its animation, which is g o d a w f u l. This anime was made by a director who has never made anime before and. It. Shows. The anime is in CG, which is already a bad sign for many, but that doesn’t immediately make the anime look bad. Many anime have developed and improved CG in anime, like Houseki no Kuni and Beastars, but sadly Ex-Arm put CG in anime back to the stone age. The 3D models in Ex-Arm are terrible, with many only looking good from one angle. The animation on the models are laughable. When characters talk, they only move their jaw up and down. There is only one motion for talking, so when characters talk, they look like puppets. The environments aren’t incredibly empty and uninspired, but they are also 2D sometimes?

  This brings me a major issue in the animation: Visual clash. This anime features 2D and 3D animation, which can look fine if it is highly stylised like Beastars, but in Ex-Arm it is not, so it ends up looking baffling. The 2D animation sucks by the way, barely any movement and the quality of lines range from fine to drawn on paint. This all isn’t even mentioning the action scenes, the weird visual effects, the inconsistent character animation, the fact that the anime hides moderately difficult things to animate off-screen or on-screen but with censoring, and the many, many bizarre animation mistakes. Ex-Arm is a visual cluster fuck that is hard to look away from.

  Ex-Arm is an anime that perplexes me. Every episode there is some new animation fuck up I can’t believe. While its story is pretty boring, it is hard to focus on it with its entertainingly bad animation. I will admit that I had some fun with watching how bad this anime could get, but after this watch I will never watch it again. It is boring, uninspired, has one-dimensional characters and its animation is nothing short of baffing.

  Ex-Arm is less of anime to be enjoyed, but an experience to learn from. It is a case study on what people can create when they get the budget but don’t have the necessary skills. It is a lesson on what you should not do while making an anime.
  
  It is an anime that deserves its reputation of one of the worst anime of all time.

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