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REVIEWS

• 

  AmishaelAL

  95/100
  ‘Death takes everything, but in return it gives meaning to life’

  Land of the Lustrous

  Very, very different to anything I’ve experienced before. Watching it felt more like watching an RPG’s cinematic sequences than an anime. It was captivating, multi-layered, and so beautifully crafted I was in sheer awe throughout the majority of the show.

  The anime felt strangely tranquil, even throughout its action scenes, even as the mystery was built up. After it was over it left me pondering for quite a while.

  The story was incredibly unique; I was enthralled from the get-go. There was very little context to go on, which matched the character’s lack of understanding about their world perfectly. All we received was a short backstory about the history of their world, which was as original as it was fantastical. Most of the story revolved around getting to know and understand the gems’ way of life and mentalities, with the mystery elements – what are the lunarians? Why do they really want the gems? What is their relationship to Sensei? – not being explored until near the end of the series.

  Each aspect of the Gems’ world was interesting: their different jobs, their home, their hierarchy (which used the hardness and age of each gem to determine their place), and their interactions with the rest of their mainly desolate world. There were some similarities to the way human society works, yet there were far more differences, and this is what made watching it so fascinating. The differences were mainly due to the lifespan of the gems; an immortal views existence differently to those who have death at the end of their road. For an immortal it is all about finding something to give eternity meaning, finding a reason to want to live, and not just exist. Humans have that too, but not to the same extent.

  As the anime compellingly puts it ‘death takes everything, but in return it gives meaning to life’. A profound quote, and one that made me stop and think about life and death in general. However I didn’t really feel the existential dread one would expect throughout this anime. To the contrary I felt…peaceful. Serene. There were a few cleverly done tense parts in the story, but they didn’t negate the overall tone.
  The pacing was also perfect, neither too fast nor too slow. I felt there was enough time given to absorb each new detail without feeling either overloaded or bored.

  The art and animation were phenomenal. The colours were vibrant, with shades of green, blue and pink I’ve never before seen in an anime. And as for the use of CGI, let me put it like this: this anime better be the winner of the best CGI category in the awards this year, because it beats everything else hands down. Each pane was flawless. Even the characters’ hair was a work of art.

  The sound was unusual, yet fitting. the op was…jerky, for lack of a better way to describe it. It took some getting used to, but I did come to see how it matched the overall tranquil tone of the series. The ed was very nice; that’s about all I can say about it.

  The characters were loveable. The character with by far the most development was Phos – as expected from the MC. His/her development, though, was wonderful. Starting out as a virtually helpless, perpetually restless, and irritatingly spoiled child, by the end of the series (s)he had grown to understand the world, to look beyond his/herself and his/her own desires and actually think in a mature way. The transition was smooth; (s)he didn’t change overnight. Rather each event impacted his/her psyche a little more, culminating after a particular incident about two thirds of the way through the series. It was remarkably executed, and evident that the underlying Phos was the same, no matter his/her changes.

  The other characters had varying degrees of development. The most intriguing of the secondary characters was probably Antarctictite, whose interactions with Phos contributed to both their developments – they rubbed off on each other and both came away the better for it. The others were mainly defined by how they contributed to the community – they were developed more as different features of the community were explored. Diamond, Bort, Cinnabar, Rutile, Jade and King were noteworthy characters, but more because of their role in Phos’ development than on their own merit. Regardless, they were all splendid to watch - Diamond in particular had some superb action scenes that also helped flesh out the story.

  Conclusion: it’s the world-building that wins it for me. That, and the overall tone of the series. I couldn’t find a single reason to give it less than a perfect score except for the sudden ending (I would have liked to see one or two of the burning questions answered). And thus, a perfect score was what I gave it. A work of art that thoroughly deserves its praises.

  NB: I’d recommend this series to deep thinkers or anyone looking for something new and creative (adults and kids alike). I wouldn’t, however, recommend this series to people looking for a fast-paced comedy with lots of romance, because this story doesn’t have that. (Thankfully it doesn’t have any fanservice either). It’s a fantastical coming of age story, and should be viewed with an open mind.
  That said, go and watch it! I hope you’ll like it just as much as I did.

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• 

  ItzToxic

  85/100
  We can finally look at a series and say: "This is a good CGI series."

  It’s unfortunate that many people overlook and under rate CGI based series, me included. But after reading the synopsis and watching 4 episodes, I’m glad I made the decision to watch Land of the Lustrous. I guess you can say this is the…Hidden gem of the season (\~_~)

  Out of all the anime that aired this Fall, Houseki no Kuni caught my attention the most. With its oddly intriguing story along with the setting and characters. The characters of this series are gems. You know, Diamond, Jade, Alexandrite, and the other ones. Each gem has a certain hardness, how easy they can break. One of the very weak gems are our main characters, Phos and Cinnabar. I did not do any research so I have no idea about how each gem acts and their exact information. But the anime does well to explain enough the characteristics of each one.

  Basically the Gems or Jewels task is to fend off against like, Moon Dwellers? They constantly fight the gems to kidnap them for the purpose of decoration. Of course, being gems, it’s understandable. With this, Land of the Lustrous does well to present an action packed, scenic filled, colourful, atmospheric anime for us to enjoy.

  Unfortunately for Phos, her task doesn't come with badass fighting scenes, her (I know they’re genderless, so i’m just gonna refer to these as girls cuz they're more feminine than anything else) job is to write down notes for an encyclopaedia and make history. Not so fun is it. Being an easily breakable gem, Phos had it coming.

  The soundtrack is quite amazing with its catchy opening and insert songs. The sfx used as well is amazing and the overall music just fits perfectly.

  The animation is definitely a strong point, despite the CGI that it has. It flows nicely and the action scenes and cinematography is spot on.

  I am pretty tempted to read the original source to see how it differs, but I do hear that the adaptation is pretty well made, so no complaints there.

  The voice acting performance of course is very good as well, each character has an appropriate voice for those characters. It fits and it makes me feel for them more.

  My enjoyment for this series is beyond the roof. To the calm, SOL feeling situations, to the action packed and serious scenes as well. Although the tone shifts could make people see this series different, I do believe it has a more positive impact than a negative one. I enjoy each character and the different types of jewels and the use of their “hardness” rank. I love how some gems are fragile and some aren't and they use that nicely in this anime.

  Overall this anime needs more attention, just because something isn't cgi, does not mean it can’t present a good story driven anime with good characters within a good setting. Houseki no Kuni deserves a lot more. If you have time at all, I really do recommend watching this anime, because It wont be a waste of time.

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• 

  larsn0va

  20/100
  A diamond in the rough? Well, it's pretty rough anyway.

  Houseki no Kuni is the dullest anime I’ve seen in a long time, which is ironic considering the gemstone theme. This review will go over why I thought so, and I hope you are able to understand my point of view.

  

  Before that, though, I want to take a little bit of time to praise the visuals.

  As you likely know by now, Houseki no Kuni is a fully CG anime. It also happens to be far and above the best-looking one, and uses the medium to its advantage rather than just as a cost-saving measure. The most obvious example of this is the characters’ hair, which has a captivating translucency that seems perfect for CG. And during the action sequences, the camera has these wild panning, sweeping, rotating motions to capture what’s going on from every angle. They never go too far as to be sickeningly fast, and add a lot of eye candy that would have been prohibitively expensive and time-consuming with traditional animation. There are a lot of great shots of the environment as well. Everything is lush with greenery and the “school” they live in has an imposing, hallowed sort of feel with its massive stone architecture. The only flaw in this sense is that since the events take place within such a small radius you end up seeing a lot of the same areas over and over. Nevertheless, in general the shot composition is quite good. A few shots in particular stick in my mind, like the scene in episode 7 when the gems go to sleep (incidentally, probably my favorite episode). And during calmer scenes the camera frequently is placed way behind any of the characters to show how small they are in comparison to the empty world they’re in. Overall it’s just quite well-done. Every other CG anime should take after this one.

  

  Unfortunately, now we have to get to the aspects I didn’t like.

  Visuals

  Wait, didn’t I like the visuals? Yeah, but there are some definite improvements that could be made. The first is quite obviously the framerate. I must give credit to Houseki no Kuni for breaking new ground in the CG space and being the first CG anime to render everything at a barely-watchable framerate. This is a quantum leap from previous CG works which typically ran at about a silky smooth 3 FPS. But even if Houseki no Kuni has made strides in this department, a barely-watchable framerate is still barely acceptable, or perhaps not acceptable at all. I get it, Japan, buying rendering time is expensive, but you need to hit a full, actual 24 FPS. Anything less is too stuttery. If you can’t afford it, then delay the project five years until costs come down. I’d gush over 60 or 120 FPS but I know that is never going to happen so I will settle for 24.

  Secondly, it's not a big problem while watching the show, but it's clear this is a product of a CG anime industry in its infancy. I mentioned the shot composition is often pretty great, but just as often it's on a bland shot of a field or two characters talking. As CG anime keeps getting better I'm sure directors will find more and more interesting things to do with the camera during downtime.

  Finally, the character design, or rather lack thereof. Their heads and hair are different but that’s it - every character looks exactly the same from the neck down. A gangly CLAMP-style body, but with considerable hips, each in the same drab black school uniform.

  

  "Wow! What Amazing® and Unique© character design!"

  Actually, speaking of considerable hips, that reminds me.

  “Gender neutral” characters

  

  “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn’t belong…”

  I don’t really care a whole lot one way or another, but when I heard talk about there only being gender-neutral characters I was a somewhat intrigued. So I was a little disappointed when I watched the show for myself and saw that, for all intents and purposes, every character was just a girl except for Kongou. They may only use male/neutral pronouns to refer to themselves and others, but that doesn’t really affect anything at all. This isn’t really a complaint per se, but the “gender neutrality” of the characters just seems like a gimmick to stimulate discussion and interest in the series rather than being of any consequence.

  Plot

  

  Nothing happens. This is barely an exaggeration. For the first half of the show it’s Phos doing monster-of-the-week crap with a new buddy. Except it’s not even monster of the week since it’s basically just the Lunarians every time. Walk around, get careless, get attacked by Lunarians suddenly, someone gem breaks, everything is okay in the end. The developments are so inconsequential that if someone explained the plot of the first six episodes to you in three minutes you could go on to episode 7 without having really missed anything. The second half does have slightly more variety. In particular the winter scenes were a nice change of pace. Nevertheless just about all that happened was “this isn’t even my final form” Phos. There are no subtleties here, for any given episode you wouldn't miss out on much of anything by just reading the Wikipedia summary instead.

  Cinnabar

  

  I only mention Cinnabar separately from the rest because they are listed as a “main” character in the Anilist database. What a joke. They show up one minute per episode to mope then go back to their cave. Their inclusion is entirely pointless and only serves to act as some sort of anchoring point to pretend there is an arc between episodes 1 and 12. I guess this is enough of a segue to talk about the rest of the characters.

  Characters

  Every character but Phos is completely one-note and forgettable. Actually, I take that back, over half of them are zero-note. There simply are not any personalities; it’s amazing how bland the characters are. I’m reminded of the classic Phantom Menace review that challenges people to describe various characters without describing their appearance or role. I wonder how well people would fare with Houseki’s cast. We could add that you can't mention their hardness level either.

  _Euclase:_

  “Uh… um… which one was that again?”

  _Jade:_

  “Hm… Uh, normal, I guess?”

  Perhaps those two are a little unfair. Despite popping up fairly often throughout the series they aren’t very important characters after all. Although one wonders why you would bother having thirty introduced characters in the first place if only two or three are of any importance.

  _Amethyst:_

  “They're twins! Wait, we can’t describe their role or whatever. Well, they’re purple. Wait, crap.”

  _Kongou:_

  “Sleepy! Yes, sleepy. Kongou is definitely sleepy.”

  You see my point. If you thought as hard as you could, you might be able to come up with more than one adjective for Diamond or Antarcticite, but that’s about it. No one but Phos is of any interest.

  Phos

  

  I made a mistake in the last section by implying Phos might be an interesting character.

  Minor spoilers: About the extent of their development is getting the ability to talk to fish and super-speed legs. Then later when the author decided super-speed legs weren’t very interesting, said powers were retconned away with Phos also getting golden Mr. Fantastic arms and a haircut. Not to mention that each of these powers were acquired in the same stupid way. Fishspeak, Phos is left unsupervised and she is eaten by the fish thing. Super speed legs, Phos is left unsupervised, gets easily tricked by by said fish and is knocked around by Lunarians. Golden arms, Phos is left unsupervised and falls into an icy pond. Why are you still leaving this incompetent gem alone!? Maybe this was Kongou’s plan all along, leave her alone so her arms and legs will get ripped off and then level up conveniently. They should just do this with all of the gems. Additionally, I have to question what this means symbolically for character growth. If you’re weak, you’re useless, but if you are also a huge idiot and put yourself in danger repeatedly then you might get sweet cyborg limbs? I have a hard time thinking that was the intent here, so the only interpretation left is that these were just cheap tricks to keep the main character relevant to the meager plot somehow.

  Halfway through the show Phos’ character changes drastically but I have a hard time accepting this as a “character arc.” It’s more like they’re one character the first half and another character in the second. This change comes off as forced as if the author couldn't figure out how else to progress the story.

  The ending

  

  I wasn’t invested in the show by the end anyway so I didn’t care that much, but prospective viewers should be aware that this anime has a non-ending. I can’t fault Houseki for that too much though as it’s just the realities that come with adapting an ongoing manga.

  Conclusion

  

  I suppose that’s about all I wanted to say. Truly, without meaning to offend, I am not sure what people liked about this show. The OP was nice, the music was very good, the visuals were flawed but intriguing. Yet that’s about it. I can’t help but feel this got the attention it did primarily because it was CG, rather than that being a detriment to its popularity. I’ll end it off with a quote from mathemagican’s review on MAL which sums up my feelings pretty well:

  “A bland cast of characters fights a boring monster of the week that goes nowhere. How dull.”

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