UNMARKED SPOILERS for FIRST episode within.
Arpeggio of Blue Steel - 1
well maybe my eyes were tired or something while watching this, it didn't look that bad to me. Action scenes and explosions, ships themselves and all the water effects look good to me, I don't think you can have large action scenes like this on average anime TV in traditional form anymore.
What looks bad of course is the characters. They look like video game characters and move just like some video game character. If you played something like Tales of or idolm@ster games you'd probably find this looking similar albeit with more detailed models. Low frame, robotic character animations look distracting and bad. If you're going full CG, I'd say just mocap everyone and be done with it. Other side characters or should I call them NPCs now? look a LOT worse than main characters, they're indeed like generic video game models.
CG aside, it features that post apocalyptic destroyed civlization set up that I dig very much, I like that. That about sums up the visuals.
It has pretty good sound effects, the battles sound like a battle coupled with orchestrated music, feels 'epic' and everything which seems appropriate here.
The set up, looked a lot like Evangelion clone at first but now it's with a mysterious fog fleet. (Now that I mention Evangelion, I think the creators really like Eva 3.33, it uses very similar looking hexagon pattern CG field effects that there was in the beginning of the movie, which seemingly work like AT fields or shields here in Arpeggio? dunno.)
Too bad the mysterious invading forces don't remain mysterious for long and turns out they're normal looking human made ships but controlled by beings manifested as.. loli cute girls.. which as they say "we're the ships". Looks like moe girls as ships really is a thing, as with uber popular Kantai Collection game. man dunno.
What I like was Iona having the same voice actress as Miho from Girls und Panzer and saying all the military babble and orders during the battles felt a lot like GuP, she's like a robot here though.
I was half interested in the premise but when moe girls showed up as enemies, I gave up, that ruined all the tension and seriousness I'm looking for in anime like this. Maybe this could be this year's GuP, be surprise hit, very entertaining show with girls piloting battle ships and submarines, I doubt it very much right now.
