[Noein] - All
It's really hard for to talk about this work for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I watched it on and off over the course of about three years and so I don't really have a unified grasp on the series as a whole. Secondly, the UK release of this work, which I own, has horrendous dub-titles which often leads to confusion as they're apparently fairly inaccurate which doesn't help when you have a series which waffles on about (faux) Quantum Mechanics all the time. With both of those considerations in effect I can't really give the series a fair review. I can, however, speak in general about my impressions of the work.
Firstly, the series strengths lie in the characters and the animation, rather than in the overall plot. While this cast of characters is hardly unique there are a few number of them and the 'twist' that they put into series keeps things relatively fresh - to explain briefly,
Noein is a science fiction work which posits that there a near infinite number of alternative dimensions to our own where people made different choices. As such you can have multiple variations of the same character from multiple directions which sometimes leads to some surprisingly effective scenes (particularly some of the flashbacks in the final episode) but sometimes just leads to really clunky, hitting the audience around the head dialogue. Still, they do a relatively good job of not having the main child cast be excessively annoying or stupid, which is a trap that a number of shows which feature a young cast fall into.
The overall plot is very messy and hard to describe, partially because I watched it over such a long period of time, partly because the subs are useless and partly because the writing is filled with inscrutable technobabble. There's some very key concepts to the series, like the need for observers to observe reality to make it reality, that just feel kind of thrown in there without any thorough explanation. At other times really, really simple concepts like the idea of multiple dimensions are explained over and over and over again for no discernible reason. In the end if none of this quantum nonsense really matters to the over story because it's really a work that deals with the idea of how does one deals with unhappiness, grief and suffering but it's wrapped up in layers and layers of sci-fi crap that unfortunately dilutes they key message.
All this science fiction, quantum stuff is mainly an excuse to have completely ridiculous action scenes that are not bound by any physical rules. The director, Kazuki Akane, seems to have a real belief in in the importance of having really lively animation and he isn't concerned with trying to limit the animators style, some scenes look incredibly sketchy in a way that you'd never see in a regular series. This produces a series which has some of the most expressive and impressive animation that I've seen in any TV series, although the quality oscillated between completely amazing and extremely basic as the show progresses. However, it's not just key fight scenes that look amazing, there's tons of cuts of characters doing every day stuff where the animation looks shockingly fluid. The same director would later go on to produce
Birdy the Mighty and anyone who has seen that series knows how great it looks. Sadly I'm too lazy to capture my own .gifs but the internet has a few laying around. Sadly they're all from like, the same scene:
I guess what I'm saying is that, on the whole, the series is worth watching. Even if you don't want to watch the show you should probably Youtube the fight scenes because ma gawd.