Betterman 01:
Okay, so.....uhh..........Seraphis, if you want to mutually dissolve our agreement, I'm cool with that, because this was just.......man, I don't even know where to begin.
I suppose it was a bad sign already when the OP was a live action video of a coral reef under the ocean with translucent stills of the characters slowly panning across the screen to some kind of slow, warbling song. It was uncomfortably Arjuna-esque. I mean, any mecha series from the years immediately following Evangelion should be assumed by default to be pretentious garbage full of DEEP THEMES, but this show basically trumpets it from the hilltops within a minute of starting.
I think that what struck me the most in the first few minutes was just how much the art design in the show embodies the absolute worst of the 90s. The insufferably-loudmouthed wiener of a protagonist has an endless repertoire of fugly faces, and virtually every other character is afflicted with some severe curves in their facial profiles, cheek zigzags, goo-goo-googly eyes,
really sharp hair, and other unfortunate features common in shows of the era. I mean, this is just a taste:
good lord.
Apart from the character design, it's a visually bland show. While this may have been partially attributable to the subterranean locale in which most of the episode took place, the color palette feels dark, dull, and muddy. There is no impressive animation of note, and while it's always tempting to describe 2D mecha animation as being good by default,
Betterman's mecha are entirely average for a work of its time. There was no fluidity, complexity, or dynamism to the combat in the episode; the mecha essentially stands in place, makes simple punches, beam attacks, and so on. There are really only two visual aspects of the episode of note: first, the show seems to have been produced in widescreen, which is unusual for the time. It's sometimes clear that the staff has no idea how to frame scenes correctly because the tops of characters' heads are often awkwardly cropped off, so if this was a thoughtless choice to make the show appear more "serious", it's laughable.
Second, and perhaps most oddly, it's quite noticeable that whenever a scene has any sort of digital effects e.g. displays on computer monitors, the entire scene is inked digitally and the show freely switches between ink and digital animation at will. It's blatantly obvious:
I'm not even going to speak about the narrative because it's the same boy-meets-mecha and same absolute mess of technobabble that every
Evangelion ripoff that ever was and ever will be has had as a first episode. Except
Betterman is worse than the average ripoff because even serious scenes are laced with ill-fitting and atrocious manic "comedy", usually courtesy the protagonist. Imagine a version of
Evangelion where, at the moment that Gendou orders Rei to be bought out on her gurney after Shinji refuses to pilot Eva-01, that Rei's IV bag pole falls over and hits Shinji in the balls with a loud clanging sound effect. That's the essence of
Betterman comedy.
I'm unsure as to whether or not I'll stick with this as I have far better shows that I want to use my time to catch up on, but it's unquestionably bad.