A3! Season Autumn & Winter

-- Fluff ratings -- Art: 7 Best part of the show. Sound: 5 Mediocre. Nothing stands out -- literally. -- Actual evaluation --Okay so... This show... I was originally not sure to write a review or not. Partly, it is because I needed time to collect my thoughts but here goes: Character: 3 Pretty much the worst part of this show is this. This show spanned 2x12 episodes. That's a total of 24. It has likely a character count exceeding its episode count and the regretable part of this, is that it developed NOTHING. The MC is effectively an audience insert. The guys are almost equally unimportant as each other aside from the two main leads of each "season"'s troupe. Even amongst the leads of the troupes, they feel bland. There is little to no development and whatever amount there is is generally cut short by the fact that each troupe only really appear for 6 episodes. Story: 4 The original premise and execution of the first 6 episodes are fine -- in fact at that point I still wanted to watch more of this show. What went wrong was that whoever wrote this decided to do this in a repetitive manner. Director: "Hey the first 6 episodes were great!! Okay man let's restart every 6 episodes with a fresh troupe to do it over and over again!" Guy A: "Hey man that's great idea!" Guy B: "Yeah! It worked for Re:Zero, people are suckers for watching the same thing over and over in the same show!" Guy C: "No guys, then we will have more characters than we have budget to develop and also repetitive writing will bore the audience-" (Guy C was tossed out the window.) Right. So there. If story had the potential to be a 5, it got dropped to a 4 for exactly this. Overall: 5 I watch everything that comes out. This show was the lemme-watch-it-if-i-close-enough-browser-tabs-from-completeing-the-other-shows-k-thx.

The choice of story structure in A3! is bizarre. The time spent on the seasonal troupes is evenly divided, so you get six episodes with each of them. The show starts off with recruiting mostly theater newbies and watching them learn how to act. Then, six episodes later, the show throws them to the side to focus on finding five new guys, who you watch learn how to act, get tossed aside, and repeat. And repeat is the keyword. The whole show is just watching some bumbling idiots learn how to act four times in row. Most of the characters don't get enough screentime todifferentiate themselves from the cast of 20 boys, so instead they have to fall back on one-trick pony gimmicks to have any memorability. There's occasionally some decent drama, though nothing unique, and most episodes end up quite boring. The second cour is at least marginally better than the first. You have a solid character dynamic between two boys in the Autumn troupe who start out hating each other but end up forming some grudging respect for each other. The Winter troupe is where the show decides to introduce some supernatural elements for the first time 19 episodes in, including getting the boys stuck in a literal time loop. It's too little too late to really recommend, but hey, if you've made it this far, you might as well finish it out.

The hardships and pitfalls of each group is unique to its members, and helps in developing the characters growth. The choice of plays for each group suits each groups' personality and the plays themselves are quite fun. Sometimes the interaction between characters are slightly on the boring side, and sometimes the conflicts slows the pace of the show so much so that I skim through much of the episode. I'll say this though, the entire show is easily digestible for anime only watchers while leaving hints and sweet kisses to those who play the games as well. My gripe would have to be howformer troupes are used fairly unsuccessfully within the current arc. There are exceptions to the rule, but it feels like at the end of every 6 episode , new game plus. Outside of that the animation, designs and music are standard(I think the OP is catchy but nothing overwhelmingly beautiful).It's a fun show that fills time and it's lighthearted nature makes it very easy to invest in. I wouldn't mind another season or two, in fact I'd look forward to it!! TLDR: The story is sweet, the characters are loveable, sometimes the pacing is slow, and everything isn't as cohesive as it should be but it's without a doubt good!