Obsolete

Exo suits? check. Urobuchi? check. Let's go. Obsolete is your standard war story full of sarcasm and indifference. What's different here however is the format. 6x12 minutes. It doesn't leave you with much space to tell a grand story or express ideologies. Anyone who's hoping for character depth or such will be let down. The staff did everything in their power to make this a coherent piece of work but they were heavily restricted by the episode count and it shows. Limestone? Aliens? It doesn't matter to us humans according to Mr. Urobuchi, and there's really no time to explain them anyway. The core of this product seems to be "Give a man afish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he'll wage war on his fellow men with fishing rods" What we get here are pieces of war history. How it started and... that's it. There's no end, or climax. The individual episodes all follow key events of this futuristic war, the background of the fractions and some people involved in the conflict. In each episode you will get new characters who drive the story and drop a few lines of lore. The rest is mindless action with dubstep. Oh right. Skrillex did the music. While the sound engineering and effects were great, the music was offputting as hell. Jungle dnb or tribal would've been more fitting considering where it takes place. They went overboard with screen effects such as smoke, but the shading was really lacking. The action itself looks well done, but with not enough contrast it looks bland. The art is... fitting I'd say. silky smooth 4fps cgi we all hate, with a realistic touch. It's sad that this level of mechanic detail needs cg because all the decent animators are busy with gundam. It gives the whole show a very cheap feel. Pair that with how short it is, and the 4th wall breaking "Just like in my japanese animes" and you're left wondering why they're doing this exactly? So is Obsolete supposed to be above anime, some higher form of entertainment? Is this how they meant it? because I'm sad to say it's subpar. Or the opposite? We tried to make something akin to anime, and almost succeeded at times! yes, that seems more correct, sadly. Honestly this show could've made it as a toy commercial. I'm not sure how many people will it reach if it's on a paid.youtube.service. Don't you want the largest possible audience for your product placement, instead of those 10 people who paid for youtube premium or whatever it is? The exosuits look cool. The story seems interesting, the execution is so-so, the runtime is the downfall of this show really. Moral of the story? War bad. Humanity bad. 12 minute format bad.

CG in anime has always been a bit of a contentious issue, and even a meme, since there have been so many shows that have miss-handled it to the detriment of the story they're trying to tell. I personally have seen very few shows that were fully, or mostly CG that I thought were enhanced by the addition of CG, but fortunately that is beginning to change. Obsolete is one of the first fully CG shows that I have not only enjoyed, but felt was enhanced by the use of CG. True, if the right style and quality of 2d animation were used, anequal or greater effect could be achieved, but for depicting such complex machinery and frequent action shots, the CG excels and is even pleasant to look at. The visual style is completed with detailed and beautiful backgrounds that look like they were painted rather than rendered. The story of the show is relatively simple, but that works in its favor in this case. Rather than trying to tell an extremely complex narrative, Obsolete focuses on a sort of snapshot take on the effect that the arrival of alien technology on earth has on the world, and warfare specifically. Each episode follows a different character and a different event in the world, following the introduction of EXOS - powerful exoskeletons built by the alien "Peddlers", who have no interest in earth and its people save to trade these suits in exchange for limestone. And some of the insights its characters have are quite interesting and thought provoking. At this stage, I'm not sure how many episodes there will be, but I certainly hope there are more. Underneath the episodic feel of the first six episodes, there are many underlying themes and now even characters and events that seem likely to tie together in future episodes to give the show a more meaningful finish, but even if it remains episodic it's still interesting enough for me to continue watching. I recommend this show to anyone who's interested in military, SciFi, or even just seeing an unusual take on these two genres, with a side of fascinating social commentary.

This story is very basic : aliens come to Earth and trade blocks of rocks for Exosekeleton robot suits. Humans soon use them for war. The story never goes much deeper. We get glimpses of different countries and the conflicts depicted here and there. I enjoyed the series for what it was : a combat, action-packed short series of 12 min for each episode. The weapons were cool, same for how the machines were animated. I liked it a lot because that's what I wanted. But the human characters aren't moving naturally at all and the frame per second is quite low. You don't see them outside oftheir suits so often so it's not that bad. Overall 7/10 for me *** Updating after second season , Jan 2021*** 3/10. What a troll story. The last episode is an insult to all viewers. Instead of giving us a conclusion, the studio put some loli fighting in space for 12 minutes to troll us. I wish I were lying. If you don't believe me, skip directly to the 12 episode. Do NOT WASTE YOUR TIME with this one

Don't listen to all the cynics complaining about this series. It was awesome. If you like mechs and/or sci fi then you will eat this up and be hungry for more. It's only downside is that there are only 6 episodes (currently). The writing was mature and intelligent. I love that the story gets right in to it. They don't explain anything about the aliens, and instead focus on the characters, some tech, and the effects of the mechs on the planet. Some of the combat scenes were great, some were just ok, but well within tolerance as they were not necessarily the main focus.I don't think this series was perfect, but it outshines everything else out there right now, except maybe GenLock. I can't wait for more episodes!