This one’s gonna be quick and dirty, because to be honest, I didn’t even make it through the whole first episode.

I hesitate to be too down on Gibiate, since it’s not as though I found the anime so offensive that I couldn’t bring myself to get through a full twenty minutes. There was nothing offensive about the anime at all, unless you count the fact that it nearly put me to sleep. Given this is an action/horror/science-fantasy series centered around time-traveling samurai and a virus that apparently turns people into monsters, I can only imagine that wasn’t the intent here. I don’t know, maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood or mindset, maybe I was just tired and out of sorts anyway, maybe a combination of both, but I found this episode incredibly dull, to the point where even when I was still watching (I made it pretty close to the end credits by the way, just a couple of minutes off), my attention was wavering constantly. At one point, I was browsing the internet looking for something better to do and only listening to the dialogue, which should give some indication as to how well the show kept me interested.

Not only did I find the storytelling lackluster and the characters flat, but even the artwork and animation looked and felt bland, not to mention extremely cheap. It’s hard not to notice whenever an anime resorts to still screens in anything action-heavy, and there were a lot thrown in here. Much of the movement was just created using motion lines rather than actually being animated at all, and the character designs were almost just as conspicuously uninspiring. I was surprised to look this up afterwards and see that it was an original series, because the visuals definitely had me thinking it was some game or light novel adaptation from the late 90s.

With the current dearth of shows, let alone good ones, airing this season, I’m sure some people will find something to enjoy in Gibiate, but it’s just not for me.