Scarlet Nexus

In the year 2020, a nation faces the pervasive threat of the "Others"—mysterious monsters who fall from the sky and feed on human brains. At the same time, psionics, a hormone that gives certain people extrasensory abilities that are effective against the Others, is discovered in the human body. Subsequently, the nation's founder establishes the Other Suppression Force (OSF) to combat these monsters and save humanity. Commonly referred to as the Scarlet Guardians, young individuals with psionics undergo intensive training to this group.

One day, the nation prepares an induction ceremony for the exceptional recruits who completed the grueling training to become Scarlet Guardians. Among these young elites is Yuito Sumeragi, the determined son of the nation's founder; at the age of five, he was rescued by a woman in the OSF. To repay this debt, he s the organization, eager to put his training to good use. As he meets his new comrades, he faces a big problem—the woman who saved him years ago closely resembles one of his teammates. However, this should be the least of his worries—unbeknownst to him, a conspiracy is brewing, one with the capability to shake the entire country.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Randall, Kasane Main

Seto, Asami Japanese

Sumeragi, Yuito Main

Enoki, Junya Japanese

Spring, Arashi ing

Horie, Yui Japanese

Ichijou, Hanabi ing

Mineuchi, Tomomi Japanese

Nazar, Tsugumi ing

Kouno, Marika Japanese

Karman, Nagi ing

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Eden, Kyouka ing

Hara, Yumi Japanese

Travers, Karen ing

Hiyama, Nobuyuki Japanese

Randall, Naomi ing

Nishi, Asuka Japanese

Garrison, Gemma ing

Takeuchi, Ryouta Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Herek, Samantha Assistant Producer

Nishimura, Hiroyuki Director, Character Design

Tateishi, Yayoi Sound Director

Reviews

Jun 3, 2022

Ciel_exe

Recommended

This review wants to be my personal experience with the IP of Scarlet Nexus, along with a disclaimer that aims to be an advice for the guys who want to watch this show.
As you may know, Scarlet Nexus is a game. It's quite rare for a game to get released along with an anime, so I was honestly excited and stunned by this fact. The game certainly is amazing and I loved it, but this is no place to talk about this.

Disclaimer if you want to watch the anime:
Play the game first. I played the game two times, both as Yuito and Kasane, the available ... MCs, and i was left with some questions. The anime was still airing, so I waited for it to finish to do a recap of the story, hoping that my doubts could be answered by it. The good news is that yes, they were, and I think all of them were. And I really appreciate the anime for doing this. I think this was the main purpose of creating it and i really think they did the right thing with this choice, at least in the concept, since the realization is kinda poor.
The episodes contain some codes you can enter in the game in a certain restaurant in order to get customization stuff. It's a cool idea and I appreciate it but don't watch the anime if you're playing the game, it will only ruin your experience imo. Just look for the codes by doing a Google search since it ended by now anyway. If you want to still enjoy more content after completing the game 2 times then watch the anime, but be warned: it doesn't expand the main story, just adds some details you probably missed at the price of zero character development.

Actual Review:
Since I played the source material, e.g. the game, I can actually judge it by making comparisons. You should respect that a 26 episodes anime is trying to cover the whole thing. My first gameplay took me about 50-60ish hours to complete, and the second one another 20-30ish. If you think about it, 26 episodes amount to less than 10 if you remove the opening and ending time. You can't expect to go through the character development you get in the actual game IF YOU DECIDE to spend time with your mates on your free time (completely optional). Of course this led to a really poor character development, but that's to be expected. The animations were on low budget, but they weren't the worst I've ever seen on an anime, so i gotta give them props for this, even if I don't know how much budget they had. The sound comparment was really really good, 'cause not only did they get two original songs from "The Oral Cigarettes" as Openings, but the Endings were also pretty good. Sound compartment was also almost entirely taken from the game, so it was of course of high quality, both in dubbing and effects, and i also appreciated the different arrangements of the in-game osts i already knew.
As i said in the disclaimer I really enjoyed the fact that I got what I came for, which was answers to my questions, because some really important plot points were explained with more detail here rather than the game itself. A lot of main happenings were rearranged for some reason (i think to ease the strain on the animation team) which led me to be confused for a moment, since I was expecting to see a faithful adaptation of the game story. Another reason could be that this way, they had the chance to further expand on the plot points that weren't so well explained in the game as i told before, so it was sometimes appreciable. Just, I didn't enjoy the stuff that was made up in the anime that didn't exist in the original game just to create some drama or suspance (that honestly didn't got me hyped). I dunno if they really tried to create more suspance by adding some dramatic context to the scene that wasn't there in the game, but if it was only to fill some void time well that's kinda sad.
In the end tho, i think that if you enjoyed the main story of the game and you're in for a rewatch, this anime does the thing. Just don't expect the same quality.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jun 2, 2024

AnimeEnjoyer420

Mixed Feelings

Scarlet Nexus is a flawed but decent sci-fi action series. How much you enjoy the series is largely going to come down to how meaningful those specific flaws are to you personally. My review is going to largely focus on those flaws, but I want to make clear that the series is good enough to merit a breakdown of the things about it that don't work rather than simply dismissing it, as I would have done for a lesser series.

A key point in favor of the series is that this is one of the most legible video game adaptations you'll ever come across. I have ... not played the Scarlet Nexus game, but I was able to easily understand the story and setting in short order. It's not the type of series that presumes familiarity with the video game, and it works just fine as a standalone story. It's also never boring. The plot moves forward at an unrelenting pace and keeps dropping new twists and revelations on you at regular intervals. For better or worse, there is no slack in this story at all, and that means there is always *something* happening to upset the status quo and drive things forward. There is also something to be said for the fact that this is a complete story with a definitive ending, not a "the journey continues... on all major video game platforms!" type of thing.

Unfortunately, I think that can also be one of the significant weak points of the series. There is so, so much happening here that it feels extremely rushed even with 26 episodes that don't have an ounce of fat on them. It launches into its main plot so quickly that it doesn't even have time to establish a status quo to later upset, because it's already multiple steps beyond that point by the 2nd episode. While this series does a respectable job of managing its cast size compared to other video game adaptations, there are still a lot of people in this show and few get explored in any meaningful way. While it's fine to leave secondary characters like Hanabi or Kagero as thinly-sketched, it's less forgivable that we know almost nothing about the leads, Yuito and Kasane. There is just no time for character development of any kind when the plot has this many moving pieces. And that deserves some criticism in and of itself. The plot can also sometimes feel like a grab bag of sci fi plot elements. There's time travel and brain hacking and dystopian population control and alien invasions and psychic powers and on and on. While it does ultimately home in on a theme around grief and living with loss in the latter half, it often feels like a mishmash of concepts that don't have a particular storytelling goal in mind, they're just in there because it's science fiction and science fiction often has those things. This would have been a better series if it had dialed back some of these plot elements and put more time into establishing the personalities and motivations of the cast .

Visually, it's also a mixed bag. The hand-drawn parts look mostly fine, but the soulless and angular digital backgrounds are unfortunate. And while the CGI has come in for heavy criticism, it's really only the CGI models for the Others that look bad. Those are ugly, low res, and poorly composited, and they stick out like sore thumbs because they look like video game graphics. However, the CGI for the OSF and the action animation actually looks quite good and is well-integrated into the overall visual identity of the show, which allows for more fluid and exciting action scenes than would otherwise be possible.

Overall, there's a fair amount to like in this series, particularly the rollercoaster-like quality of trying to keep up with its plot. While there are undoubtedly parts of this series that don't work, I would still give it a qualified recommendation. If you can overlook some of the problems that are brought along as a side effect of the relentless pace of the story, it's a fun ride.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 4, 2022

SkillsBeyond

Not Recommended

I will try to keep this spoiler free and short! Since there are alot of reviews going in depth..

My overall feeling of this anime is very lackluster.. The story is somewhat decent, but the story telling is terrible.. Missing alot of character development, development of bonding between characters, fighting scenes are decent at best sometimes and worse than decent other times..

Wasn't sure if i wanted to give it 4 or 5 since the setting is interesting..

I haven't played the game, so my opinion isn't comparing the anime to the game at all.. But the anime from my point of view is pretty damn bad... ...
I got bored midway and especially when reaching the end.. took me several weeks to finish the last 6 episodes.. (I am usually able to watch atleast 10+ episodes of an anime a day....)

So yeah, bad anime.. wouldn't recommend it to anyone, one of the worst i've watched...

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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