Anime Review: Afterlost Episode 1

Afterlost Episode 1

Studio: Madhouse

Genre: Action, Fantasy, Mystery

Stream: Funimation

Afterlost is a mobile game series initially released in Japan in May 2014. And this month along with the mobile game’s global release, Afterlost the anime adaptation is premiering on the home screen. One day, an entire city mysteriously vanished. Fast forward 3 years, and lone survivor of the missing city Yuki is being hunted down by the shadowy Agency. Takuya, a courier, is tasked with delivering Yuki to the site of the missing city (now known as Lost) after finding a message from Yuki’s missing father.

Aaand that premise is all I know about this show because not much else is explained in this first episode. Granted, this being an adaptation of a mobile game I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece in storytelling, but being someone who was completely unfamiliar with the series until hearing about this anime I was (no pun intended) lost throughout a lot of this episode.

We have quite an ensemble of characters: Takuya (voiced by one of my faves Tomokazu Sugita) the rough courier, Yuki the quiet but determined girl-in-destress who also has mystical powers, two shady scientists who seem to have hired Takuya, Takuya’s acquaintance Geek, a monk with psychokinesis, and a red-haired girl, and a bunch of other sketchy-looking individuals. Aside from our two main characters, we don’t really get any names for the others so it’s hard to feel any sense of attachment as everyone feels like a complete stranger, which only adds to the feeling of not having a clue as to what’s going on.

And like I briefly touched on with the characters, some of the people in this world apparently have special powers that aren’t explained at all and seem to be accepted by the other characters as at most “surprising” since no one reacts as if anything is out of the realm of possibility. Perhaps these aspects make more sense in the game, but from the anime alone it feels like things just happen with no rhyme or reason and as an unfamiliar viewer I’m left confused in the worst way.

And I can already hear some people saying “Hey, it’s a mystery so it’s supposed to be vague.” Okay, that’s fair to a degree and I get that. If we start getting some explanations in the next episode, I’ll be happier with the show. But as it is right now, I feel like I’ve been dropped into the middle of a story with people I should know by now and expected to follow along. It doesn’t feel like a lack of information for the sake of intrigue but rather lack of information due to prior experience needed.

And production-wise I can’t help but be a bit disappointed. Madhouse is one of my favorite studios, and they’ve worked on dozens of animated works I love like One Punch Man, Redline, and Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor. But everything about Afterlost is average to mediocre. There’s some 3D CGI in here that’s admittedly not as jarring as it often is, but it doesn’t really look that great either. The action scenes aren’t all that dynamic or fun and consist mostly or colorful blurs on the screen. Especially since none of the things happening on the screen make sense, the action doesn’t really do much for me in terms of excitement or enjoyment. And some of the songs in the soundtrack felt very out-of-place and even mixed poorly in with the rest of the audio at times.

Perplexed would be the best way to describe my feelings on this new series. I hope we get some explanations next week or I’m just going to chalk it up to being a “fan’s only” series and drop it.