Alternative title(s): RErideD: Koku Koe no Derrida
Anime Original by Geek Toys
Streaming on Crunchyroll
(Crunchyroll has made the first 5 episodes available, but for this review we are only covering episode 1)

Premise

Derrida accidentally helped his dad usher in the robot apocalypse and will most likely leap through time to try and fix his mistake.

Jel’s verdict: I Don’t Have Time For This

This show was bad on nearly every level. The time travel, killer robots, evil dads, creepy magical anime girls… we’ve seen it all before. On top of that, the show looks awful and has some hilariously bad directing, action, and art style choices. I literally laughed out loud when I saw the killer robots looked less intimidating than an ASIMO, but my favorite part was when our main character “accidentally” crawls into a cryogenic sleep chamber in a scene so awkwardly made that I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening at first.

If there’s anything I would even remotely be interested in here, I do wonder if the show will be primarily be focused on fixing the robot apocalypse or will the story focus on actually trying to make time travel happen in the first place? If anyone reading was masochistic enough to watch more, let us know. I feel like maybe the second option would be a more interesting, but either way I don’t see how they can salvage this one.

Iro’s verdict: Not Worth Your Time

Helmed by some truly impressive names, one might expect RErideD to be at least competently put together, but you’d be wrong. The first episode was boring me half to sleep when it wasn’t actively annoying me. It’s just a bunch of dialogue and exposition with no emotional character stakes behind it, capped off with the main character stumbling into a random cryogenics lab underneath a forest seemingly because it was the only way they could move the plot forward. Additionally, the animation fails to capture any of the dreamy mystery characteristic of Yoshitoshi ABe’s art, and he was half the reason I was giving this a chance in the first place. A disappointment on multiple levels.

Artemis’ verdict: Wake Me In 10 Years

I have no idea how the creators of the show made a premise like this boring as hell to actually watch, but somehow they managed it. I would probably have been on board had the opening episode been only messy – at least then it would’ve been interesting – but it was also just so dull and uninspired. When I say that you get twenty minutes of entirely dialogue-driven exposition followed by roughly two minutes of anything even remotely exciting going on, I’m not exaggerating – and those two minutes are so contrived (whoops, I accidentally fell into this handy cryogenic sleep chamber!) that even then, it’s not worth the wait.

But hey, Yoshitoshi Abe’s highly distinctive artwork is the show’s saving grace, right? Wrong. Despite taking place in the post-apocalyptic future, RErideD’s backgrounds are flat and bland, utterly devoid of anything creative or even especially dark. The character designs are likewise bog-standard, about as generic as they come. Save for the ED, there’s absolutely nothing of Yoshitoshi’s hand to be seen here, so I’d advise not wasting your time looking. In fact, while I don’t doubt there’ll be far, far worse titles to come this season, unless you’re looking for a series that’s completely average, I wouldn’t advise bothering with this one at all.