Anime original by Shirogumi
Streaming on Netflix (International release TBA)

Premise

Abducted by an unknown kidnapper when he was young and rescued by a mysterious woman named Milo, Daisuke Dojima is now a high-school student in Shibuya, waiting eagerly to protect his friends against unspecified adversaries as Milo once prophesized. When that day finally comes, huge mecha-like creatures called Revisions suddenly attack and Milo reappears, providing Daisuke with a mobile suit to help save Shibuya.

Artemis’ verdict: Don’t Bring a Knife to a Mecha Fight

I guess I’ll deal with the elephant in the room first. Yes, Revisions is all CG, and it’s… well, I don’t love it, but it’s really not that bad. Personally I think the CG looks relatively competent for the most part, if not exactly good. Your mileage may vary of course, but it’s certainly no worse than the likes of Ajin or Knights of Sidonia – probably even a minor step up from both, come to that – and the character designs in themselves are just fine, so Revisions is by no means unwatchable in this regard.

Far more importantly, director Goro Taniguchi shows that he’s still got the stuff when it comes to innovative and impactful sci-fi and gritty mecha/military-themed stories. He’s been in the game a long time, and though it’s been quite a while since I’ve watched anything of his, I still have a great deal of respect to this day for the likes of Planetes and Infinite Ryvius.

Unfortunately, the cast of Revisions, or more specifically the main cast member, has already done plenty to put me off. Not to put too fine a point on it, but frankly, Daisuke’s an asshole. He’s completely obsessed with ‘protecting’ people (especially girls, apparently) despite the fact that they don’t seem to want or need his help. He’s also clearly spent the last several years amping himself up for the Big Day so that when it finally arrives, he seems almost happy despite the fact it obviously means a whole lot of (very bloody) death and destruction all around. His preparations for this (which seem limited to pushups and weight training) do him zero good, and he immediately freezes up when shit actually does go down. While I have no doubt he’ll man up and start actually saving people at some point, he’ll probably do so because it vindicates him rather than for any altruistic reasons, because so far all I see is a self-important, self-righteous boy who literally brings a knife to a mecha fight. I’m assuming Daisuke will see a ton of very steep character growth over the course of the series but in all honestly, I don’t know if I have the patience for that. Since it looks like I’ll have no trouble filling the gaps this anime season with shows featuring main characters that don’t annoy me to this degree, I think I’ll be giving Revisions a pass.

Jel’s verdict: Needs… Revisions??? That’s all I got…

Anything good this show does in the first episode (and trust me, it’s not much) gets torpedoed by the insufferable main character. Watching him act out his hero complex was like nails on chalkboard to me, to the point where I almost gave up before finishing. I had a glimmer of home when the big moment comes and he freezes up that maybe the show would knock him back down to earth, but no, they just validate his actions by giving him a super secret weapon mech suit even though he’s proven his classmates are all made of sterner stuff than he is. Sorry dude, only acting like a hero when you’re safe or when you have bigger guns does not make you a hero. Quite the opposite actually.

So basically what I was expecting to be a run of the mill mecha show with decent CG turned out to be the second most infuriating show I’ve watched this season after The Rising of the Shield Hero. Thankfully this doesn’t dip into any of the harmful social implications of that atrocity, but it’s still not a good look. Let’s just all forget this existed by the time it gets an international release on Netflix.​ Also, let me give my own shout out to Goro Taniguchi’s Gun x Sword if you want some extreme mid-2000s anime nostalgia. Go watch that instead.