With great advancements in technology, mankind has created hIEs, human-like robots that act as public and personal servants for society. Unlike many others, the kind-hearted high school student Arato Endou treats hIEs as equals, but his financial situation keeps him from ever owning one.
However, his normal life is shattered when an ordinary run to the local grocery store goes horribly awry. Viciously assaulted by a hacked hIE, Arato is on the verge of death; but luckily, he is saved by an abnormal hIE carrying a weaponized coffin. Her name is Lacia, one of five highly advanced hIEs that recently escaped the clutches of the mysterious MemeFrame Corporation.
Faced with a hacked car threatening to run them over, Lacia offers Arato a deal: in exchange for saving his life, he must register as her new owner, thus taking full responsibility for her actions. With little choice, he decides to trust this artificial girl and allows her to live in his home. Though Lacia begins to adapt to her new, peaceful lifestyle, she warns the entranced Arato of one thing—she does not have a soul.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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TakaCode
What is a recap episode? Recap episodes are the stuff that the creators put in because they either don’t have enough material to adapt further arcs of set anime or they want to have newcomers who are interested of watching set series to catch up. Unless you are a long-running anime that has 50+ episodes I find the recap episodes to be pointless and lazy because honestly why would you watch 20-minute clip show that summaries a couple of story arcs that very often leave out important stuff when you can easily go watch actual episodes themselves. What does this have to do with Beatless? Beatless isa perfect example of how to not run a producing schedule. The reason I'm saying this right out of the gate because if Beatless was done by any other studio it would have been function-able but because this show was done by Studio Diomedea who somehow have a worst record than fucking A1 Pictures this show was destined for failure from to become a massive failure. The show itself was poorly written crap from the very beginning and it’s only made worse thanks to shitty producing schedule with its horrid intermission episodes which by the way are RECAPS!!!
One-hundred years into the future. A world in which society is mostly operated by humanoid robots called hIE. With the introduction of an ultra-advanced AI that surpasses human intelligence, beings that mankind is yet to fully comprehend made from materials far too advanced for human technology begin coming into being. Lacia, an hIE equipped with a black coffin-shaped device, is one of these. In boy-meets-girl fashion, 17-year-old Arato Endo has a fateful encounter with the artificial Lacia. For what purpose were these artificial beings created? Amid questions regarding the coexistence of these artificial beings and humans, a 17-year-old boy makes a decision…
To say that Beatless story is a mess is an understatement this is one of the worse executed and produced plots I ever heard the displeasure of watching.
For starters, the story is very dull and boring for the most part. I didn’t care about many events in the story because I was bored with them and I thought they were poorly executed. It doesn’t help that many of the story elements in Beatless were done better in other anime before this.
The pacing in the show is terrible as lots of the events in the just seem to drag out way longer than they should make some of the actions scenes very boring to watch. Along with the shows horrible pacing, the direction is just abysmal. It’s Darling in the Franxx levels of bad where it rather wastes it’s time on tropey shit instead of establishing its own world and plot correctly.
It doesn’t help that the fact that this show tries to be more big and complex than it actually is having the show takes itself too seriously with its themes, symbolism and heavy dialogue but it utterly fails thanks to this show horrible pacing, tone shifts and directing the show becomes very pretentious as a result.
The worst thing about this show that single-handy killed the show is the frequent intermission/recap episodes. For an anime that has 24 episodes this show has so many recap episodes it’s insane.
These are recap episodes alone killed the pacing and narrative as it only makes the show even more insufferable to watch. The moment I saw intermission 4 pop up 2 episodes after intermission 3 I wanted to drop dead because how can a show have 2 episodes of barely anything happening and decided to have another intermission based on these episodes.
The only good thing about the story is that it can be pretty funny at times other than that it’s a mess that is filled with so problems.
Now if you thought the story was awful you haven’t seen anything yet because the characters are somehow even worse.
Our main protagonist Arota is your typical naive character that we all seen before. He barely has any motivation at all and he just spends most of the series whining and being an incompetent idiot for the sake of it.
Laica is an empty husk of a female lead. She barely any personality at all other to just serve Arota and be waifu bait for the audience.
The rest of the characters are just walking cliches like the Arota’s annoying sister little Yuka who is basically a walking Imouto, Ryo the edgy smart childhood friend character to the spunky hot-headed Kouka who despite being the most entertaining character in the series is still a very below average character at best.
In short, the chararters in Beatless are just as bad as the story.
Moving to the production side of things Beatless are at best very underwhelming especially for an anime from 2018
For starters, the character designs of the anime are a big downgrade to the light novel where certain characters of the show are missing a lot of detail and polish. I know it’s not fair to compare the character designs from different mediums with each other but for this case, I couldn’t because the characters designs are a complete dumpster fire compare to the light novel counterparts. The best example of this was our protagonist Aroto where in the anime he looks like a typical nice boy while in light novel art he looks like more a serious threat.
It also doesn’t help the fact the character designs constancy goes off-model especially in the fights where the art constantly, for the most part, is at an all-time low.
The background scenery is terrible and uninspiring to look at.
The animation is below average at best as it has a lot of still frames, poor fight choreography at times and choppy movement.
If there’s is any silver lining for Beatless that saved it from being a total crapfeash it would be the soundtrack
The soundtrack is just a joy to listen as it perfectly captures the sci-fi setting well with its amazing use of dubstep and futuristic tracks that were played in this anime.
Opening 1 Error by GARNiDELia is a great and catchy opening theme that fits well with the first half of the series.
Opening 2 Truth.” by TrySail is amazing opening that I adore to death and it’s by far the best thing to come out from this anime.
Like with the openings themes both ending themes are great and catchy especially the first one Primalove” by ClariS which is my favourite ending theme of 2018.
The Seiyuus did a decent job with the roles that they were given and the overall acting is above average.
At the anime of this review, Beatless hasn’t got an English Dub but then again why would anyone even bother picking up this series since the series was a failure.
So there you have it Beatless is a horrendous anime.
It is likely one of the worst produced and scripted anime I have seen.
Other than the soundtrack and the kick-ass opening and ending themes there was not a single thing that I enjoyed about this show from it’s poorly executed plot, intermissions/recap episodes up the ass, shitty production values, stupid charterers and atrocious writing.
However, despite Beatless ended up being a train-wreck I will give the show this. Least you're not Darling In the Franxx.
Yas-
Back when I started the show as it aired on January 13 I liked Beatless. It had coloured me with joy and anticipation since it's first episode went so well. Compared to the other anime I started at the time, it felt like it could do a lot with it's premise. Tut Tut. It went out like a light for the whole first half and took a while to set itself on track, and unfortunately not the same track as I felt in episode 1, but hey, it had a direction, so that's already better than FranXX. Having said that, Beatless is far from perfect,despite throwing around it's ideology that robots do not make mistakes (and proving that wrong afterwards) it felt unnatural to see such robots (or hiEs if you may). The plot just kept on throwing random stuff at my face, sometimes Lacia is an idol taken straight from Aikatsu (Aikatsu Robot? Well that's redundant) and sometimes she's a fashion idol that makes Arato’s heart throb, not mine. Needless to say, it was inconsistent. It's inconsistent plot was evidenced in the first 7 weeks of it's run- I mean, episodes (will explain later) as it tried this thing or that. It began very badly after it's first episode and couldn't keep up till around episode 8 or 9 where it decided on one direction and stuck to it. How well that went is for us to judge, and my score can tell that enough. It was horrible in its first half.
Aside from these inconsistencies we also had the shocking revelation that the voice acting for a few actors was bad. Namely Shiori and Kengo. They sounded very much fake, or robotic if you love puns as much as I do. Shiori sounded like she was making her debut and failed at it (I will be very surprised if I find out this actually was her debut). But out with that, a huge problem with the anime was it's convenience. Whenever a convenient problem came, Arato conveniently solved it and conveniently everything went according to plan. Not the best thing to do to be honest. Apart from that as mentioned these random irrelevant plot points just came along and made the show feel like a cluttered up mess (trying not to jab at FranXX a second time here). Many times I felt irritated by the show not trying to focus properly on whatever the heck it wanted to be doing but alas, rarely did the rabbit go down it's respectful hole.
Moving away from that we come to another massively irritating part of the anime, the villains. Or should I say whatever the heck they tried to be. Let's start with Ginga. Watarai Ginga had a lot of potential since he was the former partner of the creator of the Lacia-class hiEs and his backstory could have been done better, but unfortunately they screwed up what could have been a great backstory and instead, mowed him down in terms of development during the series. He felt plastic. Not unlike cliched shounen villains who have no purpose other than “to destroy”. It was pretty irritating to be able to predict when Ginga would come or what Ginga would do, and though that ultimately let him to his super-predictable defeat (in the most shounen way possible), that's not an excuse especially when that's who you painted as the real villain. But ok, you do you Beatless.
After that predictable defeat someone had to take his role of villain and they brought out the randomly created and introduced Erika Burrows, which I think is the most Nippon Western name I could come up with, but anyway, apart from showing how cryogenics can be successful (that's a debate for another day) she proved that Beatless could get a worse villain than Ginga. Her actions were unexplained, her motives were set aside (“I want something interesting”? Pls, you're rich, go get a PC and play games or something) and the way the show painted her personality was far from what I could call decent. I already complained about Ginga, so this can explain how bad she is. You might say she's not a villain, but if that's indeed true, then she has absolutely NO use in this show since she'd just become a nobody.
Methode was introduced as that proud hiE who can beat em up and has good taste in sunglasses (trust me, those sunglasses, I need them) but she was pretty much another cliched villain who didn't improve. Although she had the motives, the way she carried it out and her brief appearances altogether shunted the true potential of this Character as well, another character with wasted potential. Now we move from bad villains to bad characters overall, namely our idiot MC, Arato. Arato was your average cherry boy. Apart from predictably falling in love with a robot his actions were as he said it himself, idiotic and uncalculated. In episode 19, they revealed what was the point of this incalculable mess of a character but not in the way you'd hope to call decent yet again.
Then we move over to the other hiEs, Kouka was the one with a hard on Onee-san fetish but in all honesty I was rooting for her. She was literally the only character in the show I liked and as such I lost my mind completely in episode 16. If you like Kouka too, her actions in episode 16 will leave you in a fit of rage, since it was unexplained, random and rage inducing. Snowdrop was shown as that Loli robot (great diversity Diomedea) who eats other robots to gain power and can make humans lose their sanity (?) and do weird stuff which was noticed in the first episode just before Arato was rescued by Lacia. To date, I've yet to understand what she was doing and why but eh, let's move on, the last hiE to cover (Methode was covered above) is Saturnus, describing her will be a lot like Erika Burrows, in that it's a bit of a spoiler, although she has nothing to do in the plot I can freely tell you without spoilers that she has no use at all in the plot. Satisfying the maid fetish fans might have (yet again, great diversity Diomedea), all she did apart from that is go “yes” and “let's do this” and “alright”. Those were 80% of her lines for the whole show. Underused? You betcha.
Now since I've been spewing all the negatives, let's neutralise with something that is both positive and negative, the sound. First the good, the music was great, the synth tracks used made it only the second show to extensively use synth tracks for it's soundtrack and BGM this year and needless to say it was well done. The OP/EDs as well did not disappoint. Now here comes the bad. Too much focus was kept into the music to do great in the other places. Production and budgeting wasn't done well since it was all about making that soundtrack and licensing the music, sadly this killed off the budget to focus on the other parts and so ultimately led to the downfall of the anime. Speaking of production issues, THE DAMN RECAPS. We had around 4-5 recaps for this 24 episode show. Let that seep in. Should a show get this many? I say no. Why did this show have so many recaps? Budgeting? We'll perhaps never know, but point is, I don't want to have a recap episode thrown at my face after waiting for a week. It's frustrating. For those who are binge watching it as well, the episodes are part of the show so it gets really irritating to see the words “Recap Episode” show up in your news feed. It cuts off from the main action badly. Oh wait, that itself is a fault in the show.
It's transition from one scene to another is random and pretty much tiring to watch. I can't tell you how fed up I was of this. And let's not forget the fact that our Lacia-class hiEs were given absolutely NO SENSIBLE EXPLANATION. Apart from very minor dips into their backstories, the hiEs never had their purpose of creation explained apart from one line or the other, lines like “I'm created to help humanity move forward” isn't going to earn an excuse. You need proper explanation which sadly wasn't given. Now it's not all bad though. Apart from being my guilty pleasure of the year it did have good things in it. It's plot improved considerably in it's second half, which although wasn't obviously flawless, it was a nice improvement all the same, as a person who was pissed with the first half even the mediocre-decent bracket it was in felt good to me.
Another important thing is that despite it's recaps, Beatless wasn't a rushed show. I never felt that it was rushed most of the time and the pace was pretty good in itself since I could easily watch the show without getting too much information at once. Another important point is that Beatless tried to do something different with it's main heroine, Lacia. Since this showed it's true colours in the last quarter of the show I won't delve in so deeply but it tried to paint her character in it's complete opposite way she was presented to us ever since the show started had mixed results, surprising because I thought it would fall flat on its face. It was well done since it changed my whole opinion of the past episodes of the show and Lacia herself. Kind of like that FranXX episode 13 which made you go “oh so this is why all this happened”, only that, and please bear with me on this one, it was done much better than FranXX.
If you asked me to compare FranXX and Beatless’ first episodes, FranXX easily beat it but the answer is the complete opposite if you ask me their overall position. Yes. Beatless is better than FranXX. Despite it's crazed amount of stupidity, Beatless had a direction to follow. FranXX didn't. It took Beatless 7 episodes to find its purpose and the direction it should be following, FranXX on the other hand couldn't at all find what it wanted to do, it kept on changing every episode, therefore butchering it's consistency. If I talked to the Yasaal in January about this he'd have laughed me off the room because both shows certainly didn't show their true colours until later, FranXX with it's terrible attempts at relating to teenagers with a horrible consistency and Beatless’ lame cliches coupled with bad villains, constant recaps but a somewhat proper direction (?). They're close, but Beatless edges out FranXX. Why am I comparing the two? It's natural to compare two shows of a similar level.
What started out as a guilty pleasure quickly turned into a show that made me impressed how a lame show can at least attempt at standing up and manage to somewhat achieve that. An E for Effort? You bet, might even give it a D+ if you like, because even though it had a lot of issues, Beatless was in itself a guilty pleasure to watch. Oh, and to satisfy all the fetishes with the hiEs, a responsible older partner (Lacia), the wild girl (Kouka), the proud girl (Methode), the Maid (Saturnus) and the Loli (Snowdrop), Diomedea, you sure have satisfied the fetishes. At this rate I might have a fetish of watching bad shows for guilty pleasure if I don't stop, but to Diomedea’s credit, Good Taste lads. Now we wait for the next few months till those last 4 episodes come out. How unclimactic...
Story: 2.5
Animation: 5.5
Sound: 8 (Dat synth, dat expense on sound, dat BGM, dem OP/EDs)
Character: 1.5 (Solely because of Lacia last quarter and a few characters [Kouka] here and there is this not a zero)
Enjoyment: 4 (guilty pleasure and somewhat decent improvement in the second half compared to first)
Overall: 4.3
erparom
Beatless is not about robo bitches (or mechanical waifus) but about Brainless studio, writers and artists. If you love tasteless fan service with lame characters and unbearable plot, this crap is for you. But I won't give a 0/10 but instead aq 5/10 because this anime helped me learn a lot: 1-Even the guy that directed the first FMA can make absolute CRAP 2-Diomedea is CANCER 3-An anime can be dropped when the plot gets interesting (because it is plain retard) But it was not meant to be bad. Even if not original, and even if the execution failed miserably, the story is compelling, should have been at least enjoyable, butit was not.
What went wrong? Lazy 2nd key and in between animation, a lot of argument mistakes of continuity and plot writing, very poor script and very lame characters.
I think, this could have been a very good seasonal ecchi anime, but even if it does not take itself seriously, you can make a very decent job with at least very smart writing.
For example, take Sora no Otoshimono. Is not a "good" anime, it does not take itself seriously (except when battle wise as this should have been), but is very enjoyable, is funny and characters even if cliche are very nice. In this, Beatless failed miserably. Bad Sci-fi, terrible argument and not even enjoyable characters.
LegendAqua
To be perfectly honest LA was drawn to Beatless because of Nao Touyama... In a more serious note Beatless along with Toji no Miko had some of the shakiest pacing in animes from 2018, but Beatless didn't suffer from pacing issues...Beatless suffered from constant delays. The thing is Beatless had ALOT of potential to be a good sci-fi anime though with it's very typical "meet cute" premise at the start with it's main character of Arato Endou voiced by Takuto Yoshinaga meeting the hIE Lacia voiced by the aforementioned Nao Touyama, Beatless was MUCH more than that and really disguising that starting premise into an introspective lookat technology, AI, human fears of technology and societal pressures to conformity because of it in some sense as well. But these interesting elements takes some time for it to be established but the build up and tension is apt for Beatless to do, so really LA doesn't mind the pacing in this anime, it's the outside forces focuses on Beatless' pacing is something else but that a bit later.
Beatless in many ways takes Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" and both experiments with it's concepts as well as utter breaks it's rules concerning robotics. This considering Beatless' futuristic world where hIE's are mass produced working as either helpers or military might and Arato's world is one of those outlier people thinking that robots are more than just "objects or machines" for people to just use and through Arato's perspective we see Beatless' introspective look at robots are more than humans or not. So LA talked about what Beatless does with it's Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics", but breaking it's rules?...well the rules of Isaac Asimov did entail that the robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, that a robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law and finally a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law and those rule breakers comes from in the form of the special rogue hIE's trying to find masters for their sole purpose of disrupting the social order of robots and humans in the process in which Lacia, Methode, Snowdrop, Saturnus and Kouka are all set out to do, but Lacia, our main heroine has other motives and with the help of Arato tries to achieve this, this is what makes it a VERY interesting anime.
As much as LA said there isn't pacing issues with Beatless, Beatless "seems" like it dwindles screentime on mundane things from time to time and MANY people might seem so maybe just to have some random exposition of the hIE's and how they program like "analog hacking" and the sorts but as much as exposition in this anime is VERY HEAVY and subtle to say the least (it makes sense as this was adapted from a novel thus the heavy exposition), Beatless KNOWS it's world building as it's consistently slow paced nature and exposition heavy it is, Beatless' execution is thorough and self-introspective of Beatess own world. Because of this along with the simple but greatly built up premise Beatless had going for it, all things considered, Beatless' complicated plot DOES make a lot of sense in the grand scheme of things that again Beatless had lots of potential it had going for.
And if your thinking that the entire "meet cute" scenario of Lacia and Arato goes into a serious romantic subplot, well it does, but it really doesn't become the center focus of the anime at all, but more like it grows Lacia and Arato's relationship through all the trials and tribulations they go through to achieve their goal for the good of society. There are lots of shipping moments but their relationship feels strictly in the background unless needed with it's more serious major plotline that both are tied into.
So what made Beatless suffer soo much for Beatless to be a shaky anime and lose it's potential?...the recaps, and fine one recap episode is nothing to get annoyed by, but FOUR delays all spread throughout the early beginnings and halfway through the anime. Beatless was just plagued with delays as these four delays isn't enough, the "final arc" of Beatless has been delayed til September!. LA merely says this as Beatless had ALOT of plot twists and the such and for soo many delays and recaps leads to loss in traction and intensity of the plot it had ramped up, only for recaps to stop us in it's tracks and having to wait 2 weeks and the biggest one being that the final 4 episodes isn't coming out til after another season has passed in the time of writing this review...by then it's momentum died down. Sure maybe Beatless staff wanted to make it's finale perfect and for diomedea to keep it's consistent animation stable because of this and sure you can binge watch it again, but as a person who already knows what was going on, for it to stop when it was getting to great heights then kill off it's momentum is a major buzzkill to say the least. LA WILL watch the final 4 episodes as LA really liked where it was going but in terms of Beatless track record of delays this was something unprecedented in anime for LA that LA NEEDED to talk about.
Does this mean Beatless is unsalvageable because of it's constant delays?, no, as it's concept, strong world building and toying with Isaac Asimov's laws was greatly implemented in the form of anime along with interesting characters and plot doesn't discredit Beatless at all.
So into the element of Beatless itself...
The animation done by diomedea was actually pretty decent, from it's exotic character designs, futuristic yet urban city settings down pat along with HEY Beatless CAN do action scenes....well. LA will give diomedea props that it's animation was decently impressive to say the least with some less janky or derpy battles and though it's battles are mainly laserbeams or explosions, the action at the very least was fluid in some sense that it makes the battles decent animated as a result, but diomedea's strengths would definitely go to it's character designs. Overall Beatless' animation was decent at best and it's battles are a standard "slightly" above diomedea's norm though that isn't saying much.
Voice acting, well if you read LA's first statement of this review and Nao Touyama is in this and though she's mainly monotoned with some spurts of deadpan serious vocals injected into her role as Lacia. LA found Nao Touyama's performance.....ok. Beatless has alot of great voice actors under it's belt, with Sora Amamiya doing a brash vocally-type character as Methode, Kana Hanazawa as the genki type character, Misako Tomoka as Kouka as the rebel, no shit taking hIE and Hiromi Igarashi doing her typical loli-type character with an air of childish malice to her. Takuto Yoshinaga was voiced the main protagonist Arato did fine but really Beatless' voice cast was great all round with some playing against the type while some only going greater as their preferred strong character role. By default though Nao Touyama gets LA's MVP...LA's bias LA knows but....LA doesn't care!
Beatless maybe have been plagued with delays, it's heavy exposition got people out of it and away from the anime but for what Beatless had going for it, from Beatless' interesting concept of robots and AI and the talk of sentience with all this to it's interesting characters, decent animation from diomedea and a rather impressive voice cast, LA thinks Beatless DID deserve some backlash it got especially with it's delays but saying that Beatless is a terrible anime just because of that does not for LA, it's merely something of an excuse to make the anime look worse than it truly is and Beatless is much more than you realize in the long run. Beatless is introspective, it's detailed, it's many plot twists keeps you interested, it's character motivations and plans are interesting, it's world that Beatless built is interesting and it's basic premise turns that on it's head into something revolutionary for Beatless in terms of plot and it's characters.
Look as much as LA points out the faults in Beatless and trust LA, LA got angry at Beatless from time to time too, but Beatless is still a good anime about robots and what it entails of sentience and humans fit into all this, it's just plagued with it's delays and being exposition heavy.
LA will be waiting to see if the final arc of Beatless, Beatless: Final Stage and hope for a climactic finale with Lacia and Arato trying to reach their goal, but until then...LA will give Beatless a battered but hard earned "decent anime" status.
NeuroTypicalCure
In short: There are elements of genius in this anime, but it isn't well executed for most people's expectations of anime. It's worth watching and especially so for individuals that like to think about our future as a society and the problems we are going to face. More: You watch this anime for it's ideas mostly, anything else surrounding those ideas isn't so good. The anime is about the dilemma we face concerning our future with robots and AI, it uses unique ideas since most anime like this have one super AI trying to take over, where this one lets AI battle themselves and it makes for a moreinteresting story-backbone overall.
You'll definitely get triggered and ask yourself why they didn't just kill that person, and according to some abilities of the characters this whole story could've ended much sooner.. but i guess we can't have the perfect anime and we can only hope the creators can learn from their mistakes.
The concept of "analog hacking" is an interesting one, i wouldn't really have thought of something like this and would rather have envisioned a physical AI takeover like in most anime, it's thought provoking and i think they designed this anime to share their view, which is why they are adding three recap episodes.
This anime takes itself seriously, "Memeframe" was chosen because there is another definition for the word "meme" that fits the company name more than perfectly.
meme
noun
1.
an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.
2.
an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations.
LaLeLuLiLo
For many years people have thought and dreamt about the future of technology especially when it came to A.I. and robot, and what such things could possibly lead to. It is a topic that has been talked about in almost every medium from live action movies such as “Ex Machina” and “Her”, written stories such as “Dream of Electric Sheep” and “Have No Mouth but Must Scream”, video games like “Neir” and “Detroit”, and even other anime such as “Ghost in The Shell” and “time of eve”. This is by no means a comparison of other works, but rather that the topic has beenexpounded upon multiple times and multiple directions. Now enter this anime that is about finding essence within the material especially the sentient kind, and whether something like that can have a “heart” without having a heart and thus is beatless.
Beatless is set in some sort of future where A.I. and robots have advanced a long way with A.I.s, known as HIE, being a predominant part of society not only as private servants, but also being a part of the workforce as vendors, officers, and even idols. Of course with stories like this there is bound to be some conflict between the humans and the machines mostly with humans seeing them as nothing but tools that need no sympathy. However this is not true to our main protagonist because of kind personality is willing to help HIE’s despite the fact that they are machines. It’s a bit latter that through happenstance that he is saved from an attack by Lacia an HIE who becomes the heroine of the story. Lacia however is a special type of HIe who along with four other have escaped from a facility and are around and about the world. Arato is thus forced into a contract with Lacia in order to save his life and now both their lives are intertwined with one another.
While a decent start, the majority of the story just comes off as uneventful. There are of course components at play during the course of the story such as the introduction of the other advance HIE”s, other side characters, and other factions coming into play, but none of them really have that much weight to the story. They more so pass along the show with a bunch of screen time, but no depth that makes them engaging. What seems as important parts of the story are shafted in by long boring dialogue by uninteresting characters, and then shafted out. There are plot twist and character heel turns that are meant to come off as surprising but no matter how it tries to present it through its visuals and audio, it’s how the narrative unfolded that gives it the lack of gravitas. There’s also conflict that is sprung about in the show, but it’s more for the sake of adding a false sense of drama and tension to the show so that it can be entertaining since it wasn’t able to do that with its story and characters.
Speaking of characters, they are as paperthin and uninteresting as they come. Arato the main protagonist is the typical nice guy protagonist of the story who is strung about the plot through other characters. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if it weren’t for the fact that not much comes from his character than his affection for lacia. There are moments when it seems like his character will grow, but it’s just him continuing being a reactive character than a proactive one. Lacia, well there’s not a lot to say other than she cares about Arato. There’s more than it seems about her, but like i said the way it folds out has little weight to the story and just comes off a uneventful. There’s also Arato’s sister who is just there, and who serves no purpose to the story other than taking up a lot of the screen time. Every Other character and antagonists are also just as one-dimensional and boring as them and just play through the motions of the story, well except maybe one. Kouka is probably the best thing about this show not because of her complexity but rather her personality and the way she’s presented that gives the show a sort of cheesy vibe to it even if it’s short lived because it would better to be cheesy than boring.
Visually the show is baseline mediocrity and some decisions of the show do more harm than good to the show. When it comes to shows like this that there needs to be some way for the viewer to tell the difference between the humans and machines. It could be argued that they look to human to tell the difference, but it has been explicitly told that people can easily spot the difference and shown that people can easily tell and discriminate against them. There seemed to have been a moment that could have given the studio the benefit of the doubt if they used the cliche colorful eye and hair color to differentiate between humans and HIE since viewers have been used to almost everyone having colorful hair so only giving the HIE eccentric characteristic would have been a cheeky way to differentiate them. However that's quickly cast aside with the princess character having eccentric features and HIE having normal features, so there’s no real way to tell. The most they give to telling the difference is close up of lacia eyes and its visible circuitry and kouka with visible body lines. Everything else is just average with the background, animation, and character designs with only as much effort to at least be appealing to someone.
The audio for the show is good for the most part, i guess. The voice acting as a decent as it comes from most anime. Good performances from many of them but not much really stands out, the same for the sound effects. The soundtrack for the show is pretty good and has some variety to it. It doesn’t really elevate much for the scenes or characters (except kouka of course), and are just nice to listen to by themselves.
The production of the show seems to have been an utter mess because during the airing of the show there were about a handful of intermission/recap episodes. not sure how these merit into the quality of the show, but i think they are still worth talking about. There’s honestly no reason that a show should have so many recaps. It’s not like the show was that complex, maybe forgettable, but not complex and if it were their intentions than it comes off as patronizing. Maybe the other episodes weren’t finished and they used them to give them a chance to finish but then it just seems like terrible mismanagement and a lazy way to have something to at least show the audience. Or maybe it’s because they wanted that sweet 24 ep run time even though they had no content to make more. Nonetheless whether this did or didn’t affect the quality of the show it doesn’t change the fact of how bad the actual show is. However for me it does since the show just ends abruptly with the probable announcement of a sequel even though they could have used those 4 recap episodes to at least finish something.
Beatless is just a lightly bad show, not excruciating bad, but boring bad due to how uneventful it all pans out to be. It has a running thematic via a concept known as analog hack of how people give essence to a material but it quickly turns from being insightful to a means for a plot device, and not only that but much of the characters feel like plot devices as well. It’s a show that chose the worst types of tropes and archetypes to work with, and just stagnates on them with no hopes in development. With an ending that really leads to nowhere as it promises to deliver in a later installment although what has been already shown doesn’t bode well for it. There could have been good ideas in this show but it’s bogged down in almost every possible way to serve to some group of low common denominator and by horrendous management.
Kaze2508
Anyone said Darling in the Franxx, some Tokyo Ghoul season 2, some Boku Hero 3, or some Tada-kun,... but with me Beatless is the best!! With OP1 sung by Garnidelia, most dancing inspiration band, OP2 sung by TrySail, cutest singer of Jpop, ED1 sung by ClariS, my best Jpop couple singer and ED2 sung by Tokyo Performance Band, feel like under an area live, only the appearance of these four performs has made me confirm myself this is the best anime of two season XD Despite the fact that a lot problems while airing this anime, delay,... bad reviews,... I will still marked this asmy best anime ever due to the OST
mimimilk
You ever scroll down your anime list and your eyes catch on to a show that you remember watching but don't remember the story off? Beatless is that kind of show for me. Boy meets girl story with some action thrown in to spice things up and get the story moving, problem is the story is... dull and boring. I even somehow got this show mixed up in my head with guilty crown once because of how much this show does not stand out for me. What makes a show good is when they can create moments where viewers can feel at aweor amazed, moments where the audience gets drawn in and for even a second forget their soundings and get drowned by the art, sound, and characters in front of them.
Beatless, does not do these kinds of things for me personally.
Story - 4/10
Art - 5/10 Mediocre. Visually appealing, animation wise there are no real problems, nothing awful, yet nothing that really stood out.
Sound - 5/10 Same thing with art, nothing crazy going on her.
Character - 3/10 They are outright boring and dull. The side characters did not stand out at all. A story's bad guys are just as important as the hero's yet Beatless fails at creating mindful bad guys that stand out, they just fade away after their arc is over.
Enjoyment and Overall - 4/10 I stuck around till the end, and even afterwards wanted more because of how unsatisfied I was. When I spend time on something I expect to be given something in return. For a anime with such visual pleasing characters and art, they fail to deliver on a exciting story.
_Hentai_Prince_
*Might Contain Spoiler* well this story is something different, sci-fi with romance but in this way never thought this is even possible for human to love android, well of-course its possible if a human can understand a human than what the problem with a android. i don't know how many people watched this anime and how many of them able to understand it, well its same goes for me, i just like to clear it, i also didn't understood this anime completely but whatever i understood, its my view. (to use "machine" word, in my view it like im disrespecting the android in this anime and usingthe "he" and "she" instead of "It")
the story was little complicated and was hard to understand until you focus well i think not the story but explanation in anime, well i tried my hard to understand this one bcz this story really took my attention, a romance story between a android Lacia and a human Arato who are trying to change future where human and android (AI) can coexists. And in the last 4 episode in Beatless Final Stage the truth was revealed that it was the predicted future by the Higgins (S-AI), he was trying to save himself from his destruction in future and released the 5 AIs in order to change a future.
well sometime in anime i was lost but i still able to grasp the story :p
well i don't know this kind of future or this kind of world is possible or not but i think its possible to find the happiness in all this things.
and that's what was going on here Arato fall in love with Lacia even if she is android and he supported her. and Lacia the 40th S-AI tried her best to predict the future and others moves in order to make the ideal future they were thinking in order to coexist with humans. and as they move forward things got worse sometime but she still helped Arato, bcz it was the trust they had for each other that helped them to move forward.
in my view i think this anime is good example for humans to coexist with non-human beings if possible.
Story :
well basically i explained everything up there so not much left here to write but still like to point somethings well i said above that story was kind of hard to understand so it might be possible that many people have dropped this anime and the the many who completed it, they might will understand the story :D that what it actually trying to say :D and for that
9/10
Art :
not much to say in this part but they really did some work in art the OP songs scenes are really good and the art in anime is really good, animations were amazing. and not forget to mention the characters all were so good.
10/10
Sounds :
Sound were good, then the background sounds in anime and i also like the background sound of Snowdrop. And as for OP and ED , both OP songs are really good, i liked both OP songs than the ED songs.
10/10
Character :
There are so many characters in this anime but some of them left heavy impression on anime and one of them is Kouka i like this character but it doesnt mean that Lacia is left behind bcz Lacia is damm amazing she is be able to do so many things just by predicting what will happen next, dammm that's the S-AI for sure.
10/10
Enjoyment :
well as for enjoyment, what i enjoyed the most was both OP than, as for anime yes no doubt it was really good but some time i was feeling pissed bcz of his friend Kaidai Ryou who was interfering without knowing properly whats happening and why Lacia was doing those things.
by putting this aside i enjoyed rest of the anime.
9/10
Overall :
as for overall nothing much left to write but they could have made anime in a way in which it could be more understandable easily.
9/10
(i hope i didn't hurt anyone's feeling or their own view on this anime, as i told above this my view for anime i liked this anime mostly bcz of the Last some episodes of this anime.)
Gijszzz
Very underrated anime, the concept behind it is very overlooked by many and the story is actually quite emotional and tear jerking in my opinion. I highly disagree with the low rating this anime overall has. The story is really unique in its own way and doesnt really feel like it is comparable to something other i have seen. The art style is really well done and gives a certain dystopian/realistic feeling to it together with emptiness and also a really interresting emotion that folds with the way the story goes. I think again this anime is wrongly hated and looked down on because ofsome expectations some viewers may have had.
I-Arcius-I
This is a small review, to make you understand (more or less) if you should watch this particular anime. Rest assured, I will keep out as much stuff from the story as possible, so that I don't ruin the experience. So, let's begin. I personally would recommend this anime to people who want a story with a small amount of everything - drama, comedy, action, sci-fi, romance and bunch of other things too. It's well evened out and you can feel that there is a lot of time and effort put into this, but there is a problem, that I was having while watching this andthat is stretching the story too much, so if you want to watch this, note that it's not as emotionally and action packed as some anime. But just because the story stretched out, doesn't mean that it is a bad one, quite frankly I liked the characters a lot and just overall how the was story made. As for the characters, they were very well designed, representing different values and opinions on the world. But their personality wasn't the only thing was good about it, their appearance and tools (you might get the joke if you've watched it) that they use are thought through, as for each of them has a purpose. Though the characters are definitely not perfect, since some of them have flaws in the personality and mindset, making some scenes hard to watch since you know logically no one would do or be not able to understand something. What I'm trying to say is them being stupid beyond the amount of what they should be. Also, I would've liked a bit more romance from the MC and his companion, that would've made it a bit better and more alive. Otherwise don't have any problem, the artstyle in this one was great didn't lack anything to my eye.
So overall with some of the mistakes and flaws I would rate it 8.5/10, since it is a really good story, but I cannot dismiss some of the things in there hence final rating.
It has a really interesting plot and I guess the idea is to question ourselves what is to be human and if we should be scared of the AI (Artificial Inteligence) evolving to a point where it can decide by itself what is good and what is wrong. I personally think that just like we most likely were created and are a type of bioengineered tool, it wouldn't necessarily be much of a difference from them, just our body, but not our mind. But everyone has their own opinions so I digress.
Anyway, I hope this gave you some understanding of the story and I hope you like it!
mvhcmaniac
Overall: 6 This anime falls solidly under the category of "good but not that good." Its best attribute was its conceptual basis: the battle between both AI and humans with different ideas for their future. However the execution was pretty lackluster, with terrible pacing at times and a number of scenes that just fell flat. Story: 7 The concepts here aren't new or unique in any way; Chobits explored the issue of human-AI relationships over a decade and a half ago, and more recently a similar conflict was explored in Detroit: Become Human. However, Beatless combines this human-robot identity crisis with political and social issues to spina much more complex and nuanced web of clashing ideals. Instead of the usual dichotomous pro- and anti-bot factions duking it out, we get seven different AI's and at least seven more human factions engaged in both direct and indirect conflict. And while I do have some complaints about the execution, Beatless did a pretty good job of not being too confusing. Also, Arato's philosophy was refreshingly straightforward and a bit different from anything else I've seen in fiction.
My biggest complaint about the pacing is probably with regards to the relationship between Lacia and Arato. At some points, especially near the beginning and the end, new developments came in rapid-fire, while at other times it felt like it was becoming stagnant. The pacing was also pretty bad in terms of the appearances of Arato's two best buds, to the point where I lost track of who was who because I honestly just forgot that one of them existed by the time he showed up again.
Art: 6
There wasn't much special about the animation. I gave it a point above average because it had less noticeably bad CGI than most, and the use of colors and physical traits to make the different AIs very distinct was pretty good.
Sound: 5
An average soundtrack to me is one where you don't really remember anything about it, except for just a small number of times where it sounded a bit off from what was going off.
Character: 7
In order to keep track of 14+ different humans and AI with different ideals, the characters must be fairly well done so it's easy to distinguish between them and keep track of who's who. Beatless did a pretty good job with this. I also particularly liked Arato's character because of his unique stance on hIE's, which I can totally get behind. However, some of the supporting cast seemed pretty meaningless and superficial, especially Arato's and Kengo's sisters.
Enjoyment: 6
I found the anime just good enough to want to keep watching, but I never really got hooked. The first two episodes almost did, but just knowing that I'd have to sit through another 16 episodes to get anywhere was pretty off-putting.
curisuchan
This review includes the final stage of this series. First of all i'm reluctant to watch this Anime due to its low scores and some bad reviews however because i'm a fan of AI/Machine i still give it a shot because of its synopsis. Story: The story was all about artificial intelligent, which is great since we all know that the world is moving towards the directions of AI/Machine Learning/Cloud Computing and etc. Now for the story. The story was really unique in my own opinion; while this might not be the first anime to cover about AI, it's the only Anime i personally seewhich was able to tell its purpose to its viewers, of how corrupt humans can be in order to gained power in society. The Anime was also able to sent its message that sooner or later manual labor will cease to exist as machines are now capable of doing the same work as humans and to be more precise machines can finish all its task with given time as long as there's power running on it, not to mention its accuracy at its job. its also raises my awareness to question myself what makes humans differs from machines who doesn't have soul and heart? story is 10/10 for me.
Art: Nothing to say here Lacia is beautiful <3 i totally get why she become so popular in the society. 10/10
Sound: The sound were fantastic...nope its actually amazing. the lyrics of the song were really for this anime specially the opening 2 (truth) where one lyrics is "Humans are just a visible shape". 10/10
Enjoyment: As a person interested in AI/Machine learning i can pretty say that i enjoy this a lot, to the point i feel not contented of how short the episodes this Anime had.
Overall: Beatless was my cup of tea. so nothing to say here anymore 10/10
panagiotis1g
My teenage brother begged me to watch this so I spent a weekend marathoning it to make him happy and....my God, this was bad. Like really bad. There are a FEW interesting ideas in here like the legal and moral issues of AI not being able to take responsibility for their decisions, the effect on the worldwide economy as human labor becomes obsolete and a few others but they do nothing to make up for how much of a trainwreck this story is. The characters are boring, the villains are wildly inconsistent and the story makes little to no sense. The first episode was handled adequatelyenough that I came into this anime with moderate expectations but it was all downhill from there.
PixEFit
Jesus Christ this was a trash fire. Beatless is about the journey of a high school aged boy named Arato. Arato’s world takes place in the far future, where hyper realistic robots are common and prevalent. These robots are called hIE’s, and they’ve integrated themselves into normal life as servants. Arato treats these hIE’s as equals, falling in love with them at times. One night, Arato encounters an odd looking, powerful, hyper intelligent AI hIE holding a coffin that saves him from a car hacked to target humans. In exchange for saving him the hIE asks him to become her owner. As her owner, Aratois responsible for everything that she does. Therefore, he has to deal with those related to and enemy of his new hIE, named Lacia.
Now, that synopsis doesn’t sound that bad, but trust me when I say the show is much much worse. Female robots are nothing new, and a show based around them isn’t either. But me personally has had a bad experience with them, first with Chobits, which I found descent, second being the more recent Clockwork Planet, which was a complete shitshow. Looking through the Winter anime season, this anime is 26 episodes, I thought to give this type of robot girl show another chance. And with watching this show once a week for 6 months, it has ruined the genre for me.
So the main issue about Beatless is that it doesn’t make sense. The show has so many conflicting plot points that: 1. Just don’t work, and 2. Makes it so nothing is resolved, 3. It doesn’t even matter in the long run. In fact, there are so many things that don’t matter that they have to make not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 recap episodes. And I doubt that was done due to a confusing storyline. Because from a look of the show, they didn’t have a lot of budget to work on. Art and animation is severely underwhelming, along with a soundtrack that is only decent at best. Every single character is one dimensional, retarded, and make complete one eighties at random moments as the barely coherent demands.
Arato is the worse case here. He falls in love with Lacia, his robot, who has specified that she doesn’t have feelings. Yet, he goes to great lengths to protect her, even putting real human lives in danger. Although, the worst thing about this relationship they have forged, is that the show doesn’t depict this show as a good thing at all. It doesn’t give their relationship any good points. Beatless just shows them being together, nothing spectacular, but the length Arato goes to keep their relationship isn’t worth it. The conflict in the show doesn’t even come from their relationship, but only as a catalyst for more trouble to occur. The main troubles of the show come from those who are after Lacia, which include the government, a secret organization against hIE’s, and Lacia’s other models or “sisters”. Lacia’s sisters are a major part of the show, 5 of them including Lacia, and they all represent a different part of human progress. Weapons, evolution, etc. And the end point of the show is that they all try and make a different future, according to what their owner wants. This by far is the most interesting thing about the show, to bad it's covered by bad, well, everything.
This show has no redeeming factors. I cannot recommend this to anyone whether you like this type of show or not. I give this show a 1 out of 10. This has been PixEFit’s spoiler free, but not really review on Beatless.
ku4eto
Havent seen the original material (LN/Manga), so you can cut me some slack. Lets start with the good points. Art - 6: Its not really bad to be honest, it has some low quality productions, where you can see lots of still frames, or recycled ones, but overall its fair. The opening is where it shines the most, and some fight scenes. Sound - 6:It has decent sound tracks across the series, especially on few notable moments, during fights or in the last episode. Opening track is good, ending is good (although, not on my tastes). Have heard lots of recycled sounds though. Voice acting seems good enough to not annoy at least.
From here on, its only downhill.
Story - 4:
The idea is good on paper. I mean, humanity has advanced enough, to develop AI. The AIs are tasked with the development on humanity. Until they hit a wall, because after some certain accident, the humans became cautious of the AIs (looking at you, Skynet).
So, some years later, the accident is already in history books. A certain person from a certain organization, decides, humanity progress is bad, and they cant really do anything by themselves anymore. He orchestrates some stuff, in which, he lets some hIEs (human-like robots), on the loose.
They are really powerful, with different abilities. One of them is as well super-AI. They are tasked with different missions, all for the "good" of humanity (good, as in depending on point of view).
Aaaand then it meets the production of the anime.
The anime has aired 28 episodes. Can you guess, how many recaps are there, for those 2 and half seasons?
If your answer was between 0 and 2, well.... you are in for a big surprise. They are so many, that i lost count of them. I think they sit around 4, 5 or 6.
Yes, thats right! About 20-25% of the aired episodes, were recaps!
The pacing is really bad.
The story telling is jagged at some points, and the story progression is often forced, with lack of logic at certain moments - Character A, meets by accident Character B, which turns out to be also an owner of one of those super hIE robots, that are on the loose. Coincidentally, their mutual friend, Character C, ALSO is an owner of one of those.
Then, Character D, transfers into their school (who could have known, all of the people are high schoolers), and ALSO owns such a hIE robot.
Cliche-valanche.
Character - 2:
I havent seen so badly written and animated characters in a while.
Arato, the MC, is a wanna-be whimpy kid. Bullied kids today have more balls than him.
Then, we have one of his friends, an edgy wanna-be. A little more ballsy than him, but still a whimpy baby.
The 3rd friend, in that group, is a son of one of the most powerful hIE companies, who is knowledgable about stuff left and right. The brainiac of the group, and supposedly the most mature one in terms of mentality.
Everything else is to be considered as side characters (as humans i mean).
Lacia, is a robot, which is the 2nd MC, super-AI, which is a kinda of the "EVERYTHING IS GOING ACCORDING TO MY PLAN" cliche.
Not kinda, its like that actually.
Lots can be said about characters, character development, character design and such.
Most of it will be negative. If the story pacing wasn't bad enough to make you drop this from watching it, the characters will do it.
Enjoyment - 2:
With the above 2 poor marks, i don't see how i can enjoy this. If you read the reddit discussions, TONS of people dropped it even before the half of the first season (around ep 5-6-7).
Overall - 3:
The art and sound are the main saving grace to not give it 2 or 1.
If you are a masochist, who likes whiny, dumb, teenage main characters, who believe that friendship and love will save the world, then this is the right anime for you!
Otherwise, just do not bother.
ChiisaiInu
This show had so much potential. For those of you who watched Chobits in the past you will find the premise and story-line eerily familiar minus the awkward innuendo's every 3 minutes. The character artwork for the female characters is bright and vivid. That alone is what stood out for me. The story line as of episode 20 is somewhat unclear and rather like a lost puppy looking for what it wants to be. With a second season finale otw. I am hopeful the show may yet be saved. The MC: is your average MC... spineless, indecisive, and at times lacking common sense The Imouto: I didn'tmind so much as I get the feeling her character is the comic relief you need to keep you from asking why your still watching this show
The Heroine: Is a mixed bag. drawn to be extremely attractive(success IMO) however the premise she keeps stating is she has no emotions and yet seems to convey them over and over again if nothing else via body language. She also displays utter devotion to the MC at times defying her own coding and self preservation.
All in all I find this show to be 5 out of 10. It wasn't so horrible that I wont complete it, nor is their glaring issues with every episode. I find this to be on par with other run of the mill anime being produced in this decade. I find it enjoyable enough to watch, but not so much that I would recommend it to a friend
Lord_Valzin
Beatless it starts good then we get some problems. Some guy in anitnetwork thing helps his friend then he himself gets into a terrorist attack from an ai robot. There are 5 ai robots loose season 1, 4 are found and have owners, maybe next season has the other one found. This anime makes the robots as objects ( plain robots), main character makes them as more where you can love them like any other person, One guy makes it where you can just f it. Antinetwork just want to destroy it and memeframe makes them. Lacia waifu doing fashion. Some rapey rape rape alsoin anime. Just get one of the ai robots and just rape it was like an innuendo in the anime or was it just me.
Kahru says beatless is a parody anime from ghost in the shell and is a masterpiece. I haven't watched ghost in the shell, so I probably don't get it.
The music is the only good thing from this anime.
I watched this anime the 20 eps, will watch the final stage when I can and make the other review when I can. Anyway watched this when I had no wifi. Well there were like maybe 3 recaps, didn't like that.
The anime felt like I was watching it out of order at like around ep 10, in reality I didn't at all watch it out of order, I watched it in order. I hated that, there were a few flashbacks from one ep from end of ep to start of ep. Made it confusing we do get the other robots meeting there owners and some betrayal in this anime.
The fight scenes were pretty good tho.
If this was a joke anime, I would agree.
This anime was hurting my head at points, there were some decent parts that were laughs and the little sister was cute.
Story-5
Art-7
Sound-8
Character-6
Enjoyment-5
Overall-5 (yeah 5 don't add up, maybe 6, but it's a 5)
PyraXadon
Themes in a story are usually best when they're simple. A clear-cut message delivered to the audience does much better because this way, there's little reason for the quality of the story to be sacrificed in exchange for more complicated hullabaloo that for some reasons, some people believe is 'good writing'. All of that ironically comes in the form of the one word title of 'Beatless', where more than just a few 'beats' are missing when it comes to this one. Story: Beatless takes place in a version of the future where artificial intelligence units known as hIe's have become commonplace in society, working smaller jobs andmore dangerous jobs, slowly encroaching their foothold in the world as everything becomes more and more automated. It's here where our main protagonist, Arato Endo, comes in contact with Lacia, an hIe who is one of five special units that've escaped a special facility, and becomes her owner to help pave the way for humanity's future.
On the surface, Beatless is a show that touches upon the themes of AI usage as the world of Beatless grows ever more reliant on automated computers and the future of humanity as a whole, as different perspectives of how humanity should approach the first point come into play. But given the complexity of that sentence and the kinds of insinuation that could come from said sentence, what we end up getting is perhaps one of the most poorly structured shows in the history of the anime medium.
While the first episode seems to give the audience some semblance of what the show should be about, what ends up happening is the show adding on layers upon layers of various terms, situations, characters, organizations, and events that muddy what could've been a compelling piece on our society's growing reliance on technology, into something that's basically incomprehensible to your average viewer as as characters stand or sit around for ten or so minutes at a time info-dumping their debates with walls of text that for the most part have almost no relevance as to what's going on because it's all junk that doesn't really matter at the end.
This problem is catalyzed further from how the show jumps around from event to event, creating a numerous amount of unsolved plot threads that have you scratching your head at the characters' motivations, as well as unsolved plot points that after a given episode, will drop you into something else entirely in the next cause who needs closure to a confrontation when we should instead be focusing on what the imouto has been up to these past few episodes while tensions run high between differing points of view? That won't be jarring to the audience at all!
So many problems arise from situations like these, and this is one of the few cases where you expect the show to get worse and worse because by barely the halfway point, the show establishes that it basically can't tell a proper story. Hell, Diomedia KNEW that this show was overtly complicated, so much so that they have four recap episodes in between arcs to 'refresh' the audience on what just happened. You know you screwed up when you have to recap four times, and even with that, things STILL don't make much sense. What's worse is that the show isn't even over. There's a mini second season in the works to cap off the story, and the supposed finale doesn't really do anything to even build tension cause the shit just ends without a second thought.
Overview:
+ Interesting premise
- WAY too complicated
- Four recap episodes (Like seriously? Four?!)
- Horrendous pacing
- How in blazes is two cours not enough for this story?
Characters:
Endo Arato is a useless character. Described as a sympathetic 'nice guy' who treats the android hIe's like people, Arato for the majority ninety five percent of the series is just a figurehead for the show where things just happen around him. To his credit, it makes sense sort of why he is the show's figurehead, but the guy does almost nothing to impact that plot, so little that you could make Lacia's owner a cardboard cutout and no one would be able to tell the difference. This is because most of the series happens behind our protagonist's back, and he's more or less strung along for the ride that, while the show acknowledges it, still doesn't do him any favors cause he doesn't really develop, more so that just exist and change when see fit. He's not a character, and he actually feels more fake than the fake android waifu that he has accompanying him for the majority of the series.
Then there's Lacia, the actual protagonist that does something, but is never shown because why would we as the audience need to see ANYTHING happen when we can just be told that it happened? As one of the five Lacia-class hIe's, Lacia spends the majority of the show stringing along her owner to do shit according to her whims (even though he's supposed to be the owner), ultimately making a reveal towards the end of the series that surprises no one considering how little the MC actually contributes to the series and how much Lacia has to pull up the slack in order to create some kind of interest for what's happening. There are moments of her character in the beginning that do create the interesting dynamic of what her place as an android is in this world since Arato treats her like a human despite her being a tool for humanity, but there're so few and so close to the beginning that it's pretty negligible in the long run.
And of course, there's nothing else to note when it comes to the rest of this cast. Despite the main duo being far less that exemplary characters, they are by comparison so much better than everyone else that almost no one else is worth mentioning. True the show attempts to create different versions of what the ideal human society should be with the four other Lacia-class units and respective owners, but their reasoning and motivation for even pursuing the future that they want is so baseless that Arato somehow has the most solid foundation of the four 'owners' in the series. Not only that, but the show throws in so many different organizations with differing directions on how to handle the series's different situations that by the time you get understanding as to what everyone wants, you'll see that so many things lack reason that it's no wonder why the story flopped so hard. (Sure it could be a commentary on how people have differing opinions, but why do that here, damnit?)
Overview:
+ Lacia is at least somewhat interesting
- Too many perspectives
- MC is largely uninteresting
Art:
Diomedia's efforts to make Beatless look good was largely successful. At least color-wise. Closeups used in the show do have a nice and detailed sheen to them, but for the most part, if you're looking at the actual art and animation, there's nothing much to write home about.
However I will give the show due credit with its background, as many of the farther shots, especially mixed in with the bright color scheme do aid in making the show look a lot better than it otherwise should've. Diomedia's not a top contender for having overly pretty art, so seeing some nice quality stuff from them is a nice treat, even if the show itself suffers from poor story elements.
Sound:
Personally, I find anything other than GARNiDELiA's 'Error' to be subpar at best. This isn't really a gripe with any of the other songs, but it's just that Error stands out so much more than its partner ED and the second pair of OP and ED that I really can't make a fair analysis by comparison. I put this more on my bias with Error since it has such a catchy and unique beat to it whereas everything else sounds very samey despite them all being made by different artists. Which is a shame since they're good, but just not AS good.
Personal Enjoyment:
I've realized that I write one of four kinds of reviews. There're ones where I praise every aspect of the show, ones about shows that I like but point out flaws, those about shows I don't like but give the benefit of the doubt, then finally the ones where I sit down and sit down and systematically explain why almost every aspect of the show sucks and ask myself "Why did I watch this?" and "Why was this made?" Those are the most fun to write because after months of finding myself realizing that I made a wrong choice, I get vindication by writing something that absolutely guts every aspect of a show's being because it's amazing how something this bad could ever be put on TV or shown to the public.
I honestly have not gotten this mad at a show since Sousei no Omnyouji, and that was more than a year ago; every fiber of my being was yelling at the screen over how little sense everything in Beatless made. There were times when each episode felt like nothing was achieved, and those that seemed like things was progression had little to no explanation as to why things happened, creating a vicious cycle of never-ending bad storytelling that only got worse with time. Hell an android basically livestreamed herself commit property damage and commit suicide without any real context as to why any of that happened. The hell am I supposed to get from that?
As a result of this, I got no enjoyment from watching this series, agonizing through the walls of texts and debates over AI, humans, and what humanity is supposed to be, which is all a real shame considering I actually had hopes for the series once upon a time, and the beginning was enough to keep my interest for the show until it decided that the plot could only move through the use of the little sister's random impulses, and any kind of cohesive theme was thrown out the window for complex plot threads that get largely unfinished and are extremely unsatisfactory to watch. If you ask me, this is a show worth skipping. It's a show that tries to be about everything but ends up being about nothing, giving it no positive merit aside from wasted time because quite honestly, things just happen, and that is not good writing.
That aside, "Error" is one of my favorite OPs, which is ironic considering it comes from a show I despise.
