After being hit by a truck in the year 2014, Akira Natsume awakes to find himself inside a machine following a 16-year-long coma. As he adjusts to the new interface, he is greeted by police officer Minami Uezono and her android partner Alma. The pair shows Akira that his brain is contained inside a device called an EX-ARM—a weapon of mass destruction. Aboard an enemy smuggler ship, the three must escape using nothing but their ingenuity and combat skills.
While initially reluctant to fight, Akira soon recalls his brother's words from before the accident. The memory inspires him to take action, possessing Alma's body to fight his opponents using martial arts. Once Alma plugs him into one of the ship's ports, he discovers the devastating potential of his EX-ARM by effortlessly hacking and assuming control of the vessel.
Upon safely arriving back on land, Akira meets the other members of the EX-ARM Countermeasure Prevention Team, a police division working to mitigate the effects of EX-ARMs. Witnessing the atrocities committed by those who seek the power of EX-ARMs, he resolves to join the team and put an end to the terror caused by these weapons.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Comentários
IrrelevantGuy
"Ground-breaking." Ex-Arm is an anime that is largely misconceived. Look at all the people saying how godawful the writing and especially the animation is. However, they couldn't have been further from the truth. In reality, Ex-Arm is a visionary masterpiece with little to no flaws. Every single person involved with the anime's production was extremely passionate about it, and they put a monstrous amount of effort into making it incredibly profound and compelling. As a result, Ex-Arm has become the greatest Sci-Fi series of all time -- and possibly one of the greatest things mankind has ever created. PERIOD. ...... Now, let's get serious for a bit. Ex-Arm isoriginally a Sci-Fi manga written by HiRock and illustrated by Tonya Komi. Although not exactly amazing, the manga of Ex-Arm is actually quite entertaining from what I have seen myself. Along with good art, it offers some interesting concepts that are executed decently for the most part. The anime adaptation of Ex-Arm, on the other hand, is a completely different story.
The plot of Ex-Arm follows a high school student named Akira Natsume, who is dissatisfied for possessing no remarkable abilities and wants to change himself for the better. Unfortunately for him, though, luck doesn't seem to be on his side. One day while trying to save a girl from a group of delinquents, Akira is hit by a truck. But instead of dying, he wakes up to find out that 16 years have passed and he has turned into a mere brain stored inside a superweapon.
And then everything goes horribly wrong, if it hadn't already.
It's a no-brainer to say the main issue with Ex-Arm is rooted in its animation. After watching this anime, my standards for animation have become considerably low, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Ex-Arm has one of the most awful production quality I have ever seen in any piece of media, not only anime. Just show a clip or two to someone who hasn't heard of what it is, I guarantee you that they are going to think it's made as a joke. After all, looking at the animation, it's really hard to believe this was made with serious intentions.
Ex-Arm's CGI is spectacularly horrendous. It feels like the animators learned how to do CGI a few weeks ago and decided to experiment how much they had learned. And to be honest, it just might be true. Cars, trees, roads, buildings -- every single object of the show looks awfully made; some of them were most likely straight-up taken from stockphotos and other similar websites. Everything else seems like they were animated by a bunch of amateurs. Actually, never mind. Saying that would be underestimating actual amateurs. Ex-Arm is much worse than that.
I didn't know there could be bugs and glitches in anime, but Ex-Arm has proven me entirely wrong. Very bizarre bugs and glitches appear in the animation from time to time, and they are honestly a sight to behold. Unbelievably awkward zoom-ins and zoom-ups are a norm in the show -- they never serve any actual purpose. The shot transitions are a complete mess too; many of the sequences proceed without any sense of rationality whatsoever. And surprise, surprise! It is not the fault of the manga.
Action is the place where Ex-Arm reaches its peak. There are some shockingly hideous fight scenes in the show that break the laws of physics. The character movements are unnatural even when they are just walking or shaking their heads, but it becomes even worse when they are taking part in combat. The anime also likes to use fog and shaky cams a lot during the fight scenes for some reason, and it unsurprisingly looks horrible. Surprisingly though, the choreography isn't actually that bad, but why will it matter when everything else is completely unsalvageable?
The character designs are originally decent in the manga, but the anime downright butchers them. In particular, the 3D characters always look like they are having a stroke or something. As I mentioned earlier, their movements are unthinkably unnatural, and their faces are deprived of any kinds of emotion -- I get genuinely scared by looking at them sometimes. Occasionally, there are instances of attempting to convey emotions on the characters' faces, but it simply ends up looking even worse. And guess what? Even something as basic as lip flaps aren't animated properly.
Now, you might be thinking why I specifically said "the 3D characters". Well, because there are also some lovely looking 2D characters in this CGI anime, who continuously appear in the same scene as even lovelier looking 3D characters! How wonderful.
This inevitably brings up the question: What led to the creation of such a gargantuan disaster?
Apparently, the director of the anime, Yoshikatsu Kimura, is a live-action filmmaker who has never worked in anime before. Prior to being the director of Ex-Arm, he had no experience with animation at all, so this show was basically doomed right from the beginning. What's even more ludicrous, however, is that Kimura apparently refused to work with people who are actually experienced in anime, and decided to retain his previous team who didn't have any experience with working in anime either. In addition, he spent most of his budget hiring stuntmen just to shoot motion capture, and thus had very little money left to do everything else.
And as you would expect, a show that was doomed from the beginning somehow became even worse. Far, far worse.
This raises another question: How did this show get the green light to begin with? It baffles me to think that everyone was perfectly fine with putting it on TV. I just can't imagine that anyone with half a brain and properly functioning eyes thought it was good idea to air this crap. As we have already established, there is literally not a single thing about the animation that deserves any praise; it is objectively valueless. And still, a fair amount of money was spent (read: wasted) on making this show and it was released as an anime for thousands of other people to see. Bravo, Crunchyrolls!
Okay, we get it. The production is complete garbage. But what about the story? What about the characters? Of course, to nobody's surprise, Ex-Arm fails outstandingly there as well.
As I said before, the concept of the series is actually interesting. I honestly think it is a somewhat unique take on the Sci-Fi genre, and given proper directing and execution, it could have been turned into something actually good and interesting. But obviously, the anime doesn't have of that. Due to the budget's ludicrous misuse, major corners are cut in the storyboard, and "major" isn't nearly a strong enough word here. Simply put, the anime takes everything good about the manga and completely gets rid of it.
There is a detail in the manga that contributes to worldbuilding? Cut that out. There is an elaborate monologue that adds more depth to the character? Cut that out. There is a plot point or element that provides a better understanding of the story? Cut that out. There is a conversation between the characters that makes perfect sense? CUT. THAT. OUT. Make sure to cut as many corners as possible, even if it makes everything unbelievably stupid and nonsensical. We have to compensate for my brainless spending, you know?
There is barely anything in Ex-Arm that could genuinely be called "storytelling" or "narrative". It is one of those shows where a lot of things happen in every episode, but you don't have a single clue as to why and how they happen. Furthermore, it has some of the most mind-boggling plot twists I have ever seen in anime -- mind-boggling for how stupid and predictable they are. Honestly, if the standards for writing are this low, I might as well be one of the greatest authors to ever exist. Hell, probably an online story generator could write something far better than this. And I repeat, it is entirely the fault of the adaptation. The story actually makes sense in the manga. Million times more sense than the anime, at least.
Silence is powerful, but Ex-Arm takes that a bit too literally. Several action scenes, where something playing on the background is more than just necessary, are barren of any music. You can only hear the characters making awkward breathing and panting noises, and on two or three occasions even worse, there aren't any noises. Everything is left completely, utterly silent. No tune, no melody, no sound effect, no breathing -- no nothing whatsoever. Nothing but pure silence.
Again, breaking the laws of physics is apparently child's play for the characters of Ex-Arm.
The occasional sound effects and tracks used in the background are also meritless; saying they are "uninspired" and "unoriginal" would be using the words too lightly. The score is repetitive as hell; two or three tracks are played over and over again for the entirety of the show. The ending song is barely passable, but the opening song is awful and sounds like an amateur cover of a 2000s' boyband song (though I gotta admit that I kind of started liking it ironically after a while).
If there is one thing to praise Ex-Arm about, and I think it is quite literally the only thing, it will be the voice acting. Most voice actors of the show are actually very competent and have worked in various anime before, which is apparent through their performance. But as they say, you can't fix something that is already broken. And Ex-Arm is far more than broken; it is crumbled to the point of no return. So, despite the involvement of several talented seiyuu, there are more than hundreds of extremely awkward monologues and conversations due to the poor excuse of a script. Now imagine how many more there would be if there wasn't a cast of experienced voice actors.
In terms of enjoyment, I have a sort of love-hate relationship with Ex-Arm. Occasionally, I was laughing my ass off because of all the wrong reasons; at other times, I was contemplating suicide. Initially, everything about the show was so laughably bad that I had a great time watching it, but the "novelty" wore off very quickly. It took only 3 episodes for the anime to stop being funny for me, and it instead became very painful to watch. I might have even started losing my sanity at some point. At best, Ex-Arm is ironically funny; at worst, it's complete torture.
In a way, Ex-Arm is truly ground-breaking. It completely breaks the limit of how atrocious the production quality in anime can be, and will go down in history as a fantastic example of what you absolutely should NOT do while animating a piece. Ex-Arm lacks even the most fundamental aspects of animation that make animation, well, animation. Despite having a decent source material at hand, it consists of a storyline that is sheer nonsense and characters that rival cardboard cutouts in terms of dullness. It is irrefutable how marvelously bad it is.
At the end of the day, Ex-Arm is a disgrace for everyone. It's a disgrace for all the people who worked on it, it's a disgrace for all the people who spent money on it, it's a disgrace for the original creators who had to see their work get so badly butchered -- it's a monumental failure in every regard.
Calling Ex-Arm an anime is an insult to anime as a medium. It's just offensive. Utterly offensive.
Aluett
One of the best animes of 1994. The Artstyle is amazing it's like it was made by 4 interns in 1 night. You can really feel the hard work put into this thing with every frame meticulously animated to make it look like a masterpiece. If you like Attack On Titan, One Punch Man, The Promised Neverland, Overlord, Evangelion, and Naruto, you will love this movie. Ignore This: Unique story well rounded characters characrers reacted to the situation realistically characters were unusually strong/smart/stupid i liked the genere they had flaws i think people will like it/dislike it/why? Why-man dr. Stone/dr strange
big_shot_spamton
Ex-Arm is a masterpiece on par with literary works such as Skibidi Toilet and Monster School. The plot and setting is richly developed, and features extensive critique on what it means to be human, that puts Frankenstein to shame. The animation is flawless, and has finally hushed all the anti-CGI anime critics, who believe the medium is doomed to failure. The soundtrack is masterfully crafted and the choreography of the fight scenes is beautiful. I could not imagine how any show - nay, any literature - could possibly outdo Ex-Arm. Yeah nah this show is hot ass 10/10 made me laugh harder than any recent comedy
KANLen09
HELLO HELLO! I don't want to make it all the fake~~~ "Declaring war against all of the SF series around the world!"? More like declaring victory at being the WORST show ever to grace anime since Berserk 2016 and Gibiate, fuck, even RWBY Season 1 looks better than this fucking abomination. Here we go again, the battle for the "Best of the Best and Worst" of the season, and Winter 2021 proves it all one and the same. What is Wonder Egg Priority? What is Re:Zero? What EVEN is Attack on Titan? Nope...the best show of the season goes to Ex-Arm, the one and only show youSHOULD watch at the behest of everyone who deems those shows masterpieces! And who are we to thank for this project? Well, a studio production team that does C-grade live-action productions that NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM ever had an inkling of knowledge of how to make anime, making this modern abomination like the trash that it is. Plus, I'd like to take this time to segue and thank our great sponsor: Crunchyroll! You guys have done a SUPERB job at shooting yourselves on the foot once again, damn son! You and your originals sure know how to make modern classic masterpieces in the making! Not only are the people in the West complaining, but even people in Japan are deeming it as "令和史上最強のアニメが爆誕しました" (or The strongest anime in the history of Reiwa (Japan) was born). Man, have we as the audience of the anime community not have our pair of eyes wrecked to oblivion, or have companies strapped cash ready to slap them on our faces?
Heck, I'll just raise awareness through these videos (full credits to them):
"How Not To Make An Anime (What Went Wrong With Crunchyroll's EX-ARM) | Animator Spotlight" by The Canipa Effect
"There is NO precedent for Ex-Arm. They had the money to bring in well-known VAs and en entire stunt team, but it didn't make the show any better. NONE OF THIS WAS A FREAK ACCIDENT. You can't blame COVID for the whole thing. And the blame lies squarely on the leadership." - Canipa
"How The WORST Anime Ever Made Was Made | Ex-Arm" by Browntable
"So these people got a shit-ton of $$$, and that's...what they put out? That's disappointing to me. So yeah, that's Ex-Arm, and uh...THAT'S PAIN."
"EX-Arm: The "Best" Anime Ever Made" by Trash Taste
"I'm a complete noob and I've seen clips of it, but can you explain to me what Ex-Arm is in its totalness?" - CDawgVA
"It is...HILARIOUS (laughter)." - The Anime Man
"It is...an EXPERIENCE, I would say. So that I think we have literally got the Mass Effect: Andromeda releases of anime, if you know what I mean?" - Gigguk
"The HOTTEST EX-Quisite TRASH Anime of Winter 2021" by Mother's Basement
"This is the kind of violent mess that you just can't lO.Ok away from, angles so tangled they verge on non-euclidian. It LINGERS in your eye even after you pull your meat ones away, taunting you to imagine how ANY human being, could fuck ANYTHING up in this many ways, THIS BADLY at the same time. Even Gibiate and GoHands shows aren't physically pain to watch any more." - Geoff Thew, professional shitbag
To be fair, let's break this classic modern masterpiece in the making shall we?
Story (from Wikipedia/MAL, re-arranged in style, because I don't care):
"2014: Akira Natsume seems to almost have a phobia of electrical devices while also being very good at diagnosing them. He resolves to change himself for the better and get a girlfriend like his older brother did. But then suddenly, static Truck-kun sends him towards his death!
2030: A special policewoman Minami and her Android partner Alma retrieve and activate a highly advanced AI and superweapon called EX-ARM and put it into full control of their ship as a last resort. Turns out the AI is actually just Akira's brain!
There! Easy to diagnose isn't it? I feel pretty bad for both author HiRock and illustrator Komi Shinya, both these people DO NOT deserve to have their work translate into this disastrous atrocity, but at least the plot made made sense into yet another illustration of an post-apocalyptic time-travelling Isekai to stop evil from suppression of the world...in Sony Vegas Pro effects of culminating dark lightning balls and screen shaking effects. The story isn't bad, to be honest, in fact it's a decent one.
Characters:
Who gives a shit when characters aren't drawn and motion-captured very well? From Akira to Minami and everyone else, you have great VAs backing you up, but the stiff 3D just isn't enough to salvage your character performance! Mouth flaps up and down with no expression, it just honestly makes it dull to watch them get shocked and happy without some expression. What a shame.
Visual (Flight) Animation:
BE TRUTHFUL, you know what you came here for after watching the trailer (which is the OP itself). Never in the history of the 2020s have we seen the "Best of the Best" masterpieces of the opposite spectrum, and from Visual Flight to director Yoshikatsu Kimura and his "The Expendables" team that doesn't even know how to make an anime, from the homophobic same-sex kiss from poor CGI to 2D and 3DCG characters meshing in the same panels, piss off. You guys may have done some parts of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, but that doesn't mean that you have the right to say that y'all are given the greenlight to do something like this, what a waste of money that's spent badly.
Music: HELLO！HELLO！
Anime: HELP！HELP！
Honestly, this shit ROCKS HARD so much I'm banging my head with the music. Forget about Dizzy Sunfist's ED "Diamond Shine", I would like to coin the music on a diamond platter that says: When The OP Is Way Better Than The Anime Itself. Heck, checking out AIRFLIP's MV on YouTube, with each and every comment getting a heart surely means something, can it? CAN IT? So AIRFLIP, Rise Again and make your song well-known!
"They even got my favorite 2000's rockband. Blink-183" - Gigguk
If there is a takeaway from anyone AND everyone reading this hilariously dumb-fuck of a review, Canipa sums up well:
"If there's a lesson to be learnt from this, it's this: Executives and producers at these companies NEED to have a working understanding of how anime is made. And not just the process, but the conditions as well."
HELLO HELLO! We still fight together!
No matter how I'm feeling lonesomeness again~
HELLO HELLO! We stand together!
No matter how deep I am in sadness again~
My soul will not give up...because I'm still alive...TODAY!
HELLO HELLO...no more Crunchyroll Originals please. Sink into oblivion to those who funded this monstrosity. It's cancerous in the most hilarious way possible, and I've enjoyed my time here from start to finish.
grr_mal
A lot of people bash the CGI animation, but while it is somewhat bad I don't think it deserves as much flak as it's getting. There are obvious traces that the animators at least tried. There are cool and well animated movements or whole action scenes, there are well done facial expressions, and so on. But they just couldn't keep up for all 24 minutes of every episode. There are fair amount of stiff movements and faces too. Still, I think the animation deserves at worst a 4, with some moments even double that. It wasn't the kind of lazy CGI I've seen inother shows that deserves getting angry about. There are by far worse CGI examples - the most recent that comes to mind for example is "So I'm a spider, so what?".
Similarly, story wise it's not as bad as some people make it out to be. "Not great, not terrible" is a good way to put it. It falls in many annoying tropes, but depending on how accustomed and thus accepting of them you are it may get a score of 6 or 7. I think most of them are bearable, however, two annoyed me personally too much so I bring my score down to 4 on this front as well. First, the trope of hacking scenes as physical battles or programs as CGI creatures in cyberspace. Second, unexplained and unfinished aspects left as if on purpose, either for a potential continuation, read-the-manga lure, or maybe just because the author gave up.
I bump up my overall score to 5 to spite all the 1s it is getting just from people following a blind hate trend.
narwhaal
This is the prime example of what an anime should be. This anime single-handedly negates all other anime with only episode one. Crunchyroll really outdid themselves with this revolutionary, state of the art PS2 exclusive. Everytime the main character, amos, or aimer one of those, went on screen, I immediately start praising the name of this masterpiece. Truly something to behold. I particularly liked the scene where... Ah apologies I seem to have forgotten the scene. Anyway, this cartoon is really in a league of its own. I liked how they tried to incorporate this manga into real life by using realistic 3D modelling using photoshop. Studioslike MAPPA and Ufotable should be on their toes, there's a new GOAT in town. This sets a new standard for new webtoons alike and I cannot wait to see what other shows this novel will inspire. They weren't lying when they said they were declaring war on all Sci-Fi series around the world. This romantic harem show really showed those series whose the boss.
Now let me move on to the things that make this documentary as perfect as it is.
Thank you for reading my review on sex-arm.
StormcasterJudd
I watched Ex-Arm out of curiousity searching for the worst rated MAL titles. Initially, I gave it a 1/10 after 1 episode and dropped the show as I couldn't even look at the monstrosity of the animation quality and declared that this show would be the benchmark for a 1/10 entry, with completely horrendous animation. A few months later, I was clearing off my list of dropped entries and decided to just complete the entry, since for me it is better to regret watching something, rather than to regret not being able to watch the show, since I'm watching it on youtube under a licensed distributor'schannel for free (specifically: Muse Asia), not knowing if the license would expire someday and it might not be renewed. My FOMO basically got the better of me and I watched the remaining 11 episodes across a week.
As an anime-only viewer, I found that the plot is fine, it is an interesting take on the sci-fi genre using the classic good vs evil tropes, it's a fairly average show in this regard, it falls in the "I'll watch this once, rate it a 7/10 and then move on" category. While Ex-Arm might have terrible animation quality, there are signs that the animators actually put in effort to animate this, and learning that it is the studio's first animation project, I felt like I would make an exception and actually not criticize on the animation too much, despite the fact that some of the characters' animation and expressions clearly doesn't match the tone of the voice actor's dialogue.
Does Ex-Arm really deserves a 1/10 score?
If compared to other shows, I honestly felt for me to personally give 1/10 to Ex-Arm is the equivalent of hating on something without seeing the full picture before forming an opinion, it might look absolutely horrendous, but I personally don't think a 1/10 is justified. As at the point of writing, Ex-Arm has been rated by 44.3k users, while a total of 15.8k viewers have indicated that they have completed the show. This suggests that many of the viewers who dropped the show gave it a 1/10, with a staggering 29.0k votes coming from 1/10 itself, due to the poor animation that is difficult to watch.
Note: Mathematically, if 44.3k users rated the show and assuming all 15.8k users who completed it rated a 1/10, this still suggests that 13.2k viewers who are watching or dropped the show gave it a 1/10 score, which I don't think it is realistically possible at all, hence, it is assumed that a majority of the 1s came from viewers who dropped the show.
Conclusion:
Unfortunately, because the show looks a mess despite having a completely decent plot, I'd give it a 5/10. It may look horrendous, but I can feel that it was made with passion, the voice actors did a good job to convey the tone of what the story wanted to tell, it is just lacking on the animation aspects and it is very hard to overlook this aspect.
MICK92
If you're looking for an anime that makes you feel like you're playing a free-to-play smartphone game, then "Ex-Arm" might be the perfect choice for you! This anime takes you to a world where characters seem to have been intentionally drawn and animated poorly. Don't worry if you can't understand the plot, because even the characters don't seem to know it. Additionally, you can appreciate the lack of shadows and nuances that make objects and characters even more beautiful with that veil of perfection, angles, close-ups always and in any case with the same basic expression. In short, if you want an anime that makesyou say "wow, it looks like they drew and animated it in an hour", then "Ex-Arm" is the option for you!
But don't worry, because even though the animators seem to have used advanced technology only to create visual chaos, there is still something to appreciate in "Ex-Arm". For example, the fast-paced action will make you forget that the characters seem to have the same facial expressions in every scene, and the soundtrack will make you forget the lack of emotion from the characters. If you need a break from the visual confusion, you can always have fun laughing at the grotesque details of the backgrounds and animation, which are so evident that they seem to have been made specifically to become memes on the Internet. In short, if you're looking for a visual experience that leaves you feeling like you wasted your time, then "Ex-Arm" is the anime for you!
On a serious note, this anime is a clear example of how advanced technology is not enough to compensate for a confusing plot and flat characters (in the literal sense of the word). But if you want to see how an anime series can fall apart, then "Ex-Arm" is the anime to watch! In summary, if you want to see an anime that has the potential to become a classic of the "so bad it's good" genre, then "Ex-Arm" is the anime I recommend you watch. Otherwise, you could save your time and watch something else.
It really hurts the eyes to watch it!
The anime cannot be watched, so I give it a rating of 1, but if you want to have a laugh, watch a few clips.
Styx_Thistle
Can you believe this "anime" had abhorrent animation AND a Gainax ending? The story is okay, I suppose. It's interesting enough that I'm tempted to check out the manga. However, this experience has taught me how important basic animation is for executing a show. Everything about it was either too out of whack to interpret properly or it was so abominable you just burst out laughing. There were too likeable things about this show: the voice acting was good, and I would unironically jam to the soundtrack while doing homework or something. Also, the girls would have been likeable HAD THE ANIMATORS SHOWN THEM A GRAINOF RESPECT.
Furthermore, the pacing of this show is... not the best. It could have ended on episode 11, but then episode 12 happened for some reason. Like... why wasn't it brought in earlier? Why was all of that jammed into just 20 minutes? But, hey, I think DitF has a wonderfully crafted ending now so that's nice I guess.
I would rate this a 3 for the three things that were remotely likeable, but, as a writer, I can't imagine the sheer disappointment the mangaka must feel at the mere existence of this atrocity so a 3 would just be too generous. Unless you're in a phase where you randomly decide to do things ironically, there's no way to enjoy this. Even if you were drunk, you would miss all the subtitles and still just cringe at copyright-free explosion and smoke effects dotting the screen each episode. I reckon this could have has a fighting chance had it been made by a studio like Trigger or Madhouse, or something. It still wouldn't have been the next Eva, but it might have been enjoyable.
jalainix
the animation is quite interesting. the mix of low frame rate traditional drawings and cgi characters is understandably off putting, but like. it doesn't bother me much. the story is kinda all over the place. but, importantly it has a story, it has themes, it's trying to say something. now, i might be one of those broken people who prefers the likes of Neil Breen for /what they are saying/ better than literally anything disney/marvel/etc have made in the past 30 years. beautiful images empty espousing nothing. vapidity, my friends, we are beset on all sides by profound vapidity. unironically better than rwby.
shyverEve
This is the anime equivalent of a car crash and I have adored seeing the increasing casualties of the last 12 weeks. It's utter dogshit, and I hate it and love it simultaneously. You ever seen The Room? Yeah, think that but anime. That's what we're talking here; a display of utter incompetence that still has some sort of attempt at something in there that makes you wince, yet appreciate what little effort has shown. This is both a modern tragedy and a modern masterpiece. Truly, the human mind boggles at the mere concept of this anime; a relatively okay manga, turned part CG-part 2D,by a company with literally zero prior experience in either medium.
Story:
I can barely remember it. It sure was a string of tangentially related events, though. And they were pretty okay? Mostly because it had the decent source to go off of.
Art:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sound:
I think I heard more than I watched due to how much time my eyes were squeezing shut from violent distaste.
Character:
I love chesticles.
Enjoyment:
As previously stated, this was absolutely horrible to sit through, yet positively amazing to watch due to said horrific natures. I actually cannot believe it, but I am fully convicted in giving this a 10 for enjoyment.
Overall:
If you're extremely masochistic and like subjecting yourself to terrible media, such as the aforementioned classic The Room, watch this dumpster fire and take in all the fumes. If you don't hate yourself, steer well clear.
snoesk
I might call 'Big Order' as the worse anime ever aired, but Ex-Arm takes the cake, chews it, and spew it out to Big Order face. Before that, I wondered how this anime became the lowest rating of MAL? And I've already found it. I gave some tolerance for bad anime such as Samumenco, Queen's blade, or anything bad for me. But Ex-Arm is an exclusion that should be forgotten for its criminal, which should burn its corpse to ashes and spread their remains to the sea in hope they will never be remembered for their sins and existence. Seriously, this even can't be comparedwith 7-min Chinese 3d wuxia animation. Hell, what I'm thinking of? Well, I could compare them... If Ex-Arm was handled by Digital Frontier.
I've regret everything I've watch in Ex-Arm which made me grateful to watch Big Order to the end.
This is my 1st review and I apologize for my poor english, but I'm not apologize for my writing about Ex-Arm.
OffColfax
I have finally made it through EX-ARM. And I am not best pleased with the results. By now, you've all heard the basics, so I won't bore you with the plot summary. Part of that is because it is so bloody stupid as to defy logic, decency, common sense, and the causality of the universe. And part of it is because my brain cells are currently voting to unionize so that they have a stronger voice when the rest of me gets the stupid idea to watch shitty anime. I'll go ahead and get the elephant in the room out of the way: the visuals. In2021, there is no excuse for CGI to look this bad. Seriously. I know that this is a new studio with a rookie staff, but that is no excuse for this level of incompetence. The character models themselves weren't always hideous, but the way they moved definitely was. Games were released on the Sega Genesis that had better art and animation than this. Some might think that I am exaggerating for comedic effect here, but I am being completely serious. And if the production staff thinks that rolling back the clock 30 years is a good thing, then the least they could have done was manage it competently.
And if the visuals were bad, I daresay that the audio was slightly worse. The music barely registered outside of the opening and ending songs. The opening sounded like a garage band from Sapporo covering Blink-182 and the ending sounded like a 12 year old girl singing along in the shower to early No Doubt, but those were at least not fucking atrocious so I'll give them a pass. The voice acting was all over the place, with some of it being almost passable while the rest of it sounded like the sound producer was on vacation in Petropavlovsk during recording and heard everything through a Soviet-era landline connection. The sound effects seemed to be raw stock files from a scam website just hurriedly thrown in at the last minute. The inconsistency of the sound, at times even within the same scene, actually succeeded in making the visuals seem even worse.
And the writing... Oh gods, the script for this thing... It felt like a primary school play written in class as students just randomly shouted things as the teacher frantically tried to write them all down. I am surprised that the original mangaka hasn't come out to apologize publicly for this disaster, but there's probably a clause in the licensing contract that would cause a financial penalty if they tried. Gods know nobody is going to be rushing to the store to buy up the backvolumes after this lurid attempt at an advertisement, so they need all the yen they can get. The storyboarding was a mess. The dialogue was trash. The fight choreography got shoved off a bridge. The whole concept of continuity was run over by a train. Plot points were just left hanging in mid-air. It was such a hot mess that it made the sound seem even worse.
This was a failure in every single aspect. And we are all poorer because of it. Even people who never watched this show have suffered from it simply because of the fact that it exists. So we come now to the burning question. What was worse: EX-ARM or Gibiate? It is definite that both are dreck tier anime that barely deserve to be called anime. In my estimation, both are below even the worst put out by the infamously horrid Idea Factory productions. But as to the bottom of the list, I still have to give the lowest mark to Gibiate. For all its incompetence, EX-ARM at least tried to have something interesting for a few episodes before it all went to hell. Gibiate, on the other hand, couldn't even manage that. So the production staff of EX-ARM can at least take comfort in the fact that they have avoided being the absolute worst TV anime that I have ever seen. But they are in a very close second place.
Score: 1/10
Recommendation level: Concussing yourself with a black hole would be safer.
heyitsbeaky
Some say that Ex-Arm is one of the worst things to come out of anime since Berserk (2017) but I believe Ex-Arm is the pinacle of animation and is very good. Drugs, sex, betrayal... I'm kidding it sucks hard. Manga deserved better. AUTHOR deserved better. What do I even say, this anime is the reason why CG anime is super hated. The models look ugly especially for a few characters in later episodes. The only thing keeping this half-way decent is the OP theme which reeks of 4kids so you know. But everything else is bad! The after-effects and everything HORRIBLE. IT'S LITERALLY TAKING AFTER EFFECTSFROM AN EDITING SOFTWARE.
10/10
(3/10)
Shinokami_
In my opinion the character and story isn't that bad, the only problem were the production team that make it be worse than abomination. I've seen the manga and read it to the latest chapter and boy even the distant between heaven and earth it's just to short if I compare the anime and the manga. Honestly an apologize were not gonna fit anymore, the production, publisher, and those who funded it owe their soul and blood to the mangaka. Just read the manga and save your eyes from whatever this show really is. From the first to the last episode there wasn't even a singlemoment that make me amaze to what the show gave me, even if there is it's came from a question "what on mother earth they thinking to say this worth to air?"
Groenboys
There are so many wonderful ways to screw up an anime, and in the course of my time watching anime I have seen a lot of those ways. From anime that are completely ruined by weird directional choices, to anime that completely misunderstand how to tackle a subject, to the anime that are just plain boring. But Ex-Arm is new to me, because this anime was destined for failure since these words were uttered out: “What if we hired a director that has no experience in anime to make an anime?” Yoshikatsu Kimura is a director who has directed several low-budget actionmovies. Most of these movies range from mediocre to outright boring, but all of them at least have some impressive action scenes. Before the airing of Ex-Arm, Yoshikatsu seemed confident that he could make an anime, despite having no experience in anime whatsoever. He was so confident in fact that in the trailer of Ex-Arm he “declared war on all Sci-Fi series”, one of the many declarations of war this season. That enormous amount of confidence would come back to haunt Yoshikatsu, because Ex-Arm has now become the laughing stock of not just the anime community, but the anime industry as well. But if we look past all the weird facts, tweets trashing the show and the memes, how bad is Ex-Arm actually?
Ex-Arm follows Akira Natsume, a highschool student who dies in a car crash in 2014. Jump 16 years later, and Akira awakes in a robot brain in a post-apocalyptic society. He is awakened by Minami and her robot AI companion Elma. Akira discovers that he is in fact an Ex-Arm, a machine type which grants the user using its supernatural powers. The fact that Akira exists means he is a threat, but he and his new friends convince the Ex-Arm crew to let Akira join them to let Akira catch more Ex-Arms to prevent other criminals from using them.
For a story, it is honestly not that bad. The world is detailed well and every case the Ex-Arm crew tackles goes into a different part of this post-apocalyptic world. It has a nice sense of mystery and it has quite a lot of good ideas. But the story still has major problems. The powers of Akira and other ex-arms are often not that well explained, feeling like the ex-arms do either jack shit or are overpowered. The characters also don’t really help the story. Most of them are fine and the voice actors give waaay better performances then this anime deserves, but a lof of them feel very cookie cutter. The backstory they give don’t always make sense and the “secret” villain is especially annoying, even if his backstory is fine. Overall, the story aspect has interesting aspects, but it is boring most of the time. This isn’t even mentioning the fact that the story can be called uninspired in context of series like Ghost in the Shell. But honestly, it is really hard to focus on the story or the characters of this anime, because I am constantly distracted by what is in front of my eyes.
Ex-Arms' most infamous aspect is its animation, which is g o d a w f u l. This anime was made by a director who has never made anime before and. It. Shows. The anime is in CG, which is already a bad sign for many, but that doesn’t immediately make the anime look bad. Many anime have developed and improved CG in anime, like Houseki no Kuni and Beastars, but sadly Ex-Arm put CG in anime back to the stone age. The 3D models in Ex-Arm are terrible, with many only looking good from one angle. The animation on the models are laughable. When characters talk, they only move their jaw up and down. There is only one motion for talking, so when characters talk, they look like puppets. The environments aren’t incredibly empty and uninspired, but they are also 2D sometimes?
This brings me a major issue in the animation: Visual clash. This anime features 2D and 3D animation, which can look fine if it is highly stylised like Beastars, but in Ex-Arm it is not, so it ends up looking baffling. The 2D animation sucks by the way, barely any movement and the quality of lines range from fine to drawn on paint. This all isn’t even mentioning the action scenes, the weird visual effects, the inconsistent character animation, the fact that the anime hides moderately difficult things to animate off-screen or on-screen but with censoring, and the many, many bizarre animation mistakes. Ex-Arm is a visual cluster fuck that is hard to look away from.
Ex-Arm is an anime that perplexes me. Every episode there is some new animation fuck up I can’t believe. While its story is pretty boring, it is hard to focus on it with its entertainingly bad animation. I will admit that I had some fun with watching how bad this anime could get, but after this watch I will never watch it again. It is boring, uninspired, has one-dimensional characters and its animation is nothing short of baffing.
Ex-Arm is less of anime to be enjoyed, but an experience to learn from. It is a case study on what people can create when they get the budget but don’t have the necessary skills. It is a lesson on what you should not do while making an anime.
It is an anime that deserves its reputation of one of the worst anime of all time.
Plk_Lesiak
So, the worst rated serialized anime in history. It can't be that bad... Can it? To be honest, while I had absolute blast observing the bizarre trainwreck of Hand Shakers, Ex-Arm doesn't feel good to watch, outside of joining everyone in collectively taking a piss in Crunchyroll comments. The source manga seems very mediocre story-wise, but it has one thing going for it – it's pretty stylish and gives a decent amount of personality to its core characters. The anime just butchers it with eldritch, horrible, unfinished 3D amination blended with cheap 2D art in most eye-hurting ways imaginable. Broken and unfinished are generally the main points.Something like Hand Shakers can be appealing in the so-bad-it's-good way because it never had potential to be anything more, it's just hilariously awful at its core concepts and the horrendous execution is just a cherry on top. This, however, would be a campy, but very serviceable sci-fi show if not handled by a bunch of people with no understanding of animation and too stubborn to involve anyone with proper knowledge. All the money and time were just just squandered, in a way that isn't even very amusing to watch past the initial shock factor.
If you're curious, watch the first episode to get a good feel of the horribleness. It doesn't get any better or worse, so there's no reason to go any further. Maybe grab the manga and help the original authors a bit – whatever one might say about their work, the didn't deserve this disaster.
AduOtaku
Honestly I have no idea. Not sure what to make of the story as the visuals kept distracting me. Not sure why they thought of making some characters CGI while in the same scene as characters that are clearly not CGI. I actually liked the non-CGI character designs more as they were not too distracting. I can understand if used CGI for the more complex designs but this was too much. Characters were lifeless (eyes). Point of view was simply confusing. Quite janky. Figh scences were too much and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Mediocore story. Good Illustrations to be honest. Overallfelt like it was just not refined.
FlexySpagoot
Ex-Arm is special. I don't think I've ever seen more of a mess of a show. From the awful CGI to the story everything is bad. But I think that because of how much of a mess it is, I had a great time watching it. I think you should too, but bring some friends to laugh at it with you, makes the experience 10x better. First of all, I'm going to insult the CGI for a bit and then shut up about it- I have no idea how they got the CGI so wrong. All of the character's faces are only capable of conveying 3 emotions-neutral, mouth open, and mouth open with surprised eyes. The compositing sucks even more, with the characters constantly sticking out like a sore thumb. The models themselves look awful, and even have clipping glitches! Environments look bland and empty, and the fact that only the important characters are modeled makes it pretty easy to see who is going to have a lasting impact. Also the main villain looked soo stupid.
As far as the characters themselves go, they all kind of suck. The main character is the generic "good guy who is nice" character, which everybody is already familiar with. Alma, his robot companion, is a victim of what I like to call "Rei Syndrome," which causes the afflicted to have toned down emotions, which is usually fine, but in rare cases can cause the character to have no emotions at all. Alma is one of the rarer cases. Just because a character is an android does not mean they should have no personality and be boring, especially because this show has androids with personality in it. The rest of the characters can be summed up similarly, with cast members like "the guy who works for the government" and "scientist with boobs and lollipop."
The story is also a complete mess, with horrible pacing. Its never consistent, with the missions the characters go on vastly ranging in length. It makes everything feel disconnected and weird. Even with better pacing, the story would still suck because of how bad the writing is, the main villain comes out of left field in one of the last few episodes and is probably one of the worst villains ever. I could not take him seriously because of his stupid voice. Also, Akira has a sort of transformation-ey kind of thing where he unlocks his full power or whatever, but the government limits his access to his ability for safety reasons. The weird thing is, in order to unlock said powers, Alma has to get DNA confirmation from a police officer (which is always her partner, Minami), so whenever Akira wants to go crazy mode, these two girls have to kiss each other. Which is dumb, mainly because if Ex-Arm wanted to go they ecchi route, it should have commited harder. It ends up just feeling out of place the four times they do it. Characters are also kind of introduced randomly, like Ygg, who is some random Ai that shows up because she finds Akira hot. She just shows up randomly and is just kind of like "hi I'm here now." And then also the fact that she's a computer program ends up not mattering because in the next scene she gets a custom body made for her. Ok, I'm going to shut up about the story before I think of more things to say.
The music/sound design for this show sucks (with one exception). For starters, the OP is really bad, which is good because it sets your expectations right where they should be. Ambient or battle music during scenes is mostly non-existent, leaving the scenes feeling emptier and blander than they already were. The one saving grace for this show is the ED: "Diamonds Shine" which is unironically a song I really enjoy, and is by far the best part of the show.
The one other thing about Ex-Arm that I enjoy is the overall premise/setting. Some of the finer details are weird, like the UN setting up an autonomous zone in Japan and harboring some guy who commited genocide. But the overall cyberpunk aesthetic is fine, and the idea of there being these powerful Ex-Arms that science doesn't understand is cool. There is a world where instead of the Ex-Arm we got, with Kira being a weird computer god and saving the world from some random weirdo, we instead got a cool mystery police show set in this world. Following a more emotive Alma and her partner Minami, they would patrol the streets of Japan, trying to solve the recent surge in Ex-Arm related crimes.
This show would have worked 10x better as a mystery, I dare you to tell me otherwise.
So yeah, it sucks. Watch it with your friends when you're bored and want to have fun.
