Here at Honey’s Anime, dropping anime is a rarity for numerous reasons. Our ideology is that anime is a form of art and even the worst art has some form of value. However, with more and more seasonal anime airing, even us busy bees have to make tough choices on what anime we wish to cover and what anime we feel is just not worth our precious time. Case in point, Scarlet Nexus by studio Sunrise should have been a noteworthy action anime as it comes from reputable Sunrise—Gundam and numerous other great anime—but ended up being a truly meh anime for a multitude of reasons. Here is Why We’re Dropping Scarlet Nexus and reasons you might want to as well.
That Boring Story Doesn’t Change
Scarlet Nexus has an interesting world that mixes sci-fi themes with action but the story doesn’t ever do anything with those genres. The idea of teens fighting aliens isn’t anything special and even with the few “twists” the series pulls off--like when early on we learn Others can be from humans via transformation--, Scarlet Nexus never rises beyond being an okay story. Maybe if Scarlet Nexus expanded its world and added more human drama, the tale would be more gut wrenching when people died or changed. Unfortunately, even after a dozen episodes we still weren’t wowed by the main cast—Yuito Sumeragi and Kasane Randall—and we doubt many of you will either.
The Game Is Way Better
Maybe because you become one of the two main heroes, the game Scarlet Nexus is based on is considerably more enjoyable. Hacking through hordes of Others—the name for the aliens—is addicting and fluid. Watching the anime do the same is repetitive and mind-numbing. Even the bigger boss-like battles mimicked in the anime from the game are so lackluster in comparison! We recommend playing Scarlet Nexus any day in comparison to watching the series.
Those Visuals Never Improve
We did our first impressions of Scarlet Nexus a while ago—which you should totally read—and mentioned the visuals being one of the weaker elements of the show. At times, Scarlet Nexus has some impressive fight scenes with some solid animation but then there are lazier moments that look downright pathetic. We expect a lot more from animation in 2021 and Scarlet Nexus clearly missed that mark.
No Character Development at All
There are times where Yuito’s past seems like it would create some interesting character development but he never pulls away from being the cliché main character trying to be a hero. The same with Kasane who is just tough with little to no reason for being tough. Scarlet Nexus has two main heroes who are so simple and plain it's laughable. Our hope was these characters would change as they lost teammates and learned the truth about the Others but it never happens and we really don’t want to stick around to see if change occurs in future episodes.
Final Thoughts
Scarlet Nexus had potential and a lot of advertisement going behind it. Unlike most anime, Scarlet Nexus was given two episode releases when teh game came out and we were in awe of how much Sunrise and Funimation—as well as Bandai Namco—were doing to push this series out there to the masses. Sadly, the end result was an overly simple story with bland animation, weak character development and a truly cliché narrative that has been seen before in hundreds of other sci-fi shows. Scarlet Nexus should be given a chance but don’t feel bad if you end up dropping the series like we did.
What are your opinions on Scarlet Nexus? Do you love the series or did you also drop it? Feel free to comment below to let us know your thoughts! For more coverage of various anime be sure to keep stuck to our awesome hive here at Honey’s Anime!
Author: Aaron
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