No meat on these bones.
Well, that was a hot mess. Quirky visual direction and style can’t paper over that this is a show that may have some ideas, but none of them entail what the show wants to be or where it wants to go. Well, maybe that isn’t completely true – in between all the frantic leaps around in time, it arises that at some point our male and female leads will part company, and will do so under somewhat acrimonious circumstances… but when I’ve barely met the pair to begin with and don’t care about either of them, well, who cares? We get a scene depicting their reunification after some years apart, but we haven’t even watched them truly pair off yet to begin with, so it falls completely flat.
The person I was watching with described it as like they’d taken bits and pieces of three episodes and smooshed them into one, with the end result that the pacing was atrocious. I’d add that the pacing also ensured I couldn’t grab a hold of anything at all.
On a different note, wow, damn, I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo bored of looking at underage breasts. If I have to keep looking at underage anime breasts, I might vomit from sheer boredom. (By the way, did you know that the Art Director for this show is also the Art Director for Valkyrie Drive? You can’t make this stuff up.) No, I don’t care that this is an “artsy” show. I don’t care that there’s ~effort~ put into it because, hey, we can see the lacy edge of her bra. I don’t care that it’s supposed to be part of a gag at one point since, lol, the heroine keeps her familiar in her cleavage! (When Maze~ The Megaburst of Space~ did this in the mid-90’s, it was already fairly long in the tooth as a joke.) I am just really bored of underage breasts.
I’m not ready to completely write it all off yet, although I’m deeply suspicious of the clashes in tone in this episode. I really loved UN-GO, so I’m hesitant to give up immediately… although I think were I watching it alone… well, had I been watching it alone, I wouldn’t have watched it in the first place since nothing about the premise or promo material intrigued me… Anyway, if I didn’t live with someone else who wants to watch the second episode, I wouldn’t ever get to watching it. I drop things remarkably easily. Comet Lucifer was bad, but at least it managed to maintain a consistent tone, had perfectly decent pacing, and had a clear storyline. This was the worst opening episode so far for me this season.
On the plus side, the ED has some pretty weird visuals.
GAR GAR Stegosaurus 
Interesting. I watched Concrete Revolutio and Comet Lucifer too, but I’m not interested in CL because I’m pretty sure I know exactly where it’s going, and I’m gonna keep on with CR because I have no idea WTF it’s going.
I ended up dropping both ultimately; I had to winnow the field a bit because I managed to pick up too much stuff. (Of course, if I hear really good things about either, I’d be willing to give them a second try.) I get what you mean, though.