EX-cuse me but how did this happen?
I’ll give EX-Arm one thing. It’s OP is one of the most honest you’ll see in anime. You know for damn sure what you’re getting into in after watching it. EX-Arm has a relatively simple, but interesting premise. A technophile gets psuedo-isekai’d into the future after an accident with a truck. Low and behold, he’s now a human brain trapped in some contraption known as an EX-Arm. EX-Arms are apparently highly advanced weapons created by some underground group, and after the combination of them all caused mass destruction in Tokyo, all users of them are hunted down. The anti-EX-Arm task force gets ahold of our protagonist and decide to use him and his newfound hacking/android possession abilities to aid in the search and recovery of other EX-Arms. Honestly, the idea isn’t that bad, at worse it should become a monster of the week type show as they hunt down all the pieces with some answer with how he ended up as a brain in a box. Sadly, the reality is far worse than that.
EX-Arm could be one of the worst animes I’ve ever seen. For one, its just ungodly boring. None of the action is interesting, all the characters are wooden and I could not care less about the main character. He could best be described as a person. The animation is also god awful. Apparently, no one told the animators that you need to do tweening, even with mo-cap. The result is characters moving stiffy, hilariously bad animation and characters who sometimes stare into the camera and never blink. They also mix in 2D characters with the 3D models and it looks like a 90’s point and click where the important items are colored differently. This is culminated by the fact that this show is a Crunchyroll original, meaning CR actually put some money into this trainwreck. From what I’ve read, the director had only ever worked in live action, as did his team, and boy does it show. Really the only bigger sin in this show is that the voice actor for Kazama Kiyru is the first villain and its a god damn shame he’s tainted by this work.
Is it trash? YES
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆