Review of Back Arrow

What a weird title. It combines a village pulled out of a western movie full of poor people pointing guns at someone the moment they step inside their place, an asian empire combining chinese and japanese aesthetics, another european like medieval kingdom, but all of them have advanced technology. Eventually the plot moves from yet another giant things battling each other behind a world sized wall with a dumb amnesiac protagonist voiced by Yuki Kaji and a centuries old prophecy about the end of the wolrd, to a multi layered political struggle between each country with backstabbing, alliances between former enemies, betrayals, crazy revelations, characters that don’t stay the same way as they began and change along the way while still retaining their basic concept and initial motives, and a main character that has to deals with his destructive powers, all of it presented with fast paced comedy and mecha action in a setting that keeps evolving adding mortal traps, a greek mythology hell like place and eventually going to space for an all out battle against demigods in a finale only akin to the 1984 OVA called “Birth”, it should be at least half as amazing as it sounds, but it isn’t.

Because it’s stupid, like, different levels of stupid. It’s like the creators were trying to make a serious show but weren’t serious about it. First of all it’s silly, it has a cringy comedy that you stop considering funny once you are over twelve, and that clashes a lot with the political struggle it’s going for. Also who the hell comes up with names like Back Arrow, Bruh and a country literally filled with pretty boys, even named after them.

Second, it has bad plot devices, an amnesiac protagonist doesn’t have a backdrop by default and although Back Arrow does get some development and internal struggle, the bad writing takes away all of that very easily. An end of the world prophecy in an advanced world like that? Really? It has some kind of twist, that gets resolved just as badly as the protagonist, well, because it concerns him as well. Mecha activated with imagination and own will like powers? Lame, and gets even worse when they try to give it a scientific explanation later on. A pink haired pacifist princess that never stops talking about the power of love uniting every country and being the explanation of everything in the world and its habitants. What other good show did I watch with a character like that? None. It’s even her own power to be a broken tank healer that takes damage and turns all that pain into healing magic. She also has a twist behind her and is as lame as it’s crazy, it has a silly background, and it doesn’t have nearly as much internal struggle as it should, which in turn is resolved very easily, or not, or does it? It keeps reappearing whenever there needs to be a conflict or an asspulled last moment save.

Third, there seems to be consequences for everything, which would be very cool, but they are resolved very easily, I can’t give proper examples with much details but let’s just say that for reasons the whole kingdom turns against the aforementioned princess, and even that is resolved very easily.

That probably has to do with another issue which is the erratic pacing, every episode has something important going on that contributes to the plot yet the first three have conflicts resolved in very stupid ways and most of them are jokes about a pantsu. Even leaving those aside, there are countries and characters that appear, seem to disappear and reappear again later on suppossedly to do something important, and they don’t, they turn out to be useless and not even do something at the end (again the fucking Pretty Boys country). Also the writing is just so bad, I can’t even count the amount of asspulls it has, the protagonist alone keeps pulling all kind of broken and convenient for the moment powers without even having the source of energy used in the show, eventually there’s a semi dark explanation for that which turns into dark powers that apparently is going to be a major conflict, and it’s resolved just because in about two episodes. And don’t get me started on Bit’s, Shu’s, and above everyone else, Zetsu’s powers, my God.

Oh, also the ships and mechas, they keep pulling spaceships and mechas out of nowhere. Oh, also the characters and the political bits, imagine ending a centuries long war in about two episodes of lame speeches and broken powers, or moving from loving someone to try to kill him and love him again in like, what, 5 episodes? As for the background stories only Shu and Kai has some good ones, the rest are hilarously ridiculous, imagine having shooting your own sister and princess because someone made you think a giant bird was haunting them as your backdrop, reason for exile, and eventually sacrifice in search of redemption, that’s pathetic man.

It’s not even very good as a spectacle, aside from the mecha being absolute bullshit, they look lame, who came up with these designs? Also they are suppossed to be an individual thing product of oneself’s inner state and yet I see two whole mass produced army of them battling against each other. Oh and there are also Zetsu and Shu’s Brightheights or whatever they are called (and more) but I won’t talk about them. These mecha are also made with fugly CGI and aside from the final battle they also move in very choppy ways, not very exciting as action isn’t it? As for the rest of the visuals, well, the setting is interesting enough and looks ok and the non cg effects look ok too, the character designs are recycled from previous works of the creators and constantly go off model on top of having a rather bad coloring, lowering the overall quality of the visual department as a whole.

I don’t have much to say about the sound, there are two openings and endings, none is particularly good, the background music is good enough, as are the sound effects, voice acting is effective albeit generic.

This was a mess, a very interesting one to follow for old timers for how crazy it is but otherwise still a mess in almost if not all aspects. During the same season of its second cour alone, Godzilla Singular Point was far more comitted in being a hard sci-fi series and SSSS.Dynazenon was a straightforward episodic tokusatsu mecha show with random power ups but far more meaningful and consistent characterization, they are far from great but even them kick the crap out of this, let alone older series such as the equally crazy Planet With and above all the modern classics such as Gurren Lagann being everything this series tries to be or Moribito handling its prophecy/fantasy/political aspects and character interactions far better.


3/10