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Note: There might be a little bit of spoilers in here. To sum it up: the visuals and atmosphere are great, but there is very little plot and characters in here, and what is in it, is a waste of time.
It’s interesting that this donghua even caught some attention, given that initially the premise was very vague, and it adapts a seemingly not that well known webcomic. I guess it has to do with it being easily available.
Well, aside from that, there’s the hook, two dudes go to an escape room and win it, for one of them, the protagonist, to have recurring visions of different escape rooms and the female owner of the place they went to, afterwards. Quite unusual, plus during the first three episodes the pacing is quite good, having the setup and a cliffhanger in the first, the resolution in the second, and a hint of the backdrop stories that connects all the characters in the third.
The visuals are also very good, nothing mind blowing but definitely way better than the average anime out there, especially modern ones. The artwork is very well done, it’s always consistent without quality drops whatsoever, very well made backgrounds despite being limited to the same places in the same city all the time, and a better use of lighting and shading than any anime out there these days. The special effects are also very good, and the CGI used in the show is mixed very well with the rest, compared to other anime, and donghua as well. Plus the visuals and directing during the hallucination parts are very good as well. The parts that stood out the most for me were the genuinely visually dark moments in the show, which nowadays I don’t find anywhere else, even in series that are supposed to have dark aesthetics. The minuses in this department have to do with how stiff the series is most of the time, and how simple the character designs are, the only character that stands out a little is the main girl, and only because of her dress, black and red like her hair and eyes respectively. When she appears with other clothes she blends within everyone else like the rest of the cast.
The sound department is also very good, very well made sound effects during both relaxing and intense moments and the soundtrack is pretty immersive. The opening fits the mysterious vibe from the initial episodes very well and the ending, although nothing special, is fine as well. I take out points here because of the voice acting, it feels very generic and without much variety in delivery among different scenes and events.
But that’s as far as the positives go for me.
Initially the series plays out as a suspenseful psychological thriller making the viewer guess why is this happening? Is it all just a dream? Is the protagonist going crazy? Did he fall in love with the woman? Is she a demon that bewitches all men as the rumors say? Is it that all Chinese men can’t stop having recurring thoughts about a woman they met for like an hour?
Well, let me tell you, from episode 4 to 13 and half of 14, X & Y is not a psychological thriller, is not suspenseful and it’s not a drama in the least. It’s a romcom about the two main characters teasing each other. You can forget about the setup because so does the show, as it becomes a lighthearted slice of life and romantic comedy series with no plot progression whatsoever that made it feel way longer than just a 16 episodes series of a runtime of 15 minutes per episode. Plus from that point the initial thrilling tone and atmosphere became weaker and weaker until disappearing almost completely. No wonder it ended up falling into obscurity once again.
Ok, sometimes a character would appear to yell at the protagonist to STAY AWAY FROM THAT WOMAN, SHE IS THE DEVIL is a most exaggerated and ridiculous way, only for that to lead to nothing. Ok, bad things keep happening to people that harass the main girl, as well as acquaintances of the main character, fuelling the initial suspicion. But that also leads to nothing happening in the end, a girl gets kidnapped and placed in an escape room for several episodes? Nothing happens to her in the end, it was all fake tension, the show just felt like wasting some episodes. Did a character die for harassing that other woman? It happens out of screen or you won’t see what ends up happening to the asshole.
They also keep bringing up how suspicious it is that the woman could build such a big and complex escape room place out of nowhere, but I don’t recall the show ever answering that.
Another big issue are the slice of life moments, which normally serve to at least flesh out the cast, but that doesn’t happen either. Everyone remains one note up until the last two and a half episodes. In the meantime they have the most unnatural interactions in a slice of life series ever, maybe the translation is to blame but seriously who talks like that? Even leaving the dialogues aside, there’s nothing to learn about this cast, they only appear in one place and they do the exact same things every time. Do you want to know more about the protagonist and what the heck is going on in his head? Well, too bad, he is amnesiac and he doesn’t get a clue about himself or the plot until the 14th episode out of 16, and the way he got that was so easy and simple you can’t help but think that it should have happened way earlier.
Anyways, once the answers are given, turns out there’s no supernatural stuff, and the protagonist isn’t losing his mind either, everything was a lie the whole time. To be fair, the reason behind all of this isn’t too bad, if the series was good, it could have been something like a mix between The Truman Show (minus the reality show aspect) and Memento or some shit. But there’s none of that here, and what ends up being the answer certainly isn’t very believable, in fact I dare to say it’s not at all, the characters shouldn’t interact the way they do at all, given their backdrop story, and it definitely didn’t mindfucked the protagonist nearly as much as it should have done, and it definitely didn’t need 16 episodes to show it, it could have been a short movie combining the first three episodes, very few scenes of the next ten, and then the last three. Either that but with better writing, or at least anticipate the outcome a bit for it to not feel as sudden as it was, plus it would have been more impactful and relevant for the protagonist. Ok, maybe if we track every escape room shown prior in the series we could find some hints, but I’m not doing that, and even if I did and they exist, I bet they are few, little, very easy to miss, and not really adding to the big picture nor highlighted in a way that might feel well written or directed. You would find more pausing the opening.
And you know what the worst thing about this show is? The ending is open and circular, and from what I read the series only adapts half the source material, which follows a similar pattern to end with, again, an open and circular ending.
Down to it, this is a show that promises a suspenseful psychological thriller early on, only to give Babylon vibes in a most exaggerated way, full of red herrings and fake tension, a dead pacing with barely any plot progression, a very inconsistent tone, some of the most unnatural interactions among characters ever in one of the emptiest slice of life series ever, no proper anticipation for the outcome, very nonsensical writing as a whole, disappointing resolutions, a story that essentially goes nowhere, and a complete waste of very good visuals, directing, sound, and atmosphere. I didn’t complete many donghua so far, but among those few, this is the worst of them all (but certainly not the worst one I ever checked out, that is Evil or Live, by far).
3/10
