Concrete Revolutio - Episodes 01 & 02
I've heard nothing but good things about Concrete Revolutio, especially now everyone's doing their round ups of the year/season, including a couple of most intruiging comparisons to Watchmen. The first episode is a fun mess, it can't quite make it's mind up what it wants to do and gives you the bare minimum amount of backstory and information it can get away with. Not in a way that's confusing though, it all makes sense, in a way that just feels lacking and unsatisfying. The episode does however move at a fast pace with a fair amount of action.
The second episode is a lot better, but also feels enormously rushed; There's what's supposed to be a hugely emotional moment at the end, that kind of works, but would have worked a lot better if we'd just had more time with the parties involved, the rushed nature of the show is also not helped by the show's insistence on pointless non-linear storytelling that serves in the second episode only to make the show harder to follow and in the first episode seems only like a (failed) attempt to cover up for the fact the episode is missing half of it's second and third acts.
I like Fuurouta as a character, but they could have gone into his psychology a lot more and really delved into the betrayal he feels at the end of the episode and the episode, especially the emotional scene, would have probably worked a lot better as a result. As it is we only really have that one scene and maybe another scene if you read between the lines, so it feels cramped and unnatural, and the emotional scene would feel unearned if I didn't really like Fuurouta as a character. There's also the briefest attempt at some kind of metaphor (or at least I'm assuming it was meant to be a metaphor for something, not 100% sure what though) at the end, as the set-up to the emotional moment, however that scene felt hamfisted and massively rushed, and it's impact is definitely lessoned by the fact it's brought up about 3 minutes before the end and over in about 30 seconds.
For some reason the second episode reminded me of early Durarara!! episodes, I think it's partly to do with the set-up, with each episode telling a connected but mostly self-contained story from the perspective of a different character, but there was something tonally about Revolutio than reminded me of it as well. If it can keep that vibe up, I'll be very happy as the tonal shifts and changes in Durarara!!x2 really disappointed me. However, the visual styling still really annoys me, not as much as it did when I first tried it, but something about the show still just seems wrong to me and it's quite distracting.
If it can overcome it's rushed scattershot nature, this show could become something special. If it continues as is, I think it would still be enjoyable and recommendable, but I think there's the potential in these first few episodes for it to become a touchstone work that people regularly come back to, and I definitely get the impression that the show would benefit from rewatches.