Kimi to boku no saigo no sendžó, aruiwa sekai ga hadžimaru seisen - Season 1

Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World is yet another anime series with a storyline based on Romeo and Juliet and set in a strange fantasy world. Truth be told, it is easy to laugh at this anime series which is actually quite a shame. What is so bad about it? Well, for one thing, the way the main two protagonists randomly encounter each other again and again over and over is incredibly tiring. As soon as one of them goes off somewhere, you know that they are inevitably going to meet the other by sheer coincidence, and by the fifth time, it seems absolutely fucking stupid! I also think the motivations of the protagonists and the decisions they make resulting from those encounters just do not make any sense. One protagonist wants peace in the form of negotiations between opposing sides, however, instead of negotiating with someone who clearly has the same objectives and eagerly desires some sort of cooperation, he stubbornly refuses, and it is therefore incomprehensible to me how he realistically wants to achieve his objectives. In addition, there is some sort of cooperation at times, albeit accompanied by ridiculous assurances that it is just a temporary one-off deal and that they are actually still enemies (for the millionth time, it seems really moronic)... To make matters worse I just cannot take the bad guys seriously because they have stupid names like Kissing and Masked Lord (also known as Lord Mask in some of the credits, which reminds me of the Spaceballs character Dark Helmet)... Another thing I just do not get is Captain Mismis Klass, or rather I cannot imagine any militia where this girl could have become the commander of an elite assault unit... So, what is good about this show? The world it is set in may be charming, as the struggle between science and magic is an interesting subject matter, however, I cannot say that it is something that really works well. Likewise, the storyline could have been more interesting, because a lot of the major characters clearly have ulterior motives and are conspiring together, and occasionally there are some unexpected and interesting twists (I noticed two in the final episode, for example). However, it would have had to have moved away from the Shakespearean tragedy aspect and focused more on their plotting and scheming to have given it a deeper dimension. The fight scene animation is quite good and I did not even mind the CGI abomination that shows up at the very end so much, although there is still a lot of room for improvement. All in all, I cannot call this a decent enough anime series, nor can I say that I enjoyed it, however, on the other hand, I found a few things (story-wise) that helped me get through it, and maybe I might be able to watch the next season as an act of self-sacrifice. 4/10. (08.09.2023)