Momentary Lily

This anime is the perfect example of unplugging and just enjoying it, which is why I enjoyed it overall despite its obvious flaws.

Story: 7.5/10

The beginning is so strange that it feels rushed, but as the episodes go by, we're introduced to small details that build a plot that starts to become evident around episode 7. While not excellent, it's pretty decent by Gohands standards. However, it ended inconclusively, which is disappointing. At least they tried to give it an interesting plot with the Wild Hunts, the disappearance of the human race, and the clones of our protagonists.

Characters: 8/10

We have a variety of different characters with ... distinct personalities, albeit very clichéd and shallow, but at least they wanted to give half of the main cast a modicum of development, which I appreciate.

Animation and Soundtrack: 7.5/10

In these aspects, the series is very decent, but there are some frames where its animation is used well. As for the soundtrack, this aspect is also generally good, nothing outstanding.

I could say that Momentary Lily is my guilty pleasure, so my rating would be 7/10.

Wow. Seriously wow. I personally find it amusing how this show received a far more positive reception than that of Hand Shakers. As someone who enjoyed the aforementioned "slop pile" (as it has been so cruelly dubbed by 90% of people blessed to have seen such a masterpiece) I really, really expected to enjoy this. I really tried. I just couldn't.

Story 5/10, This story is fairly "mysterious", at first all you really know if there are "Wild Hunts" which are machine-like monsters that have been going around erasing humans and causing the apocalypse. Now you know that, we have this group of 5 girls surviving ... in this derelict land who fight said monsters using "Andvari". What is an "Andvari" you ask? ...literally just a weapon. Weapons which remind one greatly of the very weapons wielded in the legendary Hand Shakers. Anyway, the group meet "Renge" an amnesiac who is also trying to survive in the wasteland and join forces. The story is a lot darker than you'd expect, but nothing that makes me say - oh, 100% worth a watch for being a tad bit surprising. Also, something that bugged me quite a bit, is the lack of male characters. This isn't bad necessarily... but of all the survivors they meet... none are male? I mean, I don't understand, surely some guy survived the erasure if all these other humans did? It just felt odd to be honest and it's a very minor complaint. NOW onto something far more important, the ending, this shows ending is such a bollocks arse-pull load of shit. If you've watched "Goodnight World", then yeah, you've seen the ending already.

Characters 5/10, they're fine to be real, I don't have much to say. All of them fit a trope, "gamer" chick, "airhead" big sis chick, "edgy" chick, "extrovert" chick, "fa- cooking" chick, "100% a blonde, but not actually blonde" chick. Now what's definitely going to make you want to put a centipede inside your ear and make you start counting back from 1000 by jumps of 7 is... the goddamn "battle cries", it's impossible to take this show seriously, they run into battle yelling ***KAPPOU*** and ***DON DON DON***, WTF! To further this point, in any "heartfelt" scene or whatever, they completely ruin it within seconds with the characters moods being way too joyous for the situation.

Music 5/10, it's fine, I really don't care for the music in this show this time around. W'z/ Hand Shakers had far better OSTs IMO.

Animation: 6/10, this is the only thing I consider above average about this show. But, what brings it down - the jiggle physics, I don't care what you say, this is not an "ecchi" (I'm jk, I know it doesn't go nearly far enough, but if people get to complain about the chain physics in Hand Shakers, I'm not going to let ts slide) why does the generic idiot big sis girl have a large rack that bounces all the damn time? How the hell am I going to be serious in a fight when that's happening?

Overall, 6/10, I'm being generous with the 6 - purely out of love for GoHands to be honest. This anime nearly put me to sleep several times and I had to work to finish it. If you want some generic action that'll put you to sleep, go for it, or... if you're just in need to see chicks fighting. Then it might be it for you.

Oh jeez what a mess. Momentary Lily has no clue what it wants to do and the result is a complete train wreck. Is this a generic monster of the week show? A generic CGDCT post apocalypse show? A generic sci fi show? A... cooking... show? Well it's technically all of these things at once but without any of the quality control required to make any of it work.

First things first, the visuals. I actually don't mind them and am able to appreciate GoHand's maximalist style for the most part. Although this is almost entirely in regards to the action sequences which, while they ... don't come anywhere close to the top brass, are interesting if anything else. In particular I enjoy the unique camera work and angling of shots, if it were paired with high quality art it would be quite satisfying. However, outside of the action the viewer is subjected to preset visuals which contrast against the character models to such a degree that it looks like they're navigating cheap green screen... despite being animation. Characters have to be in instant movement and so if t hey do much as breathe their entire body mass has to respond in kind. This is most blatant with Erika whose oversized boobs seem to be perpetually bouncing on a trampoline, for the less endowed this is shown through their hair which has the same level of jiggle physics.

The plot is just an absolute mess. For the first quarter you'll expect this to be a generic monster of the week show, maybe even less than generic as the aliens they fight against all look exactly the same and lack any defining characteristics. They must've gotten bored of this though because they suddenly spend the next half of the show on extremely generic slice of life before leading into a not even half baked twist conclusion that doesn't lead anywhere. Every episode more or less plays out the exact same and they seem to be chronically afraid of development (of both plot and character) so when they do decide to let something happen it completely lacks any impact. Every episode also features this weird chibi cooking segment which seems to be included entirely to fill episode time and nothing else. The benefit of an anime original story is that you're allowed full reign of control over the events of the show, meaning that you aren't limited by deciding how much of the plot you're allowed to adapt in order to create a cohesive story. The downside to this is that if your writing team clearly isn't capable of creating a complete story you end up with something like this where every episode ends up being filler or stuck to stereotypes, half assing the entire thing and wasting everyone's time. A story needs a plan and they clearly ran out of ideas past the third episode.

The lack of ideas is equally apparent in their characters as well. They can barely even be called characters as each of them are limited by one or two stock phrases based on their archetype. Renge technically has the most range of them all, she's shy, likes to cook and has amnesia. This at least frees her from not being limited to catchphrases every time she wants to communicate but she is also the one responsible for the episodic cooking segments so even she isn't free. For the rest of the cast it seems that they thought of a catchphrase for each of them and than designed the character after the fact. Yuri is a genki girl who says "don-don-don" all the time. Hina is a gamer who makes gamer references, mostly referring to energy drinks as "buffs." Sazanka honestly doesn't do anything but she makes proverbs every now and then. Erika starts every sentence with "onee-chan's pearl of wisdom" and has big boobs. Ayame is kind of a leader type and says "guilty" all the time as an attempt to be the world's most boring chuuni character. There's nothing else to any of these characters and they don't have any chemistry with each other either. The slice of life segments attempt to fix this by pairing them off and having heart to hearts with each other which reveal a shred of backstory but this doesn't add anything substantial to any of their relationships. It's impossible to care about any of them when every single one of their interactions plays out the same and the depth of their character is as deep as a drop of spit.

It's hard to find qualities of Momentary Lily to praise. If it had simply stuck to one of the many tropes it wanted to play out and ran it through until the end then it could have just been another slightly below average anime with maximalist visuals. However by creating something without a fully formed idea of what to do in the first place naturally the result is going to be a dumpster fire. Even in an era where CGDCT reigns supreme and demonstrates that you can get away without a concrete plot so long as you go all in on character relations they still fumble that element by forgetting to flesh out their cast beyond catchphrases and the most basic of backstories. Momentary Lily can't even be given the benefit of the doubt by assuming they simply aimed too high and came up short because they tried to do too much, because they didn't try to do anything with this in the first place. Disgraceful.