Psyren

Episode 5

I can't lie: when Psyren got hit with a sudden recap episode last week, I was fearing the worst going into this one. The good news is that at least for now, what we got here wasn't anywhere near as much of a disaster as I was dreading. While it would be a lie to say this episode looked good by any stretch of the imagination, it did look functional, which is a lot more than I was expecting going in. I'm no longer particularly optimistic that the show will be able to continue managing that, but for the moment I'll take it looking mediocre over having it actively melting on screen.

It's a good thing the meltdown scenario didn't happen, because this is probably the most action intensive episode we've had so far. After getting warped back into Psyren, it doesn't take long for Ageha and the others to find themselves in danger as the area of Psyren they've been sent to is crawling with giant worms looking to make a meal out of them. To make matters worse, most of the new players they've ended up with choose to ignore Sakurako's warnings about what kind of world Psyren is, and quickly end up dying because of it. The only ones who manage to make it out in One Piece are Oboro, who quickly proves himself too stupid to live by ignoring most of Ageha's warnings out of pride, and Kabuto who is also too stupid to live, but is girl crazy enough not to follow the rest to their doom. Neither of these two make a great first impression, and they only end up becoming more of a burden when they get hit with their PSI awakening fevers at the worst possible time, leaving the others with extra bodies to look after.

In between all this, they find themselves being attacked by a mysterious gunman who turns out to be Hiryu's missing friend Tatsuo. While this isn't the first time he's been mentioned, the execution of this twist isn't delivered with a ton of fanfare. It's nice that it is at least accompanied by a brief flashback showing how they got separated, but much like the production quality of the episode, the flashback just feels merely functional more than anything else, and doesn't really do much to make you feel for either character. Thankfully this situation does result in a decent bit of action when Sakurako takes it upon herself to defend everyone from Tatsuo, and it is probably the best the show has looked so far. Again, it doesn't look great by any means, and there's some usage of motion blurring and speed lines, but Sakurako does at least get to actually move around a bit, along with getting a few action smears. Considering how long I've been clamoring to see this series adapted it's pretty depressing that this is where the bar is at, but I've made peace with the fact that this adaptation is likely to remain subpar, and I'd rather not flood these reviews with walls of text about how janky it looks. Unless a miracle happens, all I can hope for at this stage is that this show manages to hold together well enough to avoid becoming this season's punching bag for bad animation. I wish I could still muster some lingering enthusiasm for seeing how the rest of this adaptation pans out, but right now, all I can feel towards it is apathy.

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Psyren is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.