Fire. 10/10. Masterpiece.

The plot is insane. They managed to write a main character that’s genuinely a purely good guy, that isn’t philosophically bullshitting all the time about “if I did this it would make me bad”. He’s a real ass nigga that lives in the real world and deals with applied morality.

The characters are all cohesive characters, they have a psychological backstory that makes sense. None of them are shallow, except a couple where that is part of their character.

The anime is completely free of any structural issues usual in anime. It’s not poorly adapted from a bigger source, it’s perfectly and entirely adapted into a single cohesive series. It’s not broken up into seasons with plot points that line up with that cycle. It’s 74 episodes in a row, back to back. None of it is slow. By episode 4 you feel like you watched a whole first season. The entire lore is perfectly and properly paced throughout the series. You understand it all on the first watch and build a mental model as you go. You don’t need a explanation YouTube video after you finish. Its like one long ass 24 hour movie. The story ends. Its perfectly cohesive. They leave you a perfect idea of how the characters would continue on afterwards. You aren’t left to wonder.

From the plot and art style you’d expect it to be a horror or action series but it relies on neither. There isn’t much real suspense or action scenes. There isn’t even a whodunit style mystery, you know who is doing what, sometimes before it happens. The real mystery is what will happen next, and the characters psychological profiles are so well constructed that you probably could predict a lot of it yourself before the characters do.

The story is perfect and very compelling. The meta story is also perfect and compelling. The deeper messages are also perfectly understandable and make sense. Genuinely peak fiction. I did not even care it was in 480p or the older animation. There is a 1080p upscale of it too but no one seeds that shit so I just watched it 480 and it doesn’t matter. I never watch dubs and didn’t watch this one either, but from what I did hear it’s actually well dubbed too.

Its a classic for a reason. If you haven’t seen it you’re missing out.