Houseki no Kuni is the dullest anime Ive seen in a long time which is ironic considering the gemstone theme. This review will go over why I thought so and I hope you are able to understand my point of view. 640https://i.ur.com/VWlsd7c.jpg Before that though I want to take a little bit of time to praise the visuals. As you likely know by now Houseki no Kuni is a fully CG anime. It also happens to be far and above the bestlooking one and uses the medium to its advantage rather than just as a costsaving measure. The most obvious example of this is the characters hair which has a captivating translucency that seems perfect for CG. And during the action sequences the camera has these wild panning sweeping rotating motions to capture whats going on from every angle. They never go too far as to be sickeningly fast and add a lot of eye candy that would have been prohibitively expensive and timeconsuming with traditional animation. There are a lot of great shots of the environment as well. Everything is lush with greenery and the school they live in has an imposing hallowed sort of feel with its massive stone architecture. The only flaw in this sense is that since the events take place within such a small radius you end up seeing a lot of the same areas over and over. Nevertheless in general the shot composition is quite good. A few shots in particular stick in my mind like the scene in episode 7 when the gems go to sleep incidentally probably my favorite episode. And during calmer scenes the camera frequently is placed way behind any of the characters to show how small they are in comparison to the empty world theyre in. Overall its just quite welldone. Every other CG anime should take after this one. 640https://i.ur.com/RfPYSaq.jpg Unfortunately now we have to get to the aspects I didnt like. Visuals Wait didnt I like the visuals? Yeah but there are some definite improvements that could be made. The first is quite obviously the framerate. I must give credit to Houseki no Kuni for breaking new ground in the CG space and being the first CG anime to render everything at a barelywatchable framerate. This is a quantum leap from previous CG works which typically ran at about a silky smooth 3 FPS. But even if Houseki no Kuni has made strides in this department a barelywatchable framerate is still barely acceptable or perhaps not acceptable at all. I get it Japan buying rendering time is expensive but you need to hit a full actual 24 FPS. Anything less is too stuttery. If you cant afford it then delay the project five years until costs come down. Id gush over 60 or 120 FPS but I know that is never going to happen so I will settle for 24. Secondly its not a big problem while watching the show but its clear this is a product of a CG anime industry in its infancy. I mentioned the shot composition is often pretty great but just as often its on a bland shot of a field or two characters talking. As CG anime keeps getting better Im sure directors will find more and more interesting things to do with the camera during downtime. Finally the character design or rather lack thereof. Their heads and hair are different but thats it every character looks exactly the same from the neck down. A gangly CLAMPstyle body but with considerable hips each in the same drab black school uniform. 180https://i.ur.com/XKZLRWR.png Wow What Amazing and Unique character design Actually speaking of considerable hips that reminds me. Gender neutral characters 640https://i.ur.com/Xfb2mXd.png One of these things is not like the others one of these things doesnt belong I dont really care a whole lot one way or another but when I heard talk about there only being genderneutral characters I was a somewhat intrigued. So I was a little disappointed when I watched the show for myself and saw that for all intents and purposes every character was just a girl except for Kongou. They may only use male/neutral pronouns to refer to themselves and others but that doesnt really affect anything at all. This isnt really a complaint per se but the gender neutrality of the characters just seems like a gimmick to stimulate discussion and interest in the series rather than being of any consequence. Plot 640https://i.ur.com/k0gKodt.png Nothing happens. This is barely an exaggeration. For the first half of the show its Phos doing monsteroftheweek crap with a new buddy. Except its not even monster of the week since its basically just the Lunarians every time. Walk around get careless get attacked by Lunarians suddenly someone gem breaks everything is okay in the end. The developments are so inconsequential that if someone explained the plot of the first six episodes to you in three minutes you could go on to episode 7 without having really missed anything. The second half does have slightly more variety. In particular the winter scenes were a nice change of pace. Nevertheless just about all that happened was this isnt even my final form Phos. There are no subtleties here for any given episode you wouldnt miss out on much of anything by just reading the Wikipedia summary instead. Cinnabar 640https://i.ur.com/KSYzJaq.jpg I only mention Cinnabar separately from the rest because they are listed as a main character in the Anilist database. What a joke. They show up one minute per episode to mope then go back to their cave. Their inclusion is entirely pointless and only serves to act as some sort of anchoring point to pretend there is an arc between episodes 1 and 12. I guess this is enough of a segue to talk about the rest of the characters. Characters Every character but Phos is completely onenote and forgettable. Actually I take that back over half of them are zeronote. There simply are not any personalities its amazing how bland the characters are. Im reminded of the classic Phantom Menace review that challenges people to describe various characters without describing their appearance or role.https://youtu.be/FxKtZmQgxrI?t=413 I wonder how well people would fare with Housekis cast. We could add that you cant mention their hardness level either. 115https://i.ur.com/j3s50TS.png Euclase: Uh um which one was that again? 115https://i.ur.com/bHIGpzN.png Jade: Hm Uh normal I guess? Perhaps those two are a little unfair. Despite popping up fairly often throughout the series they arent very important characters after all. Although one wonders why you would bother having thirty introduced characters in the first place if only two or three are of any importance. 115https://i.ur.com/ppYWECF.jpg Amethyst: Theyre twins Wait we cant describe their role or whatever. Well theyre purple. Wait crap. 115https://i.ur.com/SmALaqY.jpg Kongou: Sleepy Yes sleepy. Kongou is definitely sleepy. You see my point. If you thought as hard as you could you might be able to come up with more than one adjective for Diamond or Antarcticite but thats about it. No one but Phos is of any interest. Phos 638https://i.ur.com/UrVugTi.png I made a mistake in the last section by implying Phos might be an interesting character. Minor spoilers: Halfway through the show Phos character changes drastically but I have a hard time accepting this as a character arc. Its more like theyre one character the first half and another character in the second. This change comes off as forced as if the author couldnt figure out how else to progress the story. The ending 640https://i.ur.com/yEcljig.jpg I wasnt invested in the show by the end anyway so I didnt care that much but prospective viewers should be aware that this anime has a nonending. I cant fault Houseki for that too much though as its just the realities that come with adapting an ongoing manga. Conclusion 640https://i.ur.com/YkDS5i7.jpg I suppose thats about all I wanted to say. Truly without meaning to offend I am not sure what people liked about this show. The OP was nice the music was very good the visuals were flawed but intriguing. Yet thats about it. I cant help but feel this got the attention it did primarily because it was CG rather than that being a detriment to its popularity. Ill end it off with a quote from mathemagicans review on MAL which sums up my feelings pretty well: A bland cast of characters fights a boring monster of the week that goes nowhere. How dull.