Post here again after episode ten.
Okay-- mission accomplished.
Picard away...
I have to admit, the show shits the bed after episode 5.
I went into this like a fanboy; I thought that this was a sort of love letter to the anime masterpiece. And the anime IS a masterpiece; defining and refining the genre. So, I enjoyed the first few episodes as they (I thought) were trying to rekindle and, possibly, expand on the characters and world that Wantanabe built.
So it was, for me, like a star wars radio play. Or, like a Star trek comic book or like a Buckaroo banzai fan novel. Sure, those things can never recapture the thing-in-itself, but they keep the world alive (even if the attempts are sometimes sad and pathetic). A better example is what I stated before with "Star Trek Continues...)
But holy shit-- you guys were right. After episode 5 it completely loses any sense of a labor of love and becomes another self-serious, stupid, pretentious, over-budgeted, HOT MESS... And episodes 9 & 10 are fucking PAINFUL.
I should have stopped watching at episode 5 when I still believed it was a labor of love/respect.
Reminded me of how much I loved Netflix's "The Haunting of Hill House" only to have the memory of that completely fucked in the ass by their incomprehensible, slow, tedious and STUPID "Haunting of Bly Manor."
But I can't unwatch it now...