Exception

6.5/10 First things first, the animation is beautiful albeit a bit shaky at times. The original score is beautiful but the rest of the music was quite disappointing. This show definitely feels like a missed opportunity. The world building (both figurative and literal) is interesting and makes you want to know more about the back story. However, the main issue of this show is in its writing. The plot twists were either easily predictable or straight out of left field. The characters all seem very one dimensional apart for the one or two outliers whose character arcs evolve either too suddenly. Unfortunately, the exposition in the first few episodes made it seem like the writers felt the need to hold your hand for you to understand their concept. On top of that, most of the dialogue between the characters is simply not convincing enough to believe they are real (which is pretty ironic considering how the characters come to be). By the last episode, i didn't feel particularly attached to any of the characters. There were a few plot holes yes, but nothing that had a major impact on the show in my opinion. Watch it if you have some time to kill but don't expect to get your mind blown. One last thing i forgot to mention: the action sequences were laughably rigid and poorly choreographed but hey, that wasn't the point of this series.

This animated series is set aboard a spacecraft far from Earth. It travelled to its destination unmanned for reasons that are explained then its crew are created on a biological 3D printer. They are each copies of other people and their job will be to terraform a planet that will ultimately provide a new home for humanity. A solar flare during the printing process causes something to go wrong; one of the crew comes out as a monstrous creature that could be a threat to the others. That won't be the last problem they face. If you are looking for plenty of action and one story per episode you are likely to be disappointed but if you are looking for something more slow burn there is plenty to enjoy here. Inevitably there are some clichés but I still enjoyed the series. The character designs are very distinctive; at first I thought they were a bit too odd but they grew on me as the series progressed. The story provides some good tense moments well as twists that weren't too obvious. Overall I'd recommend this to sci-fi fans who also enjoy animated shows.

It's more of an arthouse film than an anime, and comes with all that that entails. In particular : It has draggingly slow pace. There are those typical drawn out arthouse camera shots of sometimes mundane scenes (eg. Of a person walking down a hallway) and sometimes aesthetic ones (eg. Planetary gases coalescing). Dialogue is focused on 'what it means to be human' rather than on moving the story along. And while that might seem compelling at times, it doesn't try to balance that with some actual plot development, and results in decisions that are nonsensical and out of character. It seems built to establish that hollow, empty feeling that arthouse often tends towards. I stopped after episode 3, because by then it seems pretty clear that it's not actually going anywhere.

Setting aside the waffling on about VERY basic moral and philosophical concepts, all of which have been sucked dry years ago, the story is just a giant series of exposition and infodumps which could easily have been implied instead of flat out stated by characters. Often times the series actually does both. One is left with the impression that the directors of this piece had a very low opinion of their audiences average intelligence. I personally find the contents of the story cliché, cheesy and promoting the wrong values, but that is just personal preference. What makes this series so hilariously bad is the execution of the storyline in the worst way possible: None of the characters truly behave in a consistent manner and they all clearly only serve as plot devices. This makes it dificult to perceive them as actual personalities. I guess this could have been done intentionally, as the entire series from its art style, the voice acting and all the way to the actual thoughts and ideas of its people feel very unnatural, forced and artificial. This theme is also developed a tiny bit durong the series, but while all the actual information is stated very plainly, this philosophical issue they have tried to tackle is severely underdeveloped. I get the value of art which makes you feel "negative" emotions when engaging with it, but I feel that the creators of this series have hit that uncanny valley where the concept works in the abstract and you can see what they are going for, but it ultimately just makes for a very annoying experience as it doesn't actually "click" the way it was supposed to. This might again just be personal preference though. If you like feeling detached, this might just be for you. All the sci-fi aspects of the series are also very badly written, leading to gaping plotholes and internal inconsistencies in the story itself. This is even the case without considering the "plan" of the antagonists, which is so hilariously bad and convoluted that it gives any rube goldberg machine a run for its money. I could have written everything this series was trying to tell me on a post-it note and I still would have managed to fit my shopping list on there. I'm still giving this a two star rating because one can see that some amount of effort and misguided vision went into this, and they at the very least tried to do something new and different. Sadly, that attempt failed in every single way, but I can still respect the vision& the effort.

If you can tolerate some predictable plotlines and cliche character behaviour, then you can watch it, because one of the good things about Exception is the symbolism and how it makes you question the worth of life and existing, and what you are ready to do for it. It was superb how so many beautiful parallels were drawn between the stuff we see and don't see being played out. The series has also many little details that are easy to miss out. The 3 first episodes seem to give away the direction the story will go, but slowly you're gonna realize that sometimes the scariest monster is within. Some little horror elements, but more on the psychology side. Soundtrack is okay, intro is great. Voice-acting(jap) could have been better.

Eco, eco, eco-terro.. forming. Fun graphics, not bad characters, twists in plot are good enough but plot itself was hurt by wish to show some actioooon, ma~an! So as stupid decisions. Without it it could be boring. Or more unique? Lets see. We have band of terraformers. They must prepare a planet for humanity. This mission is out of comission from the very start, you'll see why yourself, but all that plot stubbornly hangs on this fatality. What if it was not this case? What it could be instead? Aliens? Old story. Sudden magical intelligent dragonthingys in apparently techno-universe? Interesting, but also solid cliche. Peaceful travel without troubles? Booring. With troubles but smart ones? Possible. Harsh twists like fake travel or anything like this? Closer, tell me more. And pieces of that you may notice here. But just pieces. So - not bad, but could be better. Not enough imagination or..?

The anime "Exception" is exceptional -- exceptionally good, that is. I tend to think some of the reviewers were either not very perceptive or did not watch the full 8 episodes. Some of the things that annoyed me early on became fully explained as I came to understand the characters better later on. Music and animation -- especially the depiction of the characters -- are excellent. In some places the anime is derivative, but it is also very original in places. The two versions of the character Lewis make for an excellent central element of the story. Exception works well as a limited series, but it also leaves open many possibilities for a second season -- exploring what happens if and when the ship full of human colonists arrives, and the fate of the as yet undefined native species of the alien planet.

A crew of synthetic humans is tasked with terraforming an alien planet ahead of a slower colony ship. Sounds like an interesting science fiction premise, right? But then this plot is basically abandoned and replaced with some silly philosophical questions. The themes are a bit tedious if you've ever read any short stories by Philip K. Dick, but it's certainly watchable. The art is reasonably good. Sometimes it seems pretty detailed, and other times not so much. It looks like they were given a decent budget and made good use of it. It's definitely better than average for the stuff on Netflix. The animation itself was usually fine, but the frame rate occasionally made character movements seem unnatural. I remember once being abruptly snapped out of watching an episode because someone's movements seemed to fall into the uncanny valley. Character design is a bit odd. Each character has a color theme, like a blue uniform, blue hair, blue socks, blue blue blue. You know, I like blue quite a lot, but I sometimes wear other colors, too. It's an attention-getting stylistic choice but a bit perplexing, even for anime. For example, the blue characters sometimes seem to have blue-tinted skin, too. I'm not sure exactly why certain characters were blue-themed, but others were green. Maybe it was based on temperament or job? The plot is generally fine, and I liked it. However, it's likely that, at any given point in time, you'll already know the next two upcoming plot twists, which can make the show seem more slow-paced than it is. Unfortunately, the characters routinely overexplain their motivations or recite overt exposition to each other. The way everything is spoon-fed makes it seem like the dialogue wasn't written for an adult audience. There are a small handful of scenes with nudity that look like they were included solely for the reason of a check mark. However, on the positive side, all of the characters are adult scientists. Amazingly, there are no high school children in the entire show. It makes me feel a bit better about recommending this to other adults. So, if you're over 30, and you're not an obsessive anime fan, should you watch this? Sure, why not. If you're a science fiction fan, you'll probably be pretty forgiving of its flaws.

At first glance I almost didn't give this a chance. Then I started it. I was immediately turned off by the stiff ultra cheap imported animation that is generally and genuinely cold and boring. The difference in the art style and art deco themes made the animation easier to deal with but albeit slightly. As I progressed I became surprised by the story. In general it has several plots and subplots running throughout and some of the ideas are very fresh and welcoming. The writing is good and the voice acting is generally pretty good and somewhat convincing for a production like this on Netflix. It could have been awfulf but instead was very decent and kept my attention.

Yet another mediocre Netflix animation. It's fine. The art and character designs are beautiful. The concept is intriguing. The voice cast is also quite good. Tbh, it's all really quite alright. However, it leans heavily on tropes that have been played out for decades. Nearly every conversation feels like it's being had solely for the benefit of the audience. It rarely feels like characters are talking to eachother, merely acting as vessels for exposition. So much is stated that should really be common knowledge for anyone in such a universe. Not only that, but it will often be repeated several times to ensure that the audience misses nothing.