High-Rise Invasion

A battle royale anime has to reach for two completely opposite components if it wants to be successful and entertaining: either throw away the rules, we’re not playing around, employ some level 9000 kamikaze carnage, or instead dive deep and give it some psychology, a bit of mystery, color the characters, all at the expense of that river of blood. Sadly, High-Rise Invasion chose none of the above, falling right between the so-called halves and still having the unbelievable gall not to end it. The first two episodes were certainly the most interesting: the frightened protagonist runs away from bullets and bladed weapons so artfully that she's often left with nothing but her underwear (and her chest mysteriously grows from episode to episode), soaping it up, down (more like only down given how high up they are on skyscrapers) before figuring out how things are, what she can afford, and finding a couple of also-good-hearted lowlifes (the girls again mysteriously end up with bras only…). The plot then gets completely bogged down – now there's only walking instead of running, talking instead of doing (and that the characters are relatable and overly concerned), and the rules get flipped more than threads in a washing machine. For some reason, it gets doused with a canister of God, set on fire with fake masks, and fertilized with the weird format of The Matrix. The only notable positive is the relatively charismatic Sniper Mask character, voiced with the tailor-made voice of Yūichirō Umehara. Anyway, I'd cut the rest of it like those weird rope bridges. (22/03/2021)