[DreamSword]

I have now finished the core show of Ex-Aid, including the Lazer HBV and True Ending.

The Lazer HBV was just some goofy fun, and True Ending, while not great, I did enjoy for what it was. Especially its atmosphere.

As for the core show itself, well... it's fine. That's it. Just overall, fine. Not horrible, but not particularly great either. The biggest issue I had though was in its final act, which really wasn't a good time for me.

Because see, during the middle part of the show, where it basically became the Poppy and Parado Show, I actually got rather invested in a show that up until that point I was just kinda neutral on. But then, as the show has a good thing going, it gets completely overtaken by the arrival of Masamune Dan.

And I'll be honest, I find Masamune to be the worst written antagonist I've experienced in the franchise so far. Not only does he come in almost out of nowhere, but he gets a ton of freebies to keep him relevant to the plot and beat the cast repeatedly to the point that it got really frustrating. Masamune can't even program anything, yet he somehow makes Taddle Legacy?

He can delete anyone he wants with the press of a button(which is never followed up on), he can hoarde power-ups for himself(but doesn't do it for the longest time), he can teleport even when not transformed, he can reset the game, he can reprogram Gamedeus(even though he's not a programmer), the list just went on and on and made the entire arc really drag. And it's especially not helped in just how boring his character and personality are.

But it wasn't all bad though. While Parado ended up being my favorite character overall, the most surprising takeaway for me was actually Kuroto Dan. As someone watching Ex-Aid after having seen a bunch of Kuroto's' later series cameos, ontop of what little I knew of him from the fanbase, I was so surprised to see a character that was apparently just hammy acting and memes was actually a rather three dimensional character all throughout the show's' runtime. And I really dug that! It's a such a shame that there's so much of his character that just isn't followed up on.

In the end, unless the rest of the post show content ends up being really good for me, my final rating for Ex-Aid is a 2/6. That final act really does do alot to hurt it, but outside of that the show just never got past being thoroughly "okay" for me, with no real big emotional response from me to speak of.