Most of my exposure with anime was whatever was on Toonami and Adult Swim in the 2000s. I've not watched stuff like, Ghost In The Shell, Cowboy Bebop (only disjointed episodes out of order), Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I know are highly regarded.
I've seen just about every Miyazaki movie at this point. I've seen Akeria.
I'm sure there's more mainstream shows and non mainstream shows that I'm missing and would enjoy.
Thoughts?
Yeah, like those soft surreal fantasy landscapes are absolutely on point, and then it's like the story does everything it can to just skip past it so it can revel in this consequence-free torture and exploitation of Riko, or get hyper focused on revolting ancap frenworld monsters for an entire season. The basic concept isn't unsalvageable, but imo it would have required fixing the pacing, aging up all the characters, giving the characters actual progression both good and bad, and cutting a lot of the grossest and most clearly-the-author-is-getting-off-on-this shit.
Although even aesthetically I can't shake the feeling that it's really derivative and generic, but I can't point to what it's drawing on. Maybe just the general sort of surreal fantasy art that would make it into stuff like Heavy Metal or get used as pulp covers in the 70s and 80s.
I think it is encapsulating the early ps2 era vibes pretty perfectly. There is a specific era of cozy adventure type stuff I am picturing.