Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28224025-20180803155658/@comment-4525039-20180808025943

Angelo Gabrini wrote: Based on episode titles episodes 22-23 will be vs Tonegawa Tousen

I've been thinking about this for a while, but on a serious note, why do you guys think Ares ended up like this? I haven't been following the series recently (haven't watched past episode 6 yet), but everyone was hyped before the anime and now after every episode I see complaints both here and on Japanese forums. Hino even gets complaints on his twitter My sympathetic answer for this is that they don't have the budget to deliver the high demands and promises that is expected for the new series. Animation have taken quite a downgrade and the story is sort of trying to rush to the finish here in order to fill the 24-26 episode slot as opposed to stretching it out like IE GO did. They tried to go big but could only make do with what they have. The worse offender is the two-episode split between Seishou vs Outei in tandium with Zeus vs Raimon where the latter was almost nearly ignored for the development of the former in order to speed things along to get into other story moments. Hopefully, that budget is used to make a good game at least.

My pessmistic answer is that this is simply has purely became an advertisement for the game. Hino doesn't care about the writing good characters any more and is going for the lowest common denominator in order to appeal whatever fans they have left. It's either this or he's just saving it for Season 2 in Inazuma Japan or whatever. I also think it's kind of a mistake to set Ares so close to the original season while giving new characters the protagonist status as opposed to continuing Endou's adventure even if this isn't his universe. It really risks alienating fans in that regards especially when they are the opponents this time around. GO, say what you will, at least treat the older characters with respect and dignity as well as giving a time-gap to justifly the new protagonist status.

I still enjoy Ares on a subjective level because my personal standards are low, but objectively, it doesn't live up to the demands expected from everyone else.