superborb

tl;dr Loved the mythology + worldbuilding, felt it could use a thorough edit and more polishing to really shine

The premise: Alexandra Trese protects humanity from the supernatural (drawn from Filipino folklore), struggling to maintain the accords her father maintained with the creatures of the underworld. Starts out crime-solving mystery, culminates in a Big Bad style ending. 6 episodes of ~30 min, animated.

The mythology and setting were superb-- and indeed, what everyone's been praising. I'll defer to Filipino friends who have said that it feels accurate etc, but watching with little knowledge still let me feel immersed in the worldbuilding.

I also thought the characters were generally interesting, though the emotional storyline was strongly centered around Alexandra. With only ~3 h of runtime, that's fully to be expected. I guess it's also blending a bit into the worldbuilding, that the most interesting characters were the supernatural ones-- the Emissary was excellent. Though uh, Alexandra really liked to threaten her allies in ways that seem counterproductive? Ghost boy was helping you! Why must you-- stab his hand (no permanent damage done).

Here's where I felt it could use a strong polish though: while some plot threads were nicely pulled through and there were good callbacks, many of the threads get dropped and the Big Bad finale was a mess. Did we really need a half episode of Big Bad pontification?! And the repeated flashback reusing the same scenes may have tried to do the "building emotion by revealing more about the scene", but mostly felt repetitive. Also, a lot of the writing and dialogue could really have used some tightening. The dialogue was not helped by some VERY wooden voice acting (in the English dub), especially disappointingly for Alexandra.

[Rot13] Gur Qngh Gnyntohfnb juvfcrevat va rirelbar'f rne nyfb frrzrq gb nofbyir gurz bs glvat gbtrgure guvatf yvxr... jul qvq gur Znlbe znxr n qrny gb trg uhaqerqf bs crbcyr xvyyrq, jung jnf uvf zbgvingvba? 'Cbjre naq zbarl' nybar vf abg irel rkcynangbel.

OK but lest you think I didn't like it, I do think there were a lot of great smaller subplots, it just didn't stick the putting-it-all-together landing. The tikbalang as drag racer? INSPIRED. The whole tiyanak subplot was really top notch too, probably my favorite arc in terms of pacing and interest.

Overall, it's a fast watch and I'd recommend it if supernatural crime fighting is a genre you like.