Wonder Momo is so incompetent that the first episode, which was released only a couple days prior to writing this, actually hurts to watch. Uninspired art, phoned-in voice acting, and terrible story pacing all culminate in quite possibly one of the worst animation shorts that have come from Japan in a while.
Anime this day and age has something good to offer in terms of art and design, its practically its own genre because of this thought. Whether it be a new direction or a classic re-imagined, anime can be amazing to see. Wonder Momo is instead colorful but flat with no lighting effects, no animation tricks, and no real detail. It can be likened to watching something in SD on an HD TV: you're not going to see a whole lot.
It appears that the voice actors weren't given a chance to practice their lines, or were even given a general direction, so they did it all in one take to rush the series out, because that's what the upper management wanted.
Speaking of rushed, the story is so rushed that you'll never see it coming. It just happens. No time or chance to explain what's going on. Get in loser, we're going to fight aliens! At one point, Momo says "So like, is this where I transform into a superhero?" and that activates her powers. I facepalmed so hard I think I left my face red. There are other characters but you may not want to stick around to get to know them since they are of no consequence to anything that happens. The cast is unnoticeable; character designs that we've seen before so in this case you may not want to bother to try and remember any names. Wonder Momo has no redeeming qualities as a character: she's not overly polite, she's not the most good-looking, she's not the smartest student. What we learn about her is that she's a high school student and a popular idol, and now she has super powers. That's it.
The length is only a little over 7 minutes so I get that there's not much time to flesh anything out and that's where this entire disaster fails. Rather than making it an honest anime at a normal length of time, its just a cartoon that would be shown during a Saturday morning kids program. If that's what they were going for, then that's fine. But the huge press event that was held says otherwise.
I understand that being based off of a 1980s arcade game and a webcomic doesn't give the creators much to go on but its apparent that a lack of imagination and corporate greed is to blame. If its an attempt to cash in on nostalgia, well maybe there's a reason the game wasn't so hugely popular: it sucked. If you're going to create a female heroine, you have to CREATE one. Not draw one and say she has powers. Wonder Momo is the worst thing I have seen in regards to anime, and I don't say that lightly. I'll be using this show as an example of the lowest point you can go in the future.
I almost posted a tweet that was so horrendous that anyone with a vagina would have wanted to have me quartered and splayed. It was that bad. I second guessed myself and I'm glad I did. All because the character of Wonder Momo is so infuriating. If this anime becomes popular then the last approximately 12 years of advancements that female characters have made in the genre will be undone.
