Alas, Poor Scrappy: Poor Keita's Jerkassery makes them a pain to deal with in the game. Then he's brutally electrocuted Taking the Ziodyne for Hibiki. Also, he's nicer than he was in the game and is a straight up Tsundere.
JP are largely unfazed by demons attacking earth, or about other people getting killed, because they saw it coming and were concerned only with their larger agenda of preventing the world as a whole from being extinguished.
In ep. 9, after some severe losses and considerable trauma the previous episode, some of the group (namely, Hinako) are cheerful and rather flippant. Of course the events of that episode are just one more hammer blow and by the end of it everyone except Yamato and Fumi is clearly shaken.
Ass Pull: The ending. The Reset Button ending was arguably the games Golden Ending, as the heroes defeat Polaris and reset things to back how they were before the story started, but all of them had changes in their lives that resulted in being overall happier. The anime uses the same ending, except none of the actions of the heroes lead up to this being the logical choice, when the game itself addressed this with having an ending specifically made to acknowledge what were to happen if the heroes defeated Polaris without any idea of what the world should be like. Another requirement for this ending requires preventing the deaths of all the characters that can die in the story, the anime kills off everyone except Hibiki and Yamato, including characters that live through every route. So not only does the anime end with the game's Golden Ending without setup or ever confronting the actual Big Bad, it also ends with Hibiki and Yamato somehow retaining their memories of the story, and doesn't explain how that is possible either.
Base-Breaking Character: Yamato. Due to how the anime staff writes him compared to the game, he is more polarizing in the anime then he is in the game. Some see him as a very well done Anti-Hero who avoids being too much of a villain, and love that he is pushed more as the driving force of the story compared to the game, while also enjoying his interactions with Hibiki due to the massive amount of Ho Yay associated with the moments between them. Others instead see him as being completely rewritten to the point of being barely like his game counterpart, whose likable traits are gone and made more cruel and villainous to the point of being almost an entirely different character, and feel that he is pushed into the role of the Final Boss without it being natural.
Broken Base: Is it a well written different take on the series, or just a lazy attempt to make an Evangelion clone? While the games story was similar to Evangelion already, the anime focusing more on those similarities, and removing almost all the light hearted moments have pushed the divide further.
Faux Symbolism: Lucifer, champion of chaos and freedom is summoned to defeat Satan, agent of Law and Order and has been summoned by Yamato, who plans on brainwashing everyone to make his Meritocracy a reality.
Yamato rushing to Hibiki's rescue after receiving his Death Clip as Alcor revealed. Risking his life in the process to the point even Makoto is scandalized by his sheer recklessness. Not to mention he still treats conversations with Hibiki alone as worthwhile despite his newfound habit of immediately dissing everyone else thanks to his adaptational jerkass upgrade. On the other hand Hibiki too spends more time thinking about Yamato and his motives than the fate of the world, binging most conversations back around to him especially with Alcor.
In episode 9, Hibiki chases him into an elevator where Yamato aggressively pins him against the wall, gets all the way into his face and declares that he will bring him to submission, with force in necessary. The scene ends in a mutual promise which involves Hibiki staying by Yamato's side until the end.
The manga manages to have this scene look even more suggestive. Unlike in the anime, where he just puts his hand next to Hibiki's head, Yamato actually physically grabs Hibiki when he pins him against the wall, gets even closer to his face than he did in the anime, and wears a very suggestive smile for a longer part of the scene, as opposed to the anime version where he only smirks at the end of the conversation.
In episode 10, despite all the insults thrown his way Yamato goes out to fight Lugh but saves Hibiki in the process, keeping in mind that Hibiki could have called Byakko to catch him from his fall and ends up doing so a few minutes later after forcing Yamato to let go of his hand. They spend most of the battle fighting each other rather than a Lugh-possessed Physical God Io. Mind you, they were fighting about whether or not to kill Io. When Lugh attempts to kill Yamato during the squabble, Hibiki ends up pushing Yamato out of the way instead of letting him get killed. At the end of the episode, Yamato prevented Hibiki and Io from falling to their death. He then tells Io that he won't let Hibiki die because in his own words, "Hibiki is mine."
The final episode has Hibiki holding Yamato before he dies and crying for him telling him he doesn't have to shoulder everything anymore. Later on after Hibiki resets the timeline, he sees Yamato and goes up to him. Yamato still remembers Hibiki and while he denies having no friends and smiles acknowledging him in the end before his car drives away.
Even moreso in the manga's (which uses the same story as the anime) final chapter, which is quite different from the anime's version of events. Instead of Yamato just smiling at Hibiki and riding off in the car like in the anime, they have an actual face-to-face reunion. When Hibiki sees Yamato standing in front of the Diet Building and believes he doesn't remember him, he collapses to the ground crying. Yamato stares at him for a minute before finally remembering who Hibiki is, and smiles, reaching his hand out to help him off the ground. Realizing that Yamato does, in fact, remember the last seven days, Hibiki returns the smile, and the scene ends with them clasping hands.
Tiny Yamato apparently taught Alcor about chess, green tea and conversations and Alcor would like to think they were friends. Even now, they're on friendlier terms than the game.
Alcor apparently decided to make Hibiki's room his new home. He also got a blush out of him in that same episode.
And in episode 10, he goes out of his way to cook for him (and Daichi and Io but still...)
Fumi and Makoto are often seen together and end up in compromising positions.
It's Short, So It Sucks!: A consistent complaint towards the anime is that it takes an at least thirty hour game filled with five different endings, and condenses all of it into a thirteen episode anime. Several characters get drastically reduced in role, major events from the game are either skimmed over, or cut entirely, and some characters have their personalities drastically altered to fit the rushed pacing of the story.
Magnificent Bastard: Even more ruthless than his game version, Yamato Hotsuin keeps his determination to change the world. The lonely young heir of JPs, Yamato's determination called the attention of the rebellious septentrione Alcor, who wanted to make him his "Shining One" due to his strong personality and protect humanity from the apocalyptic Polaris's trial. Rejecting the offer, Yamato plans to use Polaris to re-create the world into a meritocracy, where people such as himself would lead humanity to a utopia. Preparing for the apocalypse, Yamato recruits useful and promising survivors from civilian backgrounds, including Hibiki Kuze and his friends. Impressed at Hibiki's potential, Yamato becomes fond of him, even receiving Hibiki's Death Clip—something that only friends of the future potential victim would receive—and saving his life multiple times. Allowing Hibiki to leave JPs, Yamato kills his Friendly Enemy Alcor after his loyal right hand sacrificed herself. Reaching Polaris as one of the two remaining humans, Yamato loses against Hibiki, smiling as he dies in his arms. After the world is restored, Yamato reconciles with Hibiki, accepting his ideological defeat. Willing to sacrifice both civilians and soldiers in his quest for his ideal world, Yamato's never gives up.
Narm: The anime tries to play everything dead serious where the video-game would be goofy and somewhat self-aware.
Daichi coming out of nowhere with a truck and ramming the monster in the first episode. It didn't help that this was the voice of Nizuma Eiji we're talking about.
Nitta is frequently framing her sizable breasts with her arms with every action she takes, including crying and cowering in fear. An odd reflex, to say the least.
JP is pronounced "cheep".
The hacking scene in the third episode is a little overwrought, with dozens of highly trained professional tech specialists wailing like a bunch of children whenever things get worse.
In the fourth episode, everyone looks super-serious when they try to hold each other up with their highly threatening cell phones. Why exactly they would do that with a summoning device that takes time to work is baffling. Oddly, the phones could be used as 'guns' in-game, with characters (in cutscenes, anyway, though this may be how the humans actually attack in battle themselves) able to zap targets through the summoning app... somehow. Since that ability is absent in the anime, however...
In the fifth episode, Hibiki tries to act cool and aloof by constantly keeping his hood up. His hood with giant floppy bunny ears on it. Again, dead serious.
In the eighth episode and beyond, Hinako's head is covered in huge rough bandages. This makes a ridiculous contrast with her perfect skimpy dancer outfit and how everyone treats the bandages as if they were perfectly normal and not even there. Like mild Fan Disservice that's being paraded as the opposite.
So Okay, It's Average: Weak dub aside, it's an alright, if forgettable series. Considering how well-received the game is, that's a bit of a disappointment.
They Copied It, So It Sucks!: A common complaint is that it seems the writers abandoned the optimistic, upbeat nature of the game to make a closer clone of Neon Genesis Evangelion. While the original game did have elements that were similar to it, the game also had enough content and plot points to make itself unique, especially considering the multiple endings. Made more blatant by the end of episode 8, with Hibiki and Alcor watching a sunset the same way Shinji and Kaworu met, and the final episode, whose first half consists of naval-gazing on the subject of "what it means to live" along with Hibiki's fusing creating a Tree of Life.
Pretty much the entire cast aside from Hibiki, Yamato, Daichi, Io, and to a lesser degree Makoto are all pretty much expendable characters and received no development at all. This seems to be a result of wanting to push the focus onto the relationship between Hibiki, Yamato, and Alcor above all the others, leaving anyone who doesn't factor into those three as fodder. In particular: Joe, Ronaldo, Otome, and Fumi all die incredibly anticlimactically with little build up or usage, even though in game they were all relatively important characters and were fairly popular. Only Airi and Jungo get any real focus from the writers outside of those few, while Hinako gets taken out for a portion of the story only to come back and die, while Keita dies early on to establish the darker direction.
The portrayal of Hibiki himself ended up garnering this from fans of the game. Despite being a blank slate silent protagonist, Hibiki was beloved for just how quirky his dialogue options could get. Studio Bridge, already making the series a rather transparent homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion opted to characterize Hibiki as an angsty I Just Want to Be Normal character, just like Shinji Ikari.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Pretty difficult to care about the cast when they're killed off in droves, and unlike the game which balanced this with humor, there is virtually none in game.
