Why the chibi slapstick?
I don't consider myself a big anime fan, but I watched this series happily all the way through. At first it didn't convince me at all, but after a few episodes it picked up steam.
But one thing bothered and annoyed me the whole time: the completely out of place, cheesy slapstick humor which often took me out of the experience. Having the characters suddenly turn into their chibi forms, yelling like they're at a metal concert or crying rivers of tears, it just never felt appropriate in any of the situations. It felt more like a way of underlining the comedy, almost like saying: "THIS IS FUNNY. YOU SHALL NOW LAUGH AT THIS. LAUGHTER OF 3.5 SECONDS PERMITTED."
Why did they have to include it? I understand it's in the manga (which I haven't read), but was it really necessary to be loyal in that regard as well? When you have a show which has genocide, an effectively militarist state, people getting burned to cinders, impaled, shot, having their brains blown out from the inside and losing limbs, having that kind of kindergarten-level slapstick feels really out of place. It's not like they were actually making this show for kindergarteners, so why couldn't they just leave the slapstick out?