The first three episodes promise something genuinely bleak: children born infected with the Gastrea virus, shunned by society but the only ones strong enough to fight back. Then the show tries to cram an entire light novel into thirteen episodes, and you watch it collapse under its own ambition, characters barely developed before plot swallows them whole. What remains is the ghost of a premise that could have been devastating in better hands, a world where your saviors are the children everyone wants dead.

A virus transforms humanity's protectors into its greatest threats. Massive walls of Varanium now cage the last surviving cities, holding back the Gastrea, creatures born from infected hosts who gain terrible strength with each mutation. Humanity's only defense comes from an unexpected source: young girls infected with the same virus who somehow retained their minds. Called the Cursed Children, these girls partner with handlers to hunt Gastrea in brutal one-on-one combat. Their infection gives them superhuman abilities that no ordinary soldier possesses. But the same power is a ticking time bomb, and even as they defend people, they are feared and shunned. In Tokyo, ten years after the outbreak, high school student Satomi Rentaro works as a Promoter for the Tendo Civil Security, run by his childhood friend Tendo Kisara. He and his Initiator, Enju Aihara, take on a secret mission to stop the destruction of the Tokyo Area.