Daisuke's hero complex doesn't soften, it's the entire point, the thing that gets people killed and makes him unbearable to watch until he finally breaks. The time travel mechanics actually work, each loop revealing something the last one hid, turning five kids thrown 300 years forward into the only people who can stop it from happening at all. CGI carries the whole thing, and it's rough enough that casual viewers bounce off, but if you stay it becomes invisible, you stop noticing the mecha and start only seeing the choice each character makes to go back.

Daisuke Dojima, a second-year high school student who was kidnapped as a child, is caught up with his friends Gai, Lu, Marimari and Keisaku in the Shibuya Drift, which carries central Shibuya more than 300 years into the future. Daisuke and his friends are stranded in a wasteland of ruins and overgrown forests, separated from everything they've ever known. Giant mechanical monsters linked to beings called Revisions threaten the city. A girl named Milo, who shares the name of the person involved in Daisuke's childhood kidnapping, hands them piloted weapons called String Puppets and tells them to protect Shibuya. Daisuke has always believed in a prophecy that the five of them would one day face grave danger, even though that old incident drove the childhood friends apart. Now they must fight an unknown enemy in an isolated city and find a way back to their own time in this mecha science fiction action series.