God, I remember it was so maddening to watch through this as someone who was a fan of BRS The Game.
They took every lesson and good story beat and interesting character from BRS The Game and The Game Manga, threw them away, and then shoehorned characters from 2012's anime in to try and fill the void...
White Rock Shooter (and the apostles of the apocalypse) where genuinely interesting villain's because you could sympathize with them. For the Apostles, they were all members of the races of the planets WRS visited and devoured before earth (and possibly they were also other imperfect clones or kids of WRS considering they all had the power to neblade.) They were forced into this life and eventually abandoned any respect for life as they became drunk off the feelings and emotions of those they ate.
That leads perfectly into WRS' character arch, who for a short time was willing to step away from a immortal life as a star traveling goddess of destruction for a life where she was beloved as a mother and as an idol Sing Love instead of feared. It was only once she was betrayed by Gibson (Blowing himself up with a nuke trying to kill her) did she start the Invasion and vow to kill all of humanity as she was scorn by them. This was further backed up with Nafe's backstory from the Manga, where she was picked up and raised by WRS as her daughter because she was so impressed by her abilities to make robots out of garbage. WRS isn't a monster, she is a creature of the power she holds, and if given the opportunity she would spare the life of a creature she would otherwise see as food to raise and nurture them as long as they reply with the respect she feels is due.
To replace ALL OF THAT REALLY INTERESTING LORE AND CHARACTER BUILDING WITH "AI bad, humanity no longer is useful, exterminate..." just burns my ass so hard. Artemis could have, and should have been a very cool villain in her own right, but for half the god damn show she doesn't do anything. It's all her stupid fucking robots, or the cult with the naked robot dude doing shit.
NONE OF THIS, really matches up with or even feels like something of Artemis' doing, which is why it's so goddamn jarring that the cult is really under her control and not just a roaming band of lunatics' max max style. WTF do you mean, that the AI would choose naked baby man and his cracked out followers, vs THE GOD DAMN MILLATARY to control and influence.
And then we had Deadmaster and Strength... I feel so bad for them, because they were both relatively blank slates after 2012's anime. Like clearly they are not the "Other Self" version of themselves, so they could have done ANYTHING with them. Why was Dead Master a sniper... on a motorcycle... when in every other depiction she's a close range combat expert who uses chains and scythes to fight.
"But wait a minute, isn't close range Strength's job, since she is literally insisting on a fisting the person?"
YES... BECAUSE THE STYLE OF FIGHTING IN BRS, IS MORE AKIN TO JOHN WICK WITH MAGIC, AND NOT MAD MAX WITH AI BULLSHIT! You guys literally picked the two worst characters for that role...
Why not Chariot? Bitch already has wheels... and a massive spider thing, and BRS already has a reason to hate her...
I need to watch Dawnfall again because admittedly I didn't watch the last 2-4 eps because I couldn't take it anymore. But after the train wreck that was High Speed Etoile, I could probably get through all of Dawnfall now... But there's so much... so much shit they just willingly threw in the garbage that was actually good.