You’ve probably heard countless negative reviews for this show, so I’ll make it brief.
First reason people hate this show. It’s a Crunchyroll original series. Crunchyroll’s advertises itself as a fundraiser that donates a percentage of paid subscriptions to underpaid animators in Japan, not to fund new shows.
Second problem, the first “trailer” showed more of who was working on it and tried using its “diverse” work space to sell the show when NO ONE CARES. Also one of the developers made several public tweets speaking out against men, one of which said “kill all men.” This is what happens when the type of feminists people hate are put incharge of making a show.
Next problem, the animation is not great. It’s not awful, for a studio’s first series it almost looks passable, until you realized that a majority of the backgrounds and objects in both the back and foregrounds are compressed images. Also the character’s movements are very stiff. Most of the time, only their heads, arms and legs move. That may sound like enough, but when compared to other shows, the characters in high guardian spice move like animatronics.
The show never explains what a guardian is, or what the enemy they’re being trained to defend against is.
The plots are very uninteresting. New magic is instant and easy and serves as a metaphor for progressivism, and old magic requires lots of practice and is a metaphor for conservatism. It totals into meaning absolutely nothing.
The characters are very boring, with no core purpose, or defining personalities. Thyme is supposed to be independently mean but learns time and time again that teamwork is good, and is back to normal by the next episode. The only entertaining characters are a short black kid whose adorable and funny, a giant muscular cat man, a stoner with a voice actor with no other credits but makes everything this character says funny, and snapdragon who is supposed to be a transgender character and is the only interesting main character out of all of them because he acts like a real person. But then they mess up his story by revealing that their professor is also transgender too early and not to snapdragon, but to the main character Rosemary which means absolutely nothing when it’s revealed to her and just makes it annoyingly predictable when it’s revealed to Snapdragon when it’s revealed that his professor can relate to wanting to be someone else.
Also the villain is an idiot, who gives an obvious turncoat his only weapon after one line saying she’s seen the light.