Damn you PA Works

Why is it that certain animation studios seem to produce initially interesting series which then turn sour after a few episodes?  PA Works is one such studio, having worked on a number of interesting concepts which quickly fell to pieces.  They're certainly very good at animation, but their projects nearly always seem to suffer from bad direction - which always seems to mismatch elements of storytelling that have no place together.

Angel Beats had the initially interesting concept of badassery and revenge, but quickly broke itself with derpy "humour" and a pointless ending that flew in the face of the initial premise.  Hanasaku Iroha was billed as a serious drama series but then started throwing in bizarre filler episodes about hentai and airsoft.

It looks like 1991 but it's really 1998

The latest series by PA Works - 'Another', had the unoriginal (but attention grabbing) concept of a boy who moves to some small town which is basically Hinamizawa with unexplained deaths happens.  This I would be entirely fine with, but the focus of the show is pretty much entirely on the unexplained murders - character development is entirely steamrollered to the point that conversations are always "hey do you know about the mysterious deaths?" "no... I can't remember anything about those".  Every conversation is like this, even when the MC's father calls him on the phone all they talk about are words to that effect.  I'm dying for some character development to happen (particularly between the MC and the heroine) but they just don't shut up about stuff they don't know.  Eight episodes in and things are still like this.

Apparently Axis logos are pretty popular in Asia @__@

There are other stupid things in the series I could mention too, like the horrible Ali Project OP or the ridiculous building of tension for non-events (in the last episode tension was built up for a truck overtaking a car.  That was it, just a truck overtaking a car.  Nothing happened aside from that).  When deaths do occur they seem entirely random and accidental - even when Higurashi had its mystery it still seemed like there was a point and direction to the deaths, but here they just seem to be for the point of gratuitous grimdark - well I say grimdark, the last two deaths were absurd to the point of being comical.

It's a real shame because I really wanted to like this series, but right now it makes Tsukihime look like a flawless masterpiece.