There have been several sequels to popular shonen anime titles throughout recent years, most of them being rather controversial. Compile this controversy with the controversy about everything Seven Deadly Sins related after seasons one and two, and you get a recipe for contentiousness. For those who aren’t familiar with the rise and fall of this franchise, let’s do a quick recap.
In 2015 Netflix had their first major exclusive license of a battle shonen property and it was the monster hit that was season one of Seven Deadly Sins. A1 pictures created some truly dazzling action scenes and the franchise’s knack for romantic drama excited shippers everywhere. For fans of medieval fantasy series, this was a must-watch show. Season two continued the momentum of season one and introduced iconic villains The Ten Commandments and iconic hero Escanor. In 2018 Seven Deadly Sins released the movie Prisoners of the Sky. It was a standard shonen side story movie that had the flashy action scenes fans expected, but it did very poorly at the Japanese box office and A1 abandoned the series.
The studio that took over, producer Studio Deen, created a production (the actual animation was actually outsourced to an even cheaper studio as Deen just produced it) that will live in infamy for its poor animation quality. Fans have dubbed seasons three and four “The Seven Deadly Frames.” This was followed by two CGI sequel films that were equally derided for their visuals. The franchises’ reputation has drastically taken a nosedive and the question is if this new series can save it.
You read the title of this article. The answer is no, absolutely not,
at least based on the first eleven episodes Netflix has released outside of Japan. Although I admit getting disappointed in Boruto and to a lesser extent Yashahime might have affected my experience, I really, really wanted to enjoy this show and was expecting to at least have some fun with it. On paper, there were ideas that seemed like this show could surpass the original in some respects. Our protagonist, Percival, is not a chronic sexual harasser like the protagonist of the parent series. The female lead is cooler than the damsel in distress of its parent series. The talking animal sidekick is merely dull rather than annoying. Another improvement is the animation quality improving from abysmal to merely bad for the spinoff. There action scenes are merely dull and uninteresting instead of hilariously inept, except for the battle with the CGI dragon which could be in the same category of classic as the “Seven Deadly Frames” seasons.
So what is the plot of this thing? As with its parent series, it takes
the theme name of bad things in Christianity and has the main characters themed after it. The Seven Deadly Sins was themed after The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Knights of the Apocalypse are themed after the four horsemen in book of Revelation. Also like the Seven Deadly Sins, the series has Arthurian legend as its theme as our protagonist is legendary Knight of the Round Table Sir Percival. I don’t remember if he’s supposed to be War, Famine, Pestilence or Death, but he doesn’t seem to embody any of those things and really the Seven Deadly Sins theming was rather awkwardly shoehorned in the parent series. As is usual for shonen series, our protagonist is a teenaged version of that character and he’s about as generic as can get. The main event that kicks off the series is an capital “E” evil knight who claims to be Percival’s father kills the protagonist’s grandfather.
This sets the plot in motion and our hero forms a band of forgettable and generic heroes such as Donny, whose most memorable personality trait is being a redhead, Nasians, whose name I had to look up because I just remember him as stupid hat guy, Anne, the obligatory large breasted anime girl who is indistinguishable from any other large breasted warrior girl. Also included in the cast are the talking horse Mr. Ed, sorry I mean Sylvan, and the Fox Sin, who is a talking fox. These characters aren’t as cool as the original cast of larger than life warriors from the original Seven Deadly Sins who were some of the most memorable characters to come out of an anime with a medieval fantasy theme despite my quibbles with a few members of the cast that I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier. There is no real interesting character development or arcs and Percival’s generic “avenge grandpa and beat the crap out of dad” story isn’t that interesting. They don’t get any cool amazingly animated fight scenes and there hasn’t yet been any romantic tension as there was with the Seven Deadly Sins cast. The show starts with a generic go from town A to town B plot. Our hero isn’t strong enough to avenge his grandfather, so that main plot point is probably going to saved for a later cour.
In conclusion, whatever quibbles people have about sequel series
like Yashahime, at least that had redeeming factors. This sequel was bad, bad, bad. I volunteered to review this series hoping to have a good time, and I was severely disappointed. I don’t know what can save this fallen franchise as I don’t know if even A1’s stellar animation can save this bland cast and generic story. If you want a medieval fantasy anime with a better plot and cast of characters, go watch Fairy Tail or Black Clover. These series might have their flaws, but they at least twenty times better than this show. Go watch the A1 seasons of Seven Deadly Sins. Then pick up the manga for what the Deen seasons covered. Maybe you all might have a better time with Four Knights of the Apocalypse, but I personally do not recommend it and give you alternatives.
