Back to SaroArsten's Profile SaroArsten's Profile

Remember that time when Darling in the Franxx and Seikon no Qwaser almost had a bastard baby, but decided to have an abortion when it was clearly too late? Somehow the embryo survived and got raised by Fate/Apocrypha. Then, at the age of 9, it discovered that its upbringer and role model is not the only thing that exists in the world, and learned about Tokyo Ghoul, JoJo and FMA. That baby is Ulysses.

Jokes aside, I may be a bit too harsh on the show in this review, but it reflects my personal opinion and what I saw in the show. Some spoilers ahead, not ... that you should really care.

Plot: what plot? The plot, as the premise makes you think, is on a level of some pseudo-historical smut fanfiction written by a 12 year old edgelord, except I've seen better pseudo-historical smut fanfiction than this. The main idea is that Jeanne D'arc can go Super Saiyan after receiving a kiss from the MC (who is Gilles de Rais, just saying). Those kisses are called "baisers" in the show, which is unneeded and cringeworthy use of French and could make my score lower by a point itself, if only it had somewhere lower to go. Then, apparently, it's supposed to follow Hundred Years' War, which it doesn't really do, only showing fragments of real history in the beginning of the first half of the show. In reality, the show is about people who want to have philosopher's stone, which is split between MC and Jeanne. At some point the show literally pulls a Franxx on us, with random aliens on spaceships trying to destroy the Earth and everything, though I wonder which came first because apparently the original novel is a few years old. Overall, the story is an incomprehensible mess and doesn't know what it wants to be at any point of the show, which results in it being either mindbogglingly boring or unbelievably dumb, and I honestly don't know which is worse. There's no ending, either, so it ends up being a LN promotion, though I can't see anyone saying "Yes, I'm going to read this".

Characters: okay, let me say this straight: this is a show where plot drives the characters, not vice versa. While I don't think there's something inherently wrong with it, this anime definitely doesn't understand what to do with those characters. This ends up in them being randomly in and out in the plot, being pushed on the sides and forgotten as quickly as they made their appearance. Most are based on some historical personalities, but almost none of their original documented traits remain, and in some cases, not even their original gender. Sadly, that's all there is to them, because the show doesn't even try to do any characterization, and any kind of development that may happen fails miserably because there's no character to develop, just a carton cutout. Also, it has an Astolfo from Fate/Apocrypha. I mean, he looks, dresses and behaves like him, but he isn't Astolfo. Amazing, isn't it?

Art: is horrendous. While the first episodes were decently animated, the quality rapidly declined in the second half, to the point where anime almost fully consisted of panning stills and ugly CGI soldiers in the end. The worst part that stills weren't even drawn properly. Montmorency's character design gave me cancer. Cute lolis were the only thing that kept me going, guess what, one got in-universe sudden boobs and ass expansion. Apparently that's a thing.

Sound: voice acting was average, the opening song was fine, the ending song (well, 10 of them, it has a new version in almost every episode) was good, and the background music wasn't really noticeable. I can't really say much about it, but it's definitely the strongest part about the show.

Enjoyment: trainwreck but it was fun to make fun of it on Discord. It's not the good kind of fun, though, as you feel your brain is slowly dying. Some scenes were rage-inducing, for example, MC saying "I want to save the girl I love so go fight for me" and army of peasants going berserk easily slaughtering professional full armored soldiers after that. Thoroughly unenjoyable even ironically.

Overall: no/10, almost the worst TV anime with normal length episodes I've ever seen (Lord of Vermilion from last season still exists). Go watch literally anything else and it probably would be better. Or try this - I don't even want to call it a trainwreck because there was no train to begin with - and maybe you'll like it, although I certainly didn't.