Back to iMistly's Profile iMistly's Profile

I have never wanted to write a review for an anime, but this one upset me. I am writing this to express my personal gripes. I recommend this show wholeheartedly if you do not perceive the nitty gritty details.

There were so many things that this anime did right, but also so many that it did wrong, especially in the last episode.
I really enjoyed the animation this studio had to offer as nothing seemed disorienting or to take from the experience. They went through the effort of animating small things but did take the chance to not animate something if they did not ... have to. I only found one occurrence that was troubling because they used a static image of a character and parallaxed downward which felt very out of pocket especially since the previous and next cuts were perfectly fine.
Many characters were introduced and it was hard to feel an attachment to many since they felt very tiered in how they were attached to the main characters. The characters were unique but at the same time very readable. Avos felt very obvious as to who their true identity would be with the amount of foreshadowing, but I did appreciate the effort to try to sway the viewer the other way.

The reason I am mixed about this anime is because it just did not properly unfold its story as it should have. Too much information was required to deliver to the viewer, thus most of it was not properly brought into the story. It forced ideas upon you until you just accepted that is how it was. This anime may have been slightly better as a slower 18 or 24 episode anime, but there is only so much you can do. The pacing was either well done or instantaneous resulting in a disruption in tonal transitions within the story. The relationships that were formed between characters felt very black and white. One second they are an enemy of the protagonist, and the next second they are a trusted ally. I understand the 'charismatic effect' that the True Demon King was supposed to have but it seemed a bit drastic.
Due to these black or white relationships, there was no personal bond between the characters. In the very last episode, it can be felt that it was supposed to be very sad and grandioso, but since I did not personally feel an attachment to the characters, it did not feel as sad as it should have been. The almost harem theme did not help in this process either. I like the protagonist being able to pick 'all the girls', but give me a little something else.
The antagonists of the story also did not give an inch of space for Anos which inevitably resulted in a personal disdain for them. Which is almost the point, but it still came off as very annoying. It was almost like fighting with a child where one tries to come up with a full argument with proof and the other just says "no".

When Anos activated Asc in the last episode and had the Fan Union sing, I thought it was going to be like E11 at 13:10 where it just disrupted the mood and energy of the currently ongoing fight. Even though it turned into quite a beautiful moment, the buildup with all the girls coming onto the screen really dropped off the mood in preparation for something like E11. There was also no explanation as to why Asc did not backfire as it almost did in E11 as well. Watching the last episode was like watching the last episode of a series I did not watch, there was a lot going on, but also a lot to be desired.

I truly felt there was a lot of potential for the anime, but I have been disappointed. While the world building was not the best, I personally enjoyed what was shown and had hoped that a proper story would play out within it. The relationship between demons and humans was great, but there was not much expressed about the spirit realm. Especially since there is not really a visual grasp of how big their world is and how it was actually divided. As far as I know, there are only 2 central cities and the rest of the land is just forests, plains, and mountains. I am pretty sure the idea of spirits was only introduced solely for Lay's mother's situation.
Another thing is the power scale of magic users. Since we mostly just see Anos' magic, the perceived scale of great magic was already at 110%. There were too many quarrels with Royalists who just did not care about the power difference and not enough occurrences where the average magic caster was intimidated. The royalists only became intimidated when they were literally killed and resurrected within a few seconds which was a repeating situation in which was sometimes still not enough.

tl;dr The anime was great, but could have used a lot of polish.

Please convince me to watch the next season as it does not seem to be that great with that sort of rating.