Mar 20, 2024
I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this dumpster fire of a manga to anyone.
The plot starts off interesting — a tavern owner running his business gets entangled with a princess looking to save her kingdom by seeking out a band of criminals, and, miraculously, she finds the ex-captain of a group of criminals in the tavern owner. A simple plot, but it's simplicity is what drew many in in the first place.
And somewhere along the way, probably right after the first big battle arc, is when Nanatsu no Taizai truly fell apart.
The story after the big battle is full of bad writing, and any plot
...
holes discovered will be ignored in favor of dramatics, or the stupid amnesia trope will be used a million times to create high stakes. The characters themselves are terribly written with the pure exception of Escanor and possibly Ban, and any interesting side characters that had greater importance was left in the dust to let the awful main cast shine (i.e., Gilthunder). All the women in the series had the worst of it; not only did they have bad writing and no character depth, but their romances were bad as well. Every single romance in this series is very problematic (Elizabeth and Meliodas, Ban and Elaine moreso for her looking like a child, King and Diane), and no one blinks an eye over it. "It's just fictional characters" can't cut it as an argument when the most attractive adult woman Merlin turns out to be a biological 12-13 year old loli that stopped herself arging and made an adult form to entice Meliodas 3000 years ago. Practically every women in the series looks like/is a child.
There was no real world building, either. There was some attempts in the first half of the plot, but after that, it all starts feeling less like a fantasy series and more like a copy and paste. It loses the whimsical, fun locations like the Forest of White Dreams and medieval aspects from the first arcs. The other realms, like the Demon Realm and the Celestial Realm, don't really feel like a setting you'd see in a fantasy or want to go to. It feels lifeless and bland, and the characters don't visit any fun looking places. It's just on to the next similar-looking village and that's that. And that's not even mentioning how all the other races just feel like humans but with different colors and clothes. The entire criminal group are claimed to be from different races, but they all look like they can come from the same race. There were only a small handful of interesting, memorable designs that weren't entirely human like Galand, but that's about it.
The end of the series was the biggest disappointment. Not only was getting baited two-three times annoying, but the true end wasn't even satisfying and had no real build up. Seeing the group of criminals fight the Demon King three times, and fighting him twice in the same manner (DK takes over Meliodas's body, he loses hope when his dad tells him his lover is dead, then Sins astral project and he regains hope when he sees his lover isn't dead, they defeat him, then the DK comes back, takes over Zeldris's body and the exact same thing happens), was not the least bit entertaining, and then to follow up with a shoehorned in secret boss was absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary. The Sins didn't even fight the Supreme Deity in the manga that's been a supposed threat the entire time.
On reread, the entire plot just seems more awful than it was when it was still in the publishing stages. It dragged on its feet when it shouldn't of and should've ended way earlier. The manga doesn't really work well as a shounen either, so it fails as not only a story, but it fails in that aspect as well.
TLDR; Nanatsu no Taizai had potential to be a great story, but it falls flat on its face after 100 chapters and fumbles the bag with its characters, plot and setting. There's nothing worth reading about in this manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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