Synopsis
All over the world, the 12 strongest warriors are called to participate in a battle royale and are dubbed with the 12 zodiac names. In the name of pride they battle to death and all to grant one wish.
The Good
With such a dark premise, it is to be expected that there would be quite a bit of gore and some psychological twists. But the way that the series handled it, placing some predictable premises only to shift the turn of the usual scenarios at the last moment deserves a thumbs up. It’s as if the writers are placing out a lure of predictability then slowly reeling the viewer in only to do something different, but not too different once they’re hooked.
The action scenes of the episode are also a commendable point for the episode as it is the type of action sequences you don’t see that much often in shows today. The speedy, quick movements that made motions look more like blurred lines rather than action along with the quick jumps look like something from a manga brought to life and brings a unique animation work to the series.
While we only learn little about the other characters, Boar, who is the main focus of the episode, showed a rather fascinating transition in character. Characters like her either go two ways, they grew up that way or were developed through a series of circumstances, the fact that they went for the route that they did was an interesting twist in a way. The fact that the show isn’t afraid to show what most of their characters are going to be like in just one episode is pretty gutsy as it paves way for quite a bit of theorizing.
Basically put we have a rather fascinating episode that lays out rather predictable scenarios only to end up shifting them to something interesting then we get a rather ballsy introduction to the darker aspects of certain characters while the episode takes focus on not all the characters but one main character who ends not lasting long. The art and animation style is something of their own as well and mainly resembles something like a manga coming to life. So far so good to say the least.
The Bad
One of the main things that makes the episode less than great is the amount of dialogue work and monologuing placed into it. Sure, dialogue plan can be fun for the most part in other series but here it’s like watching a not so fun game of tennis/ping pong going up and down and it may make things a little difficult to catch up on. The main thing however is that the dialogue tends to be somewhat long winded.
And while the action sequences do look good and a come to life kind from manga kind of thing, it still comes off as rather rushed as most action sequences these days actually shows the movement and impact of strikes and hits. Not to mention the rather gory scenes, it worked in some parts but then there are certain scenes where the animation and coloring makes them seem rather off.
Being only the first episode of the series there is only so many negatives that you can find with the story or the characters. For the most part, the main issue for this episode mainly lies in dialogue and action execution. The work clearly has no qualms in displaying some of the usual cliches found in this type of series so not much judgement can be placed on it, but in all honesty, the characters are already tropes of the battle type series.
Conclusion
The episode presents a rather gutsy anime series in the making with an interesting action style and fascinating character developments in such a short span of time. Being a first episode, the amount of criticism to be found here would be limited, but the way they worked their cliche bait us rather good. In the bigger picture of things, when looking at the episode, it was rather solid. Still, there are some points that could have been done better at least.
Rating: 7/10