Ulysses: Jehanne Darc to Renkin no Kishi

History has a famous name and it’s Joan of Arc. As a heroine of France, she’s a peasant girl that became a commander with a level of charisma that few could match during her era. She's a village girl that became a legendary figure. But Ulysses is far from a legend. It’s a show that deserved to be burned by fire. That may be a harsh thing to say and it pains me to actually mention it. But as someone who enjoyed the author’s previous work (The Ambition of Oda Nobuna), this was nothing short than a damnation. You’ll probably want to know the who, what,how, and why. And make no mistake, prepare for disappointment. For starters, you should discard any historical facts about the show altogether. This is more of a mixture of fantasy, history, action, and drama thrown together. While many people may have heard of Jeanne, few probably know of the name, “Montmorency”. As the main male protagonist, I question his motives as an alchemist. In the beginning, he tries to discover the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone. The man has potential to create a world without pain and suffering after what he’s been through. The actual result ends up with him summoning a Fairy Queen. Her name is Astaroth and she promises to teach Montmorency on how to become a Ulysses. What is a Ulysses? In their world, it’s a supreme being with unimaginable powers. To be honest, having a set up like this already sets off a lot of red flags. As for the story’s plot, we don’t meet Jeanne until after going through a background story about Montmorency and his childhood friends. The most prominent is Arthur de Richemont, who happens to be his secret love. The first episode spells doom for these kids when Richemont is seemingly killed while Montmorency experiences the reality of war. While I dare say the author made a memorable impression of the tragedy event, it didn’t make me care much about the main characters altogether. There wasn’t much chemistry between the protagonists and Montmorency hasn’t been established as a character. Why should I also care about Richemont besides her name and social status? However, I don’t want to sound too off base since that’s the early portions of the show. In the preceding episodes, we finally get to know Jeanne d’Arc, the titular main character. And oh boy, that red flag sailed high in the air. I know this show is far from historical accurate but Jeanne’s debut is also just dreadful. It’s far from paying a homage to the historical figure when she has blonde hair and also a childish personality. As a 12 year old, it’s hard to care about her beyond what she brings into the show. It doesn’t also help that the majority of the cast are also much younger than their historical counterparts. But when she becomes a Ulysses, her child persona disappears and becomes a completely different being. It’s like an inner demon awakens inside of her and makes Jeanne into a killer. Only in this show, they seem to portray her Ulysses persona to be some sort of heroine. The way I see it, Jeanne feels like a weapon of war rather than a person. While she does have a personality, her character lacks morality when “saving” people by resorting to killing. She sees Montmorency as someone to trust in after they establish a bond with each other. But to me, there’s little more character bond than an alchemist and his partner. Sadly, the show’s character relationships are poorly written with little creative thought. The childhood friendships between Montmorency, Richemont, Charlotte, and Philip gives off a pseudo-harem stench that hardly develops anywhere. Then, there’s Astaroth (who isn’t even human) so her lack of common logic at times is thrown out the window. Weak character bonds and chemistry made the cast look like poor actors on a stage. If we talk about other characters with status, there’s guys like La Tremoille. As a sadistic human being, it doesn’t take long for the man to reveal his true colors and his intentions against Jeanne. And by this point, I knew pretty much every antagonist in this show is more like disposable waste. Luckly, there’s something in it for fans who are interested in seeing a well-polished war story, right? After all, the show does take place during the 15th century when France and England were engaged in warfare. Unfortunately, I’ll have to be the bearer of bad news. Challenging myself to watch this series with a focused mind was tough when it’s just bloodbath slaughter on the battlefield. In later episodes, I find less and less devoted to see who would take the French throne. Even some of the more noticeable characters like La Hire feels out of place. Seriously, who wears that sort of shaggy outfit with twin barrel guns? I think the author went over their head to make the characters look fashionable but it came out as nearly unbelievable. Oh and be prepared for a host load of fan service in the form of kissing. It’s not just a soft gentle kiss either as many scenes show French kissing with tongue and saliva. Don’t mistake that as romance though as it’s more of a process necessary for the plot device of the show. Studio AXsiz has a mixed reception of their projects and to be honest, this anime can join that list too. I get it now. I think what the show wanted me to experience is some sort of war story with emotions and character struggles. What I got instead is a show with poorly adapted historical figures that almost feels like an insult to the real Joan of Arc. I’d advice from committing to this show unless you’re absolutely curious about Mikage Kasuga’s work. Avoid this like the plague and don't look back.

I've just watched ULYSSES :JEHANNE DARC TO RENKIN NO KISHI and I wanted to share my thoughts and takes about this anime : I absolutely loved it !! I would recommand the story because it is different : I believe what's makes the story special is the fact that the main characters are not overpowered, there is humor, and also dark content which makes it roller coaster of emotions and an enjoyable ride ! As for the story, alchemy and fantasy makes it more intresting because mostly everyone knows what happened during the Hundred Years War but here these magical elements make way for unexpected scenes andso the story becomes even more intriguing ! The music is also captivating and the piano is really great for emotional scenes throughout the epidodes! I really like the charcaters developping from the 1st to 12th episode and how they change! You can see them turn from kids to adults episodes by episodes all while keeping humor ! The animation and drawings are beautiful, especially the charcaters design along with the ones for fights and emotional scenes. Overall I would truly recommand it for an audience that what to see something different. It is a special anime in it's own way and that difference is what's makes it intriguing and captivating at the same time ! Honestly I really do believe that it is an enjoyable anime due to the fact that the characters are compelling, showing emotions, along with the music, it makes it even better ! Also we can see the characters grow as persons through the entire story by what they say along with the actions they are taking. My favorite part about the entire anime it is that despite taking place during dark times during the Middle Ages, the main characters are inspiring because they support one another during difficult time and never let each other down. As a result I believe people watching it can be inspired by it. It is a great attitude to have during difficult times (to help others in need) and in my opinion I think the anime does an excellent job emphasising this character's trait (whether it is with main characters : Jeanne and Montmorency, or with secondary characters such as La Hire, Richemont, Charlotte, etc..) To conclude, I would say it is by far the best anime I've watched this year and I can't wait to see what's coming next (hopefully a next season or even a spin-off hopefully!

I'm French so it might be my national pride or something but this anime felt like an insult to Jeanne d'Arc, I really like this period of history and I know the story of Gille de Rais (Montmorency) and Jeanne so almost all caracter don't have the personnality of their historic figures wich is not really important if you can do a better caracter but they did not. Orginaly the king (Charlotte) his a coward, Jeanne is a little girl who became a general and lead army, killed people, and had the charisma so incredible she is still consider one of the most incredible caracterof our history and Montmorency was crazy about Jeanne so fucking crazy he killed babies. I'm normaly not harsh on anime but this one is just..... So what did the show gave us? The story : Kind of messy maybe they tried to put a lot in 12 épisodes but could not so the story didn't make sense if you don't know history or geography of France. The magic aspect was really bad, the magic stones were not really exploited; they were just magic weapon but 3 min of an angry girl beating up soldier from time to time not worth it espacially in the end the god felt like a pile of shit falling from the sky on an anime that could have been at least decent. Charaters: Just basic nothing really amazing; jeanne is disapointing, Montmorency is like any other anime character that want to save the world and the other are just like any other female character that like the hero because he is a nice guy who want to save people. The main enemy doesn't exist well they are like 2 or 3 depending on the situation. Quality: The quality of the animation and music overall is decent. General opinion: They could have done a incredible anime but they wanted to change it to make it more like any other fantasy anime and they fucked up so bad. If their is a lesson for that show; it's don't try to change something big and incredible into a normal thing because you will most likely fucked up.

History is always something that we tend to look back to in order to improve from the mistakes we have made in society and also act as a precortional tale. of course, history also spawns stories that can be seen influencing media today. Often times, media likes to bring these classic tales to the modern day to have a new way of telling the story. Sometimes they put their own spin on it to differentiate itself or to spice things things up. That last sentence is where we find ourselves today. A retelling of the story of one of the most empowering females in historywith a twist of it being in a magical setting. Sit back, relax and make sure that you drink some of that sweet, sweet elixir as I present to you the anime review for Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knight. Lets Begin. Story: 2.5/10 Set during the 100 years war between France and England, the story follows an aspiring alchemist by the name of Montmorency who wants to protect his closest friends by becoming the next Ulysses, a protector of humanity. With the help of the fairy queen, Astaroth, and being the owner of the powerful Philosophers stone, he finds out that he cannot do it for he cannot contain the power of the stone. However, after encountering a young farmgirl by the name of Jeanne who is able to able to contain the Philosophers stone, they decide to become a beacon of hope for all of France to drive back England to their country and become the heroes the country needs. If it wasn't obvious already, the story is based off the story of Joan of Arc, a woman who was blessed by God to drive back England from their land. Only this time, its not religion that grants her powers, its magic. It was intriguing for me at least to begin with since magic is more interesting I would say than being blessed by God because you can make some interesting storylines with that. Well it would be if the story managed to keep sight of what the story is supposed to be based on. Even though the magic element makes for some good explanations, it doesn't change the fact that this is a loose adaptation of the Joan of Arc story. Throughout the series, the story goes off track as it likes to take detours to explore other plot threads. If you are going to do that, you've got to make them interesting. Ulysses does not do that. The story's characterisation is piss poor. They don't do well at distincting the characters from one another and establishing them in the story. Instead, they just fall into cliched character tropes that just don't help make the story more interesting. It makes the story overall feel uninspired. It doesn't do well to captivate its audience as it just lacks that unique factor despite its setting. It doesn't help the fact that the story just goes off the rails near the end and feels like a completely different story overall than what it was supposed to be. The fact that the entire story continuously forgets that this is a fantasy retelling is bad when you think about it. It is like the show just loses interest and wants to do something different. That's just bad storytelling. If you are going on a set path, stick with it. There is also explanation dumps at the start of almost every episode to tell the story that is going on in the background. Telling your story and not showing doesn't exactly make your story engaging now does it? Characters: 1/10 The characters in this show are just plain awful, cliched and boring. lets start with out main protagonist Montmorency. Montomorency is yet another standard, generic protagonist. His motivations are clearly just to protect his best friends and Jeanne which isn't exactly an original motivation and his personality isn't endearing either. He is more or less annoying and a bit dense as, like every other generic protagonist, he doesn't always consider other people's feelings and apologises for it. He doesn't do much either as his only relevance to the plot is at the beginning and near the end of the story. That's bad for the character that's supposed to be the main protagonist. And it only gets worse. All of the female characters in this show are best described as "Montomorency harem." The majority have little to no personality whatsoever and basically just feel lost without Montomorency. They basically can't do much without requiring their mmaaaaann to come and save them. It kind of ruins their individuality. Richemont especially feels like this. What I thought was going to be a strong female character turned into one of the parts of the overall harem and what the show likes to focus on when it comes to fan service with some groping and sexual harassment. Yeah, like that's going to build a character. And the fact that she feels lost without Montomorency at her side feels so cliched (again, the harem). But what I find the worst part of the characters is the show's treatment of Jeanne. Jeanne (or Joan of Arc) is regarded as one of the most empowering woman in history. Her motivation and ability to unite France under one banner to drive back England was inspiring and captivating to make her an icon in France's history books. So what does the show do? Make her a thirsty loli who has an obsession of having big breasts. That's just insulting. And also, she feels like a secondary character despite she should be the main focus of this show and, guess what? Feels lost without Montomorency. The show goes through Montomrency first and he is just so boring, uninspired and unlikable. So that just makes all other characters just as bad, if not worse than Montomrency. Animation: 3/10 Crap is the simplest way to describe it. While the art style is arguably alright, the animation itself is just bad. Cutaways, intense, shaky cinematography instead of animating it and some really crappy looking CGI. It makes the fight scenes really lacklustre. There are times though where the animation looks good, but they are few and far between when the show is dominated with cheap ways to animate a fight scene. The character designs are somewhat relevant to the time period, but some of the designs lean more to the fanservice side with large, bouncy breasts pretty much everywhere (No wonder Jeanne wants a pair) and showing more skin than, well, armour. Again, it just feels like the characters are just there to act as nothing more than part of the harem. Sound: 6/10 The music for Ulysess is alright. Nothing spectacular yet not bad at the same time. It certainly sounds kind of like the style of music that would be playing at that time with a sense of French royalty to it. It can add a mood but really, it is played down a little too much and is forgettable or even noticeable at times. It fails to stand out and add to a scene. The same goes with the opening as well. It is a pretty standard opening with showing the characters and visually foreshadowing of events to come. The song "Liberation" by Mai Fuchigami didn't really make want to "jam out" to this opening because it just meh. That is it, it doesn't do anything good, neither does it do anything bad. It just exists. The ending sequence though. Now that's beautiful. It's brilliant artwork correlating to the episode is just so good to look at. The calming song as well adds to it as it just makes it that more beautiful. It almost makes it worth to watch through an episode. Almost. Conclusion: There are some anime that I watch because I enjoy them. There are some anime that I watch because I am going along with the ride. Then there are some anime that I watch because when I get to review them, I get to bash the s**t at them. Ulysses is very much the latter. A story that has no idea what it want it wants to do with itself. Uninspiring and uninteresting characters. Crap animation and and meh ost. This show really doesn't have anything going for it. It doesn't do anything well and just does everything else either meh or poorly. I had some hype going into this series and it really didn't do anything to amaze me to match up to that hype. What could have been an interesting, fantasy retelling of the story of one of the most iconic woman in history turned into a mess that I don't recommend anyone to watch. Not even to the curious. Your time is best spent elsewhere with this one. My personal enjoyment: 1/10 Overall score: 2.7/10 Recommendation: Don't f***ing bother

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