Cestvs: The Roman Fighter

Hey everyone! And welcome to “Garbage of the Season [2]!” The series where I discuss the current season's trashy pile of unwatchable monstrosities so that mom can’t say I’m doing nothing with my life. But before I start, I’d suggest you smash that helpful button and click on notifications so that you won’t miss out on any of my upcoming reviews. So without further ado, roll the intro… *Bibi H - How it is starts playing* … *End of intro* Today’s garbage is the ever popular Cestvs: The Roman Fighter or as I like to call it, a tragic misfortune. For the premise wasn’t actual dogshit, there was awhole lot of potential here. Something the people behind it didn’t seem to agree on. A word of advice. Don’t cram in something that doesn’t fit. It will often end up ruining everything someway or another. But that’s what they did with Cestvs: A Tragic Misfortune. They crammed in an expansive storyline into a meager eleven episodes and yes, it did turn out as rushed as one would expect. Big chunks of the source material was thrown out the window and with it, a whole lot of meaningful character development. I care more for used toilet paper than I do for the entire cast. Which isn’t even that big to begin with. But still felt very underdeveloped. Even the titular character, Cestvs, has not many noteworthy things about him. In a harem he would’ve been the protagonist. That’s the level of depth we’re talking about here. He’s a slave, and he wants to gain freedom. Understandable motivation, but not something that makes him worthy of being a main character. Seeing as that’s what every other slave desires as well. He is just one sheep in a large herd and not one who stands out. That and his massive plot armor makes the fights that ensue rather uninteresting. He can’t lose since his name is in the goddamn title of the show. If he lost a fight then there would be no show. Speaking of fights… What is an action-centered show without some good animation, right? Oh wait, it’s mostly CGI, what a shame. To be fair the CGI is not awful by anime standards. But it’s not a step forward either. I would’ve chosen this over being a slideshow, like most of the 2d segments we got were like. As meager of a praise that might be. To summarize, I would describe this show the same way as I would my girlfriend. Not worth the time spent. But you know something that is worth spending time on? Me...GotS! And this has been Garbage of the Season! Leave your thoughts about Cestvs: A Tragic Misfortune in the comments below and I’ll see you in the next review. Roll the outro... *A video showing Tobey Maguire dry humping the air next to a vegemite sandwich starts playing* The End...

I decided to watch this anime because I'm a sucker for history and I'm a huge Hajime no Ippo fan, which is an anime about boxing. This sounds like the perfect anime for someone like me, right? Let's start off with the visuals. Animation: 1) CGI usage most of the time. Character movement seems incredibly slow, clunky and worst of all, it breaks immersion; 2) Not a fan at all of the character design Sound: 1) the soundtrack is okay 2) Most of the voice actors hired are incredibly experienced and famous. However, the seiyuu chosen for Cestvs is a rookie and I find that interesting.He did a solid job, giving a believable performance to the role. Story and characters: 1) It pretends to be historically accurate by throwing random pieces of trivia to the audience; 2) The characters are boring and so is the narrative. Ancient Rome's brutality and violence are absent from this anime. Slaves, fighters and gladiators weren't killed easily for no good reason. The Roman nobility loved violence and gore. To have Nero, a real Roman Emperor and one of the most vicious ones, be confused and scared of violence was a major turn off. This guy used to doom ancient christians to serve as torches to light up the roman streets at night. Even as a kid, he would already be numb to violence as a roman noble. There are too many examples but this gives you an idea of what to expect throughout the 11 episodes; 3) I didn't read the manga but I was told (and certainly seems that way) several events were skipped between the 1st and 2nd episodes. These events aren't addressed again, except in very brief flashbacks with little to no explanation. It's a major flaw in storytelling and hurts the flow of the story. It's hard to feel connected to a character and his struggles if you don't get to experience it. This is one of the major flaws on this anime; 4) Slaves interactions with roman nobles is way too inaccurate to take this anime seriously 5) Some episodes begin with some very obnoxious and long flashbacks. Some of them took about 4 minutes in total just of footage already shown previously. 6) The ending is obviously trying to get a sequel announced but I honestly hope it doesn't happen. If you want to do a story set in a historical setting, you have to respect certain historical aspects because otherwise it feels that the audience was tricked into watching something entirely different. In conclusion, it gets a 4/10. Awful visuals, boring characters, historical inaccuracies and skipped important events that later on the audience is supposed to understand through very brief flashbacks.

I really liked this anime. The 3d was jarring at first and made me nauseous, but then I got used to it and even liked it because it made the fights and bodies very detailed. Compared to other fighting anime, the fights are realistic and the ones in the second half are thrilling, I was tensed up like it was an action movie. I might have to read the manga because there was a large time jump and I bet there is fun character development that happens. The characters do have more flat personalities. This did not bother me too much, because it was mostlyfighting and not drama. If this anime had 12 more episodes or a second season I think it would have more fans. One of its flaws is the rapid pacing of the plot, but there are many anime out there where a fight takes 10 if not 20 episodes to get through and it makes me want to watch the episodes at a faster speed. Cestvs kept me on my toes and there were no moments of boredom. I watched it in one sitting.

Yes you can say this Anime is trash, why wouldn't you? it butchered the Manga, BUT... I'm an Anime only and saw this anime is getting a lot of hate, then I got to know that the studio skipped about 60% of the story. For Manga readers, yes this is such a let down. Although I think in the future (if they continue regardless of the hate) they will cover the rest as a flashback, that would probably make it a lot better; so I'm being optimistic here. The use of CGI is a lot more than I expected but it doesn't matter much to me, ofcourse2D looks a lot better and enjoyable but it's okay with CGI too. (in my opinion) We see some good fighting styles that were quite enjoyable, and the next season is gonna have a lot of them, so that's a plus point for me (atleast) I don't know why everyone is taking this too seriously. Also, I hope Bandai do some justice to the Manga in the next season even as the flashbacks.

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