ThTheRealist68
March 21, 2024
Not Recommended
Over the past 12 weeks, I have spent a combined 4 hours of my fleeting time on this planet watching Chained Soldier, and through 12 episodes, all I can say is that my experience was only slightly better than taking the SAT, getting a colonoscopy, or having a physical done by an old man. This series just feels forgettable; in the depressing way where it isn’t laughably bad enough to be remembered, but it’s nowhere near good enough to be remembered either. This series is just another redundant entry into the bloated ecchi ___ genre, that blank being an amalgamation of different story beats thattry to add more substance to the main plot of watching the main character be lusted after by beautiful women.
Kill la Kill is an ecchi anime that does this well; Its overall story is equal parts gripping and ridiculous enough to keep the audience engaged. Unfortunately for Chained Soldier, its story beats aren't strong enough to accomplish this. Chained Soldier goes for this weird Solo Leveling rip-off angle by establishing Mato: this mysterious shadow realm-esque location linked to Japan somehow. Unfortunately, Mato is hilariously underdeveloped as a setting.
As viewers, we only really know 3 things about Mato: one, that people can just wind up there somehow through a “Mato Mishap”, two, that there are peaches that grow down there that give superpowers, and three, the place is packed with monsters that the “Anti-Demon Corp” fights. This is absolutely everything that the plot operates on, so whenever Mato is treated as a “desolate wasteland” that impacts our characters or drives the plot, said character development or story beat usually is underwhelming, due to the sheer shallowness of the Mato. In addition, there is non-Mato-based character development, but it’s so bog standard that it isn’t even worth mentioning.
Mushoku Tensei is an ecchi anime that has very strong characters; Eris, Roxy, Cliff, and Sylphie, among others, are developed enough so that if the author decided to make a story featuring any of them as the protagonist, it would still have the impact of the main quest. Chained Soldier doesn’t even get close to doing that, as the characters are some of the most generic, trope-built characters anime has to offer.
For example, Yuuki is a black-haired self-insert mc whose key character traits are that he gets nervous around women and he has a generic “good boy” sense of duty. Kyouka is a generic tough leader who spends 90% of her dialogue saying leader shit, and 10% of her dialogue questioning Yuuki’s kinks. Shushu is a “teasing girl” who is really horny. Himari is a tsundere that initially doesn’t like men, but is now horny for our main character for…reasons. Nei is actually the only character that I have somewhat positive feelings for, only because she is a sweet distraction from the rest of the character cast. (Also I’m really happy she is not lewded in the story, as I really didn’t feel like making 20% of this review an explanation on why that isn’t ok.)
Keep in mind, those characters who might seem shallow are the “MAIN” characters of this story. The side characters are even more shallow; Tenka is just horny, albeit forcefully, and Azuma’s only memorable character trait is that strikes a Jojo pose to freeze time. I shouldn’t have to tell you that a character roster this bland and generic isn’t a recipe for success in any anime.
“So what if the characters and story are generic and non-compelling, at least we have the animation and fan service!” You might say that, however, unlike something like High School DXD, which looks good enough to be compelling as an action or fan service anime, Chained Soldier accomplishes neither. In fact, it looks like shit. Mato is this wasteland with a charcoal-esque ground and a reddish-purple sky. If that doesn’t sound visually appealing to you, too damn bad, it's the backdrop of every single fight that this show has to offer. Speaking of the fights, they aren’t animated well at all. Character movements often look chunky and cumbersome, like they deserve more frames to be fluid. Of course, that’s when the characters actually are in motion; this series uses a lot of animation tricks to avoid doing that as much as possible, i.e, sword slashes coming out of a charging character instead of animating them actually swinging their sword, and panning the camera instead of moving the character on a jump slash or something.
The art style of this show is just visually unappealing at times. Honestly, High School DXD, which was released 12 years ago, looks better in every capacity. The lighting is often strange whenever we are outside of the reddish-purple skies of Mato. Impactful moments are often defined with a chain flying across the screen, but these chains are so far outside of the show’s art style that they are jarring whenever they appear. And then the CGI, oh god the CGI. You see, all of the Shuuki, those monsters I mentioned earlier, are made through horrid CGI. Whenever they move, it is incredibly jarring, and it honestly fucks with any non-CGI aspect of the scene. This is even more disappointing for the more impactful Shuuki, who are imbued with special powers, thus having a different appearance, yet they have the exact same CGI movement patterns. Finally, the Shuuki don’t look good either; the basic ones look like Temple Run gorillas and the more advanced ones just look bad.
So… Chained Soldier is an ecchi “action” anime that fails to establish any sort of compelling story or characters. The show doesn’t look good either: the animation of the fights is bad, and due to the shitty art style, the ecchi fanservice isn’t fulfilling, and even if it was, it isn’t appealing enough to save the rest of the story. So, what does Chained Soldier do well? Well, other than not lewding Nei, not much. The biggest praise I can give this series is that it isn’t offensively bad in any department. Everything is mid to bad, but nothing is appealing, terrible, or anger-inducing. The only problem with this is that in the long run, Chained Soldier will just be forgettable. Hell, I’ve already started. I needed the MAL page for this series to criticize its characters, before referencing it, I only knew the names of two characters out of the entire story. I doubt I’ll be able to name a character in 2 months; in 11, I’ll completely forget that this series exists. And that right there, is a damn shame, because, on paper, this was something that could’ve been at least memorable.
Thank you for reading.
