Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai suru

'Reign of the Seven Spellblades' is a fantasy action series about teenage wizards at boarding school. It has a lot of ideas and it tries to do a lot of things, many of which could have worked: after all, it's basically 'Harry Potter', only darker and more violent. Unfortunately, every part of it is rushed, forced, and underdeveloped, practically perfunctory: watching an episode feels like reading a plot synopsis. It's an awkward mess from start to finish, entertainingly bad at times, but mostly just boring. It is immediately clear that the series is drastically abbreviating its written source material, and whatever appeal the original may possess,little has survived this brutal treatment. It's like ordering a pizza and receiving a ball of dough, a slice of processed cheese, and a squashed tomato. Scenes play out as if the writer or the director were checking off plot points scribbled on a sticky note, with no added detail or depth. It's difficult to discuss 'Spellblades' without rewriting it scene by scene, because it does practically everything wrong. I will try to avoid doing that, but — well, for example, if you want to establish that a magic school is dangerous, you can introduce what we think is the protagonist of what appears to be a general fantasy action series, then subvert our expectations by having a magical plant devour him five minutes in. It's a bit more entertaining than having someone state that magic school is dangerous. A relatable protagonist is a solid foundation for a story, which is why 'Harry Potter' begins at home with Harry Potter. 'Spellblades' begins by rushing no fewer than six main characters into a fight scene. It makes the most important character less relatable by relegating much of his personality to a mysterious backstory to be revealed at some later date, which is problematic in a point-of-view character. Also, it's difficult to create a sense of mystery when the setting is so underdeveloped: we can't tell if a scene is intentionally confusing because of a mystery that hasn't been solved yet, or unintentionally confusing because the adaptation is missing some important detail. Having met on the first day of school, the main characters quickly become close friends. Anyone who ever lived in a college dorm can understand this formative experience of young adulthood and how the series has failed to capture it. I am not asking for literary realism: I am asking that they bond in a way that feels credible. Real life is often unrealistic. Real students can build a close friendship on a chance encounter in a stairwell at one in the morning, because real students are notoriously stupid. Wizarding students, on the other hand, are too busy self-seriously collecting plot points to have any formative experiences at all. I think one night of bad behaviour would go a long way toward humanizing them. Didn't Harry Potter use a cloak of invisibility to sneak his friends into bars? Let the edgy wizard boy date the goldfish-brained samurai girl. It doesn't have to be dark and mysterious: it can just be fun. As it stands, the tone is inconsistent: the series often attempts to be whimsical — easily detected in the soundtrack — but the characters, the setting, and the plot are really too dark for that. 'Harry Potter' meets the minimum threshold for whimsy because Harry Potter and friends are basically normal kids, not child soldiers; none of them has a death wish, not even Ron; and the Slytherins are bullies, not murderers. As for the violence, action scenes are fundamentally about character conflict; they are not necessarily violent. (The potato chip scene in 'Death Note' is a good example.) Violence without conflict is just spectacle: another pointless tournament arc. 'Spellblades' has plenty of violence but little conflict: many of the fight scenes serve no purpose, as the students are continually challenging one another merely to show off. The plot is practically impossible to spoil because it includes practically every fantasy trope and treats each of them with about as much detail and depth as a plot synopsis. None of its ideas are inherently bad: every good pizza begins with a ball of dough. The plot, the setting, and the characters could have worked: just rewrite every scene. Make the goldfish-brained samurai girl the protagonist: her backstory, her struggle, her growth — all of it has potential. I know you can make any story sound stupid by describing it in a stupid way, and I have tried to avoid doing that. So an elf and a troll fight bees with a werewolf: so what? 'Hamlet' had a ghost and a pirate ship, and it turned out fine. In every case, it is the execution that counts, and in this case — I mean 'Spellblades', not 'Hamlet' — the execution is perfunctory, wasting its potential. On the positive side, the series is morally inoffensive, exalting friendship, courage, traditional martial arts, and the ethical treatment of animals; in that respect, it's better than 'Black Lagoon'. I liked the kissing scene, the severed hand, and the barbecue guy. The last arc was watchable. The voice actors did the best they could with the material. All in all, 'Reign of the Seven Spellblades' is unfortunately quite bad. At times, it was entertainingly bad; looking back on the season as a whole, the edgy wizard kids, the goldfish-brained samurai, the slightly improved final arc, etc., I can even say that it was endearingly bad, so long as I do not have to rewatch any of it. I can recommend it as a case study in how not to tell a story, but I cannot recommend it as a fantasy series.

Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai suru (2023) Overall, it is like a 7 but it has a massive issue. This isn't supposed to be the power of friendship and slice of life, it is supposed to be dark, gritty, and full of revenge. It was supposed to be deep but in the end, it is Harry Potter with more selfish characters. People hide their powers when it matters and you get a deep set of allies everywhere but they basically do nothing. One minute you get a deep backstory, see the targets, and get ready for some revenge and it was great but then suddenly itgoes back to the power of friendship and slice of life and nothing particular happens again. Even the finale builds up like it is going to be an epic battle but in the end, nothing really happens which is a real big shame. The art is average, the sound isn't bad and the characters are somewhat interesting just sort of lacking. If a season 2 came out with more of the dark stuff it hints about like it tries to in the final episode for all of a few seconds then fantastic. If not then it is just a fake story premise just like every other show in a school. 3/10 in its current state.

This series is a bit of a mess as it lacks focus and isn't sure what it wants to be The Harry Potter comparisons are apt, but clearly in an attempt to avoid those comparisons the series tried to add in all these extra elements and became an even bigger mess than Harry Potter is. It's a magical high school romp, except they are either skipping class a lot or the school just doesn't do more than two classes a week. It's a revenge story, except the MC doesn't seem to have much interest in carrying out his revenge In an overall story premise that makes little sense The schoolis dangerous because magic is dangerous and can consume the person, but its also made even more dangerous because the teachers and other students are actively out to harm all the students for no real reason other than 'they can' So you see where everything breaks down, its a mass of ideas, but the worst thing is, they aren't all mixed together in a blender, its like the ideas are all put into a tombola and then drawn out one at a time, focusing on whatever has been drawn out and forgetting about pretty much everything else. This is why I say it does not know what it wants to be. One big issue is the cast, it has a cast of six 'main' characters, and yet that cast is often just stripped to two or three of them, and they are just painfully dull It's actually some of the characters that aren't the main cast that are some of the most interesting and are given some development, backstory and also quite crucially, personality Thing is, there is clearly potential here, somewhere amongst everything else, and it is not an outright bad series, but nor is it a good series, it does have some good moments, but those good moments aren't enough to elevate it.

< concise review > Verisimilitude: The "lifelikeness" or believability of a work of fiction. Well, in Seven Spellblades, this is not the case. Something just feels "off". Character interactions feel forced and cliche. The script is boring, idiotic, and campy. Character expressions fall flat. And thus the show fails the believability test. This is sad, because on paper this should have been a fantastic show. But the people who put it together just didn't know what the flying f**k they were doing. The worst part of the writing is the transitions. Switching from grimdark to happy-go-lucky friendship slice of life time is entirely possible todo well, the caveat is that to do this there needs to be something in the plot that logically ties the two together giving each more suspense. Things that hint at something more going on with one side of the story when you are watching the other. Seven Spellblades fails to do this, or to be more accurate it doesn't even try, emphasizing its verisimilitude check failure even further. It almost feels like you are watching two different shows that just switch between each other at random with no connection whatsoever, like a drunken fever dream you can barely remember. 5/10. Wasted potential.

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