Noblesse

Noblesse was a pretty fun and enjoyable watch. Nothing spectacular, but nothing awful either. Like most things in life, Noblesse has some pros and cons. I’ll start with the bad. Noblesse, the anime, is probably the walking definition of mediocre. The series sets up a lot of cool and interesting mysteries and plot points, but the execution feels lacklustre and leaves much to be desired. The first 4-5 episodes were really good and then I felt it was downhill from there. The final third of the show had some cool fights and nice moments between the characters, but that’s about it. Now that I’ve got thebad out of the way, Noblesse does have some good things going for it. For one, it’s by far the best adapted webtoon anime of the year. GoH and ToG suffered from tremendous pacing issues, but Noblesse did a really good job of bringing the manhwa to life. The comedy is decent, the fights are really well animated and the world is interesting. I do appreciate the fact that the story is very character driven and not just another battle shonen style set up like GoH and ToG. Dialogue and the relationship between characters are huge here. My gripe with the story mainly comes from the second half of the show. There’s a key moment with one of the main characters that marks a turning point in the anime, and it seems like once this character faded, so did my interest. The “Lord” arc that takes up the final 4-5 episodes had potential to be really good, but the “antagonist’s” motivations were so weak and shallow to me that it was hard to take it seriously. The final episode was handled pretty well which probably saved its score for me, though. Despite it’s flaws, I did enjoy Noblesse quite a bit and think it had a lot of potential. I do recognise the fact we only saw a few chapters out of a massive work. The whole concept of vampire nobles, mysticism and human genetic engineering is cool. I just wish the story had been a bit better down the stretch. Noblesse gets 7 cups of tea out of 10.

MILD SPOILERS AHEAD WebToon Anime only ever made sense in hindsight. Back when "Tower of God" was airing I expressed my excitement for what could have been a landmark turning point for both the WebToon and anime markets. I stand by everything I said, and there are undoubtedly good results achieved with this venture. A quick search on Google Trends would reveal that interest in WebToons and Manhwa skyrocketed with the release of ToG. If the goal was to create commercially successful products that brought WebToons mainstream prevalence, the production committees at Crunchyroll certainly succeeded. But despite the corporate success, it's difficult to view this partnershipwithout some degree of cynicism; the flagship adaptations themselves have left a weak first impression. At best, they were middling half-measures that somewhat managed to hint at greater things to come; at worst, they did disgraceful disservice to the source material being promoted. And that brings us to where we are today. ToG was a flawed, but promising, adaptation that oozed with potential. But "God of High School" was all style with no substance, and today's case study, "Noblesse," possesses neither. At the very least the sheer lunacy of GoHS was capable at provoking a vitriolic response from me. But soulless unambition confines this husk of a show to an arguably worse fate - indifference. Here's how. This review contains mild spoilers, but skip ahead to my Tl;Dr if you're short on time. Noblesse is built around a powerful entity living amongst men. After an 820-year slumber, the mysterious Raizel awakens, à la Rip Van Winkle. He is a member of the Nobles, a secluded race charged with protecting mankind from afar. Finding himself far from home, Raizel decides to live a peaceful life in modern-day South Korea. The show is split into two arcs, both of which are concerned with factions alerted to his "Awakening." His incredible abilities are rarely put on display, instead serving as the impetus for power struggles and internal politics. These conflicts and Raizel's new way of life are what the show utilises to explore certain ideas. But before we take that deep dive, there is something that needs to be addressed. For those of you who don't know, Noblesse the Anime does not share the same chronological beginning as the original webcomic. A 2016 prequel, titled "Noblesse: Awakening," is the canonical start of our story, and the anime decided to continue where that OVA left off. Personally I didn't see a need to catch that prequel, given that the anime was never advertised as a follow-up. Way I see it, the existence of the source material or other adaptations doesn't absolve this individual instalment of meeting fundamental story objectives. My beliefs aside, I'm not one to tell you whether the OVA is necessary viewing or not, but I believe there is merit in making observations off the anime alone. And the show does attempt to make the best out of its 13 episodes, isolating a specific time period in order to deliver a narrative and thematic context one could understand as an entry point into the franchise. It's all just not very good. The anime's message carries noble intentions, but lacks meaning. Noblesse emphasizes the importance of setting aside our differences. All of us may come from various backgrounds, or possess unique traits. But no single member of mankind holds greater value than any other individual, nor is anyone entitled to unjustly take that value from someone else for personal gain. You and I are different, but you and I are the same, and should be treated as such. Throughout the series, there's this healthy lifestyle being promoted, showing how wonderful it is to live in peace and harmony with those around us. This is contrasted with the true enemy of Noblesse: systemically-corrupt organizations which represent dehumanization at its ugliest extreme. Be it greedy, soulless monsters or authority figures driven to irrationality, the antagonists of Noblesse abuse their powers at the expense of others. It's up to our boy Raizel and his crew to stand up for the little guy and maintain the balance. It's a solid message, and one that is certainly welcome in our politically-charged landscape. Let's not draw lines in the sand or discriminate, but go the distance to understand and love others instead. Let's join forces against systemic oppression, let's band together against the evils threatening to break us. The Noblesse OP sums up this idea through an emotionally-stirring refrain: "So why does everybody hurt each other?" These sweet sentiments sound an awful lot like propaganda, but there's no need to worry about things getting too preachy. Because while being thematically framed as propaganda, Noblesse undermines its own points by not saying much of anything at all. Now, I'm going to be demonstrating how this series is lacking in the execution of its intended message. The following three points covered here aren't necessary to every story of this nature. Rather, they're here to highlight how the thematic storytelling fails to be convincing. Firstly, let's address Raizel and others of his kind. Noblesse implies countless differences between Nobles and humans, but doesn't give much for the audience to work with. For a show featuring Nobles for a significant chunk of the runtime, we sure know next-to-nothing about them, aside from their incredible powers and boomer mannerisms. Why is their society so secluded from the outside world? Why are they supposedly incompatible with the humans they once protected? How does their society, ideologies and way of life differ from ours? Are there negative repercussions should our worlds collide? I'd like to think there are answers to these fascinating questions, but I just can't find them within this adaptation. The difference matters to the message, showing that anybody can see eye-to-eye and seek common ground. But there is no context, and as a result there's no real conflict between either party, rendering any commentary on this subject meaningless. Granted, it may not be fair to look from this perspective; even though the script seems like it would tackle this topic, neither of the show's two arcs really attempt to address this issue. So let's go ahead and talk about those instead; specifically, how they fail to portray moral ambiguity. Good and Evil are two ends of a spectrum, with the show's cast clumped together on either end. Bad people are capable of doing good things, and they can't simply abandon their flawed nature at the drop of a hat. But very rarely does the show burden itself with positioning our characters in the middle; there is no moral grey area. Noblesse chooses to play these concepts as straight as possible, watering-down the conversation to its most basic principles. For example, take the villains from the Union, some of whom are cold-blooded murderers who ingest pills that turn them into literal monsters, horrifyingly disfigured and dehumanized. There's no doubt in everyone's mind that Raizel would obliterate such cruel killers without a second thought. But the very moment one of the antagonists reveals some sign of humanity, their lives are immediately spared, and they suddenly become capable of doing no wrong. These moral questions are made to be as simple as possible, offering no substance in stating the obvious. What happens if you're on the bad end of the spectrum, and are finding it hard to work towards that harmonious middle ground? Well, Noblesse just throws up its hands in the air and adds nothing else to the subject. Those reformed characters from the Union are magically OK with their new social standings and doing good deeds, because that's how rehabilitation and life works, apparently. The third example I'd like to point out is the show's assessment of what unity means. Raizel and his growing group of besties enjoy a quaint suburban life, but rarely do we see them make connections with normal human folk. Within Raizel's household, peeps from various backgrounds do interact with each other. But there's no real attempt at understanding each other, nor is there an apparent need to. There's no difficulty faced, nor adjustments made, nor compromises agreed upon. Similar to my first point, there is no conflict, and it's hard to care. Everyone's just happy chilling at home and at their workplace, instantly bonding without putting in any effort. Two teenage students who had grown acquainted with Raizel's crew almost served as the human core of the group, only to unceremoniously disappear entirely from the narrative, because Noblesse decided that it was a good time to throw in exposition about random in-world politics. Closest we get to mutual understanding between different groups of people is one line of exposition, which I believe embodies a lot of the issues I have with Noblesse's thematic half-measures. Raizel's butler, Frankenstein, clues one of the main characters in on a brief history of Nobles and humans, back in Episode 2. In describing the relationship between both races, Frankie claimed that humans were weak and solely dependent on the Nobles to survive. Now that Raizel has opened his horizons to see human life up-close, he clearly knows that hypothesis isn't true and realises how his native society's misconceptions are false. But that's just it, there was never any intention to convince the audience otherwise. Of course humans are not helpless, how could they be anything but? Noblesse prides itself in making digestible, weak arguments, expecting a pat on the back and thunderous applause. It hints at a greater conversation, but drains all nuance from it, to the point where most potential meaning is lost. I must apologize if you felt that you didn't really gain anything from this long-ass paragraph, because I know that feeling too. It's the experience I had with this show; Noblesse is ultimately a show about nothing. Critiquing Noblesse for what it attempts to do is marginally more interesting than what it actually is. A vast majority of Noblesse comes across as… a school-based SOL. That's right, this story is played straight to be a slice-of-life. This cast of powerful idiots are either commuting to school or playing House at Raizel's. Bursts of serious exposition regarding investigations or politics are often quickly interrupted by long stretches of repetitive comedy sketches. Cutting out all the times Raizel and his bros get called "hot" by every minor girl in the high school cohort would end up halving the season's episode count. Episode 7, the all-time low for the series, sees one of Raizel's fellow Noble getting crushed on by a student, followed by Raizel's chummy friends playing a basketball match. What makes these unfunny skits all the more annoying are the copy/pasted cast of characters. People might find Noblesse's non-personalities entertaining, and I'd be inclined to agree if everyone wasn't a carbon copy of one another. Noblesse's crew of genetically-superior expository devices are the literary equivalent of "Hey Man, Can I Copy Your Homework?" Eccentricity is fun in small doses, but cramming in this cast of stock characters sucks any life or chemistry to be had in the group dynamic. This means that scenes play out exactly the same, because all of the characters in them are exactly the same. The VAs soft-spoken, stoic delivery makes this issue worse, as half the damn characters sound painfully indistinguishable from one another. Every good guy's vocal inflection is equally polite and devoid of all personality. It has been annoying to hear a huge chunk of the cast members talking like they're all auditioning for roles in a fujoshi-bait butler anime. Of course, I mean no offence to those who find pleasure in those sorts of things; if those BL shows are to your fancy, you could do far better than this bland bunch of refugees in a PTSD halfway house. You could also settle for more in the visuals department; Production I.G. phoned in their work with all the brilliant aesthetic of a 2010s Man of Action cartoon. Lighting is fine, but backgrounds and character designs leave much to be desired. The show goes as far as to reskin their characters' supernatural abilities as much as possible, and the same goes for the repetitive backdrops of drab city skylines and stiff forests. The soundtrack is unmemorable, but I quite liked the opening and ending songs. The fact that the ED's K-Pop manages to be the best part of half of these anime episodes is pretty damning of the show's quality. Tl;Dr: "The most destructive criticism is indifference." E.W. Howe. I'd like to think I've done my best to find something worth caring about in this show, but it appears that Noblesse seems less interested in its own story than I am. The series' subtext is watered-down to merely stating the obvious, with holes distracting from any positive takeaways. It's a pandering script that fails to pander effectively, and an action show that feels like it barely has any to deliver. Noblesse is at times not a show with supernatural combat, but a stiff, unfunny SOL that's one sexual awakening away from turning into BL. Visuals are unappealing, music is unmemorable. Noblesse makes mistakes in almost every regard, but it's no trainwreck. And that's a damn shame, because at least it's fun to see things go off-the-rails with trashy shows. Instead, all I'm left with after Noblesse, is sheer indifference. 3/10~ *** STRAY RAMBLINGS (SPOILERS): - Out of the 12 eps we got (let's be honest, Ep 7 was a fkin OVA,) I only had a good time with one, Ep 8. Up till that point we barely had any info about who the Nobles are or where they were from, so the visit to Lukedonia was a refreshing change of scenery. We also had Young Frankenstein, who was the only fun character in the show… - …Until he wasn't. The episode immediately following saw the novelty of the flashback wear off, and the show's only strong character along with it. YF all but disappeared between episodes, and all we were left with was boring ol' Frankie. I was disconnected from the rest of the episode, because the arc made zero sense! How does the Big Bad Bully of Lukedonia go from declaring his lifelong hatred for Nobles in one episode, to subservient servitude with zero complaints under a member of said Nobles? And what's more confusing is that the Blood Pact thing only happened at the end of Ep 9, which still leaves the question of what happened to YF during this time unanswered. This scene could have been a massive moment for the series, as Raizel and YF set aside their differences with their union. But again, the show just expects us to shut up and accept what's offered. - So remember how the Union hacker and the schoolboy hacker had this "Aneki" relationship, only for it to disappear with the memory wipe and never addressed again? God, this show was such a waste of time. - Rael really got his ass confined for 10 years over getting rejected. Fs in chat maybe, Idc. - Crunchyroll, Sony, Whomever I Need to Talk to: Please give your WebToon adaptations more episodes. Each of them needed more time to tell compelling stories, and all three fell short of that. Well, maybe more eps wouldn't have saved this script, but still. - BEST GIRL: No one really deserves this award, but I'll offer it to Young Frankenstein for being such a badass chad. Genuinely fun on-screen presence. Plus he's practically shipped with Raizel for life, and he definitely wears the pants in that relationship. YF, FTW. *** And we're through with this show, good riddance. Really wasn't looking forward to covering this mess. I guess you can call me a WebToon completionist from now on, here's hoping I finally find more nice things to say about the state of these subpar adaptations. If you happen to like my verbose rants, feel free to check out my other reviews for seasons past and present. Have a Happy New Year, peace~

It's not uncommon for an anime to drift away from the adapted material. Sometimes it's good, sometimes very bad. When Crunchyroll announced the anime adaptations of 3 major webtoons — Tower of God, The God of High School and Noblesse, I was pretty thrilled. It was desire fulfilled of watching webtoons being animated. After watching numerous manga turning into anime, it was time to enjoy something new. But alas, it didn't work out well. So far, all the adaptations coproduced by Crunchyroll have been utter garbage. They've done everything they can to promote themselves even if it hurdles the story or makes it less enjoyable.And Noblesse has been a victim of this. The very first OVA of Noblesse — Noblesse: Awakening, animated by Production I.G. is mesmerizing. Even though there were some minor details removed and the story was changed, it was amazing. Every single moment of that OVA was worth watching. I was really impressed with I.G. and was hoping they'd do great with this anime too. Alas, I was mistaken. This adaptation of Noblesse is nothing more than to give hatred to webtoons in general. None of the adapted webtoons gave a sense of "hype" nor "promote" the webtoons. Here are some of the major faults in Noblesse anime: 1. The anime started from the point where the OVA (Noblesse: Awakening) ended. They didn't bother to give some highlights of what happened before. Majority of the audience were clueless about the scenario and had to do a little bit of research before continuing. But not all of them were to energetic for it, as they simply dropped it and rated it 1 and moved on. Just shows how awful the direction of the first episode was. 2. The anime changed the location from South Korea to Japan. Now this is something that sticks out for me. Why change the location entirely just because it's being animated in Japan? Personally, this felt like they're either trying to claim that Noblesse is a Japanese story or have a superior mentality that anything animated in Japan will have the details of Japan only. Which in my opinion, is a very bad move. Not only did they change the location, but also changed the names of the characters from Korean to Japanese. This also happened with Tower of God where Bam's name was changed to Yoru to accommodate a Japanese name. But that too was a bad idea. The idea of changing something entirely to a native perspective by discrediting the official name is disrespectful. It's like Japanese mangaka creating a new Batman story, but instead of naming Batman as Bruce Wayne, they name him Wozaru Koto. Did that make any sense? Nope. So, in general, I found this pretty bad and it made me enjoy the story less. 3. The plot was changed as per the studio's need to adapt only certain things to fill in 13 episodes. It's not a new thing for the anime to be different than the adapted material. But to literally change everything? That's a no bueno. As far as I can see, they butchered major parts of the story. When the poster was revealed for the anime, Raskreia was also included in there. Which pretty much made me confirm that the anime was adapting everything till the end of Lukedonia. As a person who read the entire webtoon of Noblesse, I knew it was going to be horsecrap. The anime robbed us of key moments such as thrills, excitement, and the joy of learning something new in the story by skipping most of the things. 4. The characters are weird, weak and too emotional. After watching Episode 13, I couldn't help but facepalm. They made Raskreia out of all characters to be a normal girl with feelings. No, that's not the Raskreia we know. In the webtoon, Raskreia doesn't know it's Cadis who has infiltrated in Lukedonia until he steps in the tomb room. She does have the idea that Cadis was a traitor, but doesn't know his whereabouts for centuries. She's mostly shown as a proud character who can take her own decisions without hesitation. Though she does take a few bad decisions. And for the love of god, she doesn't grovel like a girl who has just been dumped by her crush. So far, all I saw was how they belittled the anime that it's not even funny to laugh at. 5. Character Designs Almost 50% of the characters shown in the anime have a weak design as compared to the webtoon. Raizel's entire body is weak, with his hair being totally different; Seira's face and hair are different; Gejutel's beard is different; etc. In short, their main plan to make the anime bad worked. 6. Voice Actors Now, I don't really want to be picky in terms of voices, but I need to state it. The studio didn't do a good job hiring appropriate voice actors. In my opinion, it felt as if they just chose whoever signed up for it. When reading the webtoon, I always read Regis' lines in the voice of Toshiro from Bleach, since it resembles him a bit. But here, the impact wasn't the same, but it wasn't that bad either. And Karias' voice was very different. That I didn't like. In the end, I'd like to say that this was a very adaptation of the webtoon. Crunchyroll did a very bad job in promoting it. Though they got what they wanted — Publicity. If you're wondering to watch the anime of Noblesse, I suggest you stop right away. You'll miss out on a lot of things and won't get the joy of reading the original story. That is all.

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