Ars no Kyojuu

Beast of Ars felt like a JRPG consisting of colorful and visually attractive main characters, with a fairly interesting setting and lore, but with the gameplay being an afterthought, and having dungeons and bosses that are nerfed to "Baby Mode". It's been tagged as Action, Adventure, Fantasy Anime. But it barely got any "ACTION" as it only had a few battle scenes which only lasted a few minutes, if not seconds when it does happen. It is also lacking in the "ADVENTURE" aspect since they barely struggled to get to their 'Main Story Quests' destinations. And the closest to "FANTASY" it got was making me fantasizeabout Jiro's "Giant Beast" spearing through Romana's "Ars". (Excuse the childishness. Been holding it in for 3 months.) I genuinely wanted this Anime to be at least an overall fine one. I quite appreciated how the main characters and the setting weren't that hard to connect to from the get-go. Not that it says much about its level of quality though. But, considering it had a mediocre animation, those little things were quite considerable. But alas, it failed where it matters the most… the payoffs. Every battle that was presented as "dangerous", "threatening" and/or "big deal" ended in a blink of an eye by quickly giving enemy monsters a single poke to their big red eyes. And more disappointingly, the supposedly main boss immediately unleashes their final form without having to be pushed to their limit but still ended up defeated in just a snap. (Frieza and Cell must be disappointed) There seem to be a lot more important story details they kept for a sequel but, I won't be looking forward to it that much, now knowing how weakly they handle the conclusions to about everything they set up/build up. STORY (5/10): Some of the backstory set up are fairly interesting but are being wasted by poorly execution. The "World of Ars" setting exists but barely mattered until the last 2 episodes as the story focused more on the heartless-humans-plays-around-with-human-life cliché, which effectively made the Ars-related stuff feel like an afterthought. CHARACTERS (4/10): Jiro was given more background compared to the rest of the main characters. A warrior who has lost direction in life after losing his waifu in battle during a war, and now finds himself protecting someone, a "Kannagi", like his wife, after a chanced meeting as some kind of redemption. Kuumi, the heroine of the Anime, serves as the positivity symbol for the story, a damsel in distress, and an important key to Jiro's redemption, and by the last episode, an important key to the Ars lore as well, it seems (they're keeping it for the sequel). Unfortunately, her entire character is just the usual made-to-be-evil-but-turned-out-being-an-overly-kind-and-sweet-human-for-Anime-reasons. Romana and Myaa have been given some hint of mysterious/secretive background, with the former playing the responsible older-sister figure and healer role, and the latter being the sassy co-captain and initiator of banter. But there's not much to write about them yet as well. There's also Meran..... his there too. That Meran bit was supposed to be a joke but, it says a lot when the comic-relief duo of the enemy goons does more in their few seconds of screen time than him during an entire episode, who's mostly being a passive character, reacting to things being said and being a punching bag to Myaa's insults. The rest of the characters are not worth mentioning (Yet?). MUSIC (5/10) & ANIMATION (4/10): OP and ED are fairly fine. Fitting for an Anime, but not too generic, in my opinion. (I have both included on a playlist.) Side note: Maybe it's just me but, the "silhouette" sequence during the OP sequence looks kinda off. The VA for some of the characters were fine, if not fairly good (i.e. Jiro, Kuumi, Romana). Art for this is definitely… "very simple", to put it nicely. Faces are distorted from time to time, and of course, the lackluster battle animations. Not to mention, the random out-of-place CGI animations. But overall, I'd say the "very simple" old-school style animation fitted this Anime well enough. But this Anime really needed so much more action scenes than the very little amount it got. OVERALL (5/10): The material kind of showed some promise, which made me hopeful enough that it will be good enough by the end. But unfortunately, it gave me disappointing payoffs to most of the story bits that piqued my interest. With the biggest culprit of all being the lack of intense emotion-filled battles. And just to end this with some positive remark, I'd say: I don't regret the time I spent watching this Anime since the main characters had pretty good chemistry… and Meran is there too :P

Man what a letdown. It was a pretty decent original fantasy show; and I give a smidge more leeway to original projects since they are taking a bigger risk too. Premise was suitably interesting to keep me going through the show. Cast was likeable enough and had some decent story beats in it. Could have focused a little more than it did but that would have been a nitpick had it not been for that last episode. I was thinking as the episode was wrapping up; it's okay, I've seen worse, then they piss me off in the last 30 seconds to make the mildlydisappointing ending really disappointing. It's so unfortunate really, that the ending kills the show for me. There's not much to talk about in terms of production value. It's pretty average across the board so I don't have much to say about it other than the opening song is kind of catchy and the CG was okay most of the time. This is such a disappointing ending. I can't really recommend it to anyone barring a guarantee of a sequel season of which I am not confident in that happening.

This is a pretty darn enjoyable anime. The plotline felt fresh and the characters each seemed to have realistic motivations. The world is well-outlayed, and there's a healthy balance between seriousness and lightheartedness. It never felt like the shounen MC was too OP on his own, or that anyone was having too easy of a time. The ending felt a little rushed but it also left the door open for greater explanations. The politics and negotiation are well done, and I like that they don't under-write the character's plans and schemes. Also, the ero-fanservice is pretty minimal, with therebeing one self-sexualized character, and the rest portrayed without sexual overtones. This isn't a masterpiece of an anime or anything, but well worth a watch if you're into fantasy and like when characters actually treat with each other on a serious level.

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