Übel Blatt
Ubel Blatt
Übel Blatt～ユーベルブラット～
Once admired as the strongest swordsman of the empire, Ascheriit is betrayed and brutally killed by seven of his brothers-in-arms after defeating the evil forces of Wischtech. Twenty years later, Ascheriit's name has fallen into infamy while his murderers are now admired everywhere and dubbed as the Seven Heroes. However, Ascheriit returns from the dead as a half-elf named Köinzell with only one goal in mind: to take revenge on his old companions. Soon joined by new allies who share his thirst for justice, Köinzell will stop at nothing to expose the crimes of the Seven Heroes and find ultimate solace. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
Synopsis
Once admired as the strongest swordsman of the empire, Ascheriit is betrayed and brutally killed by seven of his brothers-in-arms after defeating the evil forces of Wischtech. Twenty years later, Ascheriit's name has fallen into infamy while his murderers are now admired everywhere and dubbed as the Seven Heroes. However, Ascheriit returns from the dead as a half-elf named Köinzell with only one goal in mind: to take revenge on his old companions. Soon joined by new allies who share his thirst for justice, Köinzell will stop at nothing to expose the crimes of the Seven Heroes and find ultimate solace. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
Characters
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Trailer
Reviews(20)
KANLen09
March 28, 2025
Übel Blatt — Congrats on conducting a speedrun that'll lose your audience right from the get-go. How did this happen and go so out of hand? I am a firm believer that when shows present their content in the typical fashion, it needs to be in the 3Cs: clear, concise, and consistent. Yet, some people just don't share that sentiment and proceed to yank the standard that's given in the vein of The Promised Neverland's bastardized sequel, rushing through the source material and providing little to no context; that, at the end of the day, may be what the anime envisioned it to be, but withmany crucial sacrifices along the way. And in this Winter season, there's one very respected work that got the Promised Neverland treatment so bad that I don't even know where to start: mangaka Etorouji Shiono's Übel Blatt (Evil Blade in German), one of the earliest dark fantasy stories serialized from 2004 to 2019 that saw its success internationally, to the point of being awarded in the seinen category of the Japan Expo Award in 2008 and even making it to France's Top 15 manga at one point. Let's go from the top: being Clear of the story. With Übel Blatt being one of the forefronts of the dark fantasy genre, giving way to series like mangaka Daiki Kobayashi's Ragna Crimson (which received Silver Link's adaptation from Fall 2023 to Winter 2024), you can tell that the manga series was at one point a huge influence on people wanting to create stories in the same vein, which is a clear sign that there's a fandom out there for such stories of violence, gore, and sexual predation that are unapologetic and captivating. Such is the likes of author Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, which is how the revenge story of Köinzell, a half-elf child most distinguishable for the scar over his left eye, is on a quest of revenge against those who betrayed and killed him in the medieval fantasy landscape. At this point I must warn you that although much of the review's context is from the anime, the manga itself provides so much depth that it's most baffling how director Takeshi Naoya could offer to re-edit much of its story to the point of being unexplainable (please refer to the ANN interview that's done recently). If you thought that the series' story is just too much of an infodump to understand, the anime started at Volume 1, gravely skipping Volume 0, which provides context for how everything came to be, and it's important context that was sadly missing in the anime. The TL;DR is that there were 14 elite warriors (dubbed the Fourteen Lances) commissioned to deal with the evil nation of Wischtech that manifests itself in dark magic and powerful weapons. But the same group of warriors faltered along the way, losing some to the gravities of the land, leaving only 7 out of 11 heroes who abandoned the quest and the remaining 4 warriors eventually finishing the deed. However, it's at this point that the 7 warriors would ambush and eliminate the 4 to steal their credits and accomplishments and dub themselves the Seven (False) Heroes that supposedly were the ones who defeated Wischtech while branding the 4 as Traitorous Lances who had sold their souls to the evil nation itself, despite being the ones actually credited for the quest completion. And one of them is Ascheriit, a young boy whose potential is seen in swordsmanship to be tuteled from and help out the elite warriors and unceremoniously branded as a Wischtech defector. The years of betrayal lasted for 20 years, which is when Ascheriit came back as the half-elf Köinzell to exact revenge on the Seven Heroes who claimed credit for the work that they did not conduct. The concise portion is overall done rather subparly, though to the extent of the limited runtime when it comes to anime, it's a much-needed sacrifice, or does it feel intentional to cut content and leave it as it is? Going through much of Köinzell's revenge story against the Seven Heroes should tell you that he's really out to get their heads, and his half-elf self being able to be empowered by the twin moons of the world for some serious power. The journey that takes him to cities and nations wherever each of the Seven Heroes resides, while being on the chase as the glorified "Hero-Child" alongside his aides of smuggler Wied and underground tavern owner Altea, as well as Peepi, who has been with him from the very beginning, as well as the young and promising girl of Aht, Köinzell can't clearly do his revenge story on his own and needs help from all avenues that he can muster to deal his captors a serious blow. Director Takeshi Naoya even goes so far as to do a switcheroo around the characters for Köinzell's personal growth, which clearly is evident of the evolution of the MC himself. And yet, because of the extensive focus on him, bringing in censorship to remove all traces of sexual and erotic elements serves as his answer, alongside his idea of using iaido for swordsmanship skills and even going as far as to draw inspiration from his childhood love of Knights of the Zodiac for this. In other words, the de-sanitization of the source material itself...which, as you can tell, is NEVER good to draw out the full potential of the work itself (which is actually doable but omitted for reasons we'll never know). The consistency, however, brings about all of the negative connotations of why the anime is ultimately inferior to the manga. At first, I thought that Satelight and Staple Entertainment coming for a collab would help give the series some oomph, but it's undoubtedly clear that little to no effort was put into the anime at all. Sure, Takeshi Naoya did quote the statement of Satelight's involvement being only in the CG department and the artwork being "beautiful, perfectly capturing the fantasy world," for which I'll give credit for the cinematography here. However, that's no excuse for bad production, which in this show, is ALL OVER THE PLACE, and you can't shake it after seeing through the piss-poor animation, especially for a high-octane fantasy series like this one. At least music composer Shun Narita had the composition alright for the anime, which may still not serve as a sigh of relief given all of the issues involved in other areas. And as much as I can praise GARNiDELiA's long-awaited return for the OP, which is a good song, Hina Tachibana's ED song just left me with mixed feelings of how to be properly engaged for a soothing song in the midst of such violence and gore. Ultimately, what you get from an Amazon Prime exclusive show is the pandering of expectations with a more-than-complicated story and premise (that's not hard to understand, just interpreted VERY differently from the source material), compelling but unfulfilled characters (that are not explored much), and a production so off the charts that you can't even fathom surviving on the 3-episode rule. Just read the manga from scratch; the anime should be avoided AT ALL COSTS for being butchered recklessly...unless you're like the director himself to say, "If you can enjoy it, then that's a stroke of luck."….to which I say: "Please don't push your luck."
