During a protracted civil war that pitted the North against the South, the outnumbered Northerners used dark magic to create monstrous super-soldiers called Incarnates. Now that the war has ended, those Sacred Beasts must learn to make their way in a peaceful society, or face death at the hands of a Beast Hunter. Nancy Schaal Bancroft, the daughter of an Incarnate, turns to hunting the hunter herself. But once she catches up with her quarry, she discovers hard truths about the lives of these Sacred Beasts – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: TBA
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: In the young country of Patria, a competition for resources pits the armies of the North and South against one-another. The North is vastly outnumbered, but they have a special tool at their disposal – the Incarnates, unholy fusions of man and beast that have unimaginable power. This helps tip the scales to the side of the North, and hopefully, eventually toward peace.
When one of the Incarnates goes rogue, the downside of this incredible power becomes apparent. Eventually, their human souls become unable to fight off the beast personas within, and only death can stop their rampage. Elaine, the doctor who created the Incarnates, plans to kill them one-by-one to prevent anything bad from happening. Unfortunately, after she fires a fatal shot at Hank, captain of the squad, she’s murdered by Cain, one of her creations. Hank miraculously awakens two months later and learns that the war has ended, but the leftover incarnates are causing trouble across the land. He becomes a hunter of these rogue incarnates, in order to stop them from murdering the populace.
Impressions: The Summer Season sneaked up on me a little bit, but here we are. As the first series out of the gate, this one unfairly has to serve as a sort of representative, setting the tone for the season (at least until something mind-blowingly good or eye-burningly bad pops in to take its place). I almost added this series into my preview post, because the premise sounded sort of interesting to me. I held back, however, because I’ve been burned recently by series that look and feel similar (I’m talking about you, Fairy Gone). This feeling of straddling two emotional reactions does a good job of summing-up my opinion of this episode.
This episode is an anime flavored mish-mash of gritty action, goofy comedy, and supernatural mayhem that’s thus far only partially successful at any one of these aspects. As anime fans I think we become used to the experience of watching very serious story beats get obliterated by ill-timed comedic gags. It’s a type of tonal whiplash that can be done well, but more often than not just ends up sabotaging the overall feeling of an otherwise decent episode. This episode is by no means the worst offender in this regard, but there’s something a bit awkward about watching several scenes worth of beast-on-human carnage and then transitioning to a group meal time during which the characters are teasing one-another about their love interests. While I imagine this is what war can be like in some cases, and a little levity in a serious situation can be therapeutic, as an outsider looking in it simply feels unbalanced. In these scenes the adult characters also behave a lot like teenagers, which has always been a pet peeve of mine. Adults are fully capable of acting silly, but in ways that definitely don’t recall the clumsiness of adolescent person-to-person interactions.
I don’t consider predictability to be a negative trait in storytelling, because to some extent a narrative ought to be logical enough for viewers to work through it on their own. That said, this episode broadcasts some of its major plot points to the extent that there’s not really any mystery left to solve. The moment Hank talks about asking Elaine to marry him “after the war,” experienced viewers know that one or both of them is likely doomed; happy endings don’t manifest 3/4ths of the way into the first episode of an anime series, after all. Observant viewers will probably also notice that the Incarnates’ human forms are slowly overtaken by physical markers of their transformations (mostly colored splotches, though in the case of the Siren she starts sprouting some random feathers). I didn’t really read any descriptions of the story before watching the episode, but even I could tell that something bad was bound to happen as the characters started to look more and more like they were stricken with some kind of degenerative skin disease.
The bulk of the episode is mostly just set-up for Hank’s story, which doesn’t really seem to start until the final couple of minutes. I like the fact that the episode didn’t skimp on background information, because so many intro episodes dive right into flashy action sequences only to try to pick up the pieces afterwards. That said, there’s a whole other protagonist left to introduce (frankly she’s the one I’m more interested in now that I’ve read up a little bit on the basic story) and we only get a short glimpse of her right at the end of the episode and during the next episode preview. I’m admittedly much more interested in a girl’s/young woman’s story than I am in a tale of a man and his man-pain, but that’s just me.
The animation and visual quality throughout the episode is fairly passable, though it certainly won’t be winning any sakuga awards. In another example of the series’ tonal whiplash, some of the fight scenes are especially gory, with blood, dismemberment, acidic poisoning, and other sorts of violence that only ultra-powerful beast men would be capable of. I found it kind of gross and cartoonish, but worth noting for folks who are more sensitive to that particular brand of animated violence.
I think my instincts were correct in leaving this out of my seasonal preview post. This episode is a decent opener, and I get the feeling that this falls under the umbrella of “silly, violent action” without too many pretenses. It’s definitely not a series that excites me all that much, however.
Pros: The first episode takes its time setting up the background of the story.
Cons: There’s some tonal whiplash, as well as some man-pain.
Content Warnings: Violence (including some brief gun violence) and gore.
Grade: C