Spring 2021 First Impressions – Seven Knights Revolution: Hero Successor

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: TBA

Source: Smartphone Game

Story Summary: The world was once saved from darkness by heroes chosen by the Goddess. Now that the land is once again haunted by terrible, demonic beasts, individuals called the Seven Knights wield the souls of those heroes. Nemo is a student about to enter Granseed Academy, when his village is attacked by man-eating demons. Luckily he’s rescued by Faria, one of the Seven Knights. As they ride toward Granseed Academy, their train is attacked by a demon and Nemo is summoned by the Goddess to receive the power of an ancient hero. Using the power of succession, Nemo helps rescue Faria.

Impressions: One of my most hated phrases in media consumption is “what did I just watch?” It’s almost as irritating to me as “you really have to be on drugs to enjoy this.” Yet after watching this episode, I’m left questioning what I just watched because even though I’m literally typing this 2 minutes after finishing the episode, my memory of anything that happened in it is fading quickly. I think it’s because the setting of this game-based anime series is an indistinct conglomerate of many fantasy concepts that ends up just feeling mind-numbing. This is one of those properties that tosses out fantasy terminology like cheap candy at a parade, luring people in with a shiny wrapper but tasting like stale butterscotch.

Granted, there are some parts of it that I liked. Ignoring the fact that the characters activate their powers using what look like collectable trading cards, the transformation that Faria undergoes to achieve her successor powers settles into a cool visual mid-point between her typical character design and the design of Eunomia, the hero soul with whom she’s contracted. I also thought the demon designs were appropriately gross, with creatures devouring and then infesting various townfolk and mutated limbs generating at will.

Beyond that, though, I don’t really have that much to say about the episode, and that’s perhaps the most damning thing about it. The animation quality is workmanlike; it does the job during action scenes but nothing about it is there to “wow” anyone. Nemo is sort of your typical dweeb who trips and falls into some OP abilities at the convenient time. Faria starts as a badass and then steps aside to let our brave hero be even cooler than her, despite his lack of experience. The material is all very expected and mostly uninteresting as a stand alone anime series. I suspect it might be more interesting to gamers who’ve played the source material.

Pros: As I mentioned, the character and monster designs are decent and add a little bit of spice to a mostly dull affair.

One thing that did hit me the right way is that the setting of the series is more of a steampunk fantasy age, rather than your more typical medieval swords and sorcery environment. It briefly got me thinking about Final Fantasy 6, which I still have great memories of playing as a kid and which I still believe is one of the more creative entries in the series.

Cons: Honestly, most of the episode is not bad, but its fatal flaw is that it’s simply uninteresting. The entire introduction just feels rote, to the point that nothing about it is particularly memorable.

Content Warnings: Humans being consumed by monsters. Violence, including sword and magical violence. Minor injuries with blood.

Would I Watch More? – No, I doubt it; it’s just not interesting to me.