Monster Strike The Animation

A sort of continuation of the Monster Strike series of animation shorts found on their official YouTube channel, this series is broken up into several arcs loosely connected by shorts featuring Oragon and a mysterious girl version Oragon that all build toward a single conclusive chapter. I'll talk about each of the arcs separately and what I liked and what I think didn't work very well.

We're first introduced to Lucifer and a whole host of other angel type beings. It's all very loosely based on Christian folklore, the kind you won't find in the Bible but might find in something like Dante's Inferno or a ... Dan Brown book. While theologically I can't give it any points for accuracy, I did think it was an interesting section, telling a pretty grounded and human story about corruption within positions of power and betrayal from the people who are closest to you. It wasn't the most exciting thing in the world, but there were definitely worse arcs to come.

There was one bizarre and seemingly out of place episode in the middle of the first arc that introduced a minor character who wouldn't come back until way later. For this one episode the animation suddenly looks way worse, like it was done cheaply in MikuMikuDance or something. Like I say it felt really out of place and kind of ruined the pacing of an otherwise competent arc, because it completely derailed the story for an episode and wasn't about anything in particular.

Next we meet the Saber Class Heroic Spirit herself, King Arthur Pendragon of Camelot. Her first story isn't that interesting, and serves mostly as an introduction to her character. And if I had a quarter for every time I've seen a Japanese video game series portray King Arthur as a blonde woman I would have 2 quarters, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice. After a brief catch up with Lucifer and friends we get into what I think is wannabe Saber's first real character arc, fighting against the obnoxious disco diva lady.

I know that sometimes villains are portrayed a certain way to make it easier to hate them. They may be arrogant, flamboyant, over the top annoying, but it's okay because we're not supposed to be rooting for them or anything. When executed well these kinds of villains can actually be fun to watch, take all those classic Disney villains as examples, but I am not exaggerating when I say that every single excruciating moment where disco lady who's name I refuse to remember was on screen I contemplated giving up watching anime ever again. She is the worst. A team of top-of-their-field scientists working around the clock for decades in a lab to produce the most obnoxious character archetype ever gave up because they realized they couldn't outdo what was created here. Loud, narcissistic, petty, self-centered and loud, she's an amalgamation of everything I hate about the internet since it was given to teenage girls. Smarts phones were a mistake.

The worst part is that there is actually a really good story about redemption and learning to live without vanity that would have worked so well if the villain weren't so unbearable. I understand creating a narrative foil to the journey the hero is going through, but they didn't have to go so hard in that direction.

The next section of note is with King Solomon's granddaughter. It's confusing because her name is Solomon, but she's supposed to be descended from the actual King Solomon of Jewish history, like from the Bible. Does that mean the Arthur we met wasn't really the King Arthur from English folklore and just his daughter or something? I don't understand why they were fine gender-bending some historical figures but not others outright. I liked the story regardless. The rivalry between Solomon and her childhood friend was great. There's a reason rival characters are so common, it just works. With the villain I think it's funny when they try to paint a bad guy's motivations as sympathetic later on in the story like, "I had no choice I needed to convince the real bad man I was on his side or he would have killed you," and that's just supposed to make all the horrible things he did okay.

Noah's section was an interesting one. Noah is not typical someone you think of as a hero, and you certainly don't picture a shounen protagonist. All the leads up to this point were female so it was interesting to see a male character run the show for once. Despite it being an odd pick amongst the other historical and religious figures they actually kind of made it work, and he really did manage pull off the action hero vibe. I think the strongest emotional turnaround in this whole series comes from this arc in the form of the littlest devil Chesed and his little redemption arc he goes through. It's a perfect example of how this series manages to put a lot of heart into each story, to try to get you as invested as possible with these characters in the short time you have with them so that when they show up again you actually care.

There's another Lucifer arc right before the final confrontation that was actually really good. It was a murder mystery type affair with a countdown and a group of increasingly suspicious people all turning on each other. Really fun to watch and to try and guess who the real killer was. My money is always on the true culprit not even being among them, or it being all of them but the show still managed to surprise me. I won't give it away here.

When all the characters get together at the end it feels like quite an event. Not quite Avengers Endgame, more like the first Avengers when it was novel just to have 4 characters from different movies you liked on screen together at the same time. Looking back on how films have changed over the decade since that first Avengers movie it can seem quaint, but I remember at the time how completely blown away everyone in the theater was. It was kind of that same feeling with the end of this show after 50 or so episodes of build up. Seeing them all work together was cool, but as with the Avengers movies there is the problem of creating a villain that can stand out in any way beside such an ensemble cast. If you don't give your villain just as much build up as your heroes the audience is obviously not going to care much about their conflict. I just felt that it fell flat a little, like they were just fighting the generic concept of evil and not a real threat.

Overall I think I've changed my opinions somewhat having been forced to look back at this show a little more critically. I had it at an average 7 from me but I think I'll boost that to an 8. It was a good show, but it's going to feel more like watching Saturday morning cartoons than a real serious action show most of the time. There's a lot to like, but it's not so amazing that I can't look past it's flaws. I'm amazed that of all the reviews I've written this was the one a moderator singled out as being "spam," but I'm glad I took the time to rewrite it, as it gave me a fresh perspective. I'm sorry for saying tits.

8/10

Edit: I have seen 37 episodes now, and my love for this series has only grown. People who rated this series badly: Did we even watch the same anime???

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I've only seen 14 episodes of this series, so my opinion might change later on.

I seriously have no idea so far why this show has such a low score. Is it the 3D animation? In my opinion, the animation in this series is excellent. Are the people who are rating this fans of the actual game? Is there something I'm missing here? I don't get it.

I'm watching this series for the 2021 Anime-Watching Challenge, and I was ... very concerned when I saw the score. I was scared this should would just drag on with no end in sight. Because I went in with such low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised at how much this sereis has blown me away. While the characters are all definitely anime characters made to appeal to the many tastes of waifu hunters, I still really like them. The animation and the art style are absolutely gorgeous. The story is really engaging, too!

The anime is split up into several chapters. The main story is that of the Fallen Angel Lucifer, who was cursed through means that I can't reveal, due to spoilers. There are little interludes here and there that focus on other characters from the Monster Strike game(s?), which may frustrate some people who are more invested in Lucifer's story.

I really can't find anything to complain about in this series. It's definitely no masterpiece, but it's a lot of fun and really pretty. I really hope my opinion doesn't sour in later episodes. Please give Monster Strike The Animation a chance!

With that, I will end this review by thanking you for taking the time to read it. I really appreciate it!

I am so disappointed in this series. I first watched episode 0 and had some high hopes. The animation looked great on the little red monster (I don't think I ever got his name in the show), and when we get transported to the Strike World through the box monster's film projector eyes, it looked like it came straight out of a video game! I also became very intrigued by Lucifer's story in the first eight episodes, and I thought to myself, "if this is the main story line, why isn't it called 'Monster Strike: The Fallen Angel' "? That would have been an eye-catching ... and less confusing title (since there's already a "Monster Strike Anime" title within the franchise). And then episode 9 happened. And for no reason at all, we get introduced to Pandora in a world or sector of the world completely different from that of Lucifer's. The production quality also fell completely in this episode. Pandora looked like a Hololive character and showed very little emotion, the servant next to Zeus couldn't move his neck and arms like a normal human person, the scene with the Fickle Kid looked absolutely ugly, top to bottom. It was terrible. And this was a part of the official Lucifer series on the YouTube playlist for some reason. It had no reason to exist, and to me it was useless advertising pandering. I guess nobody liked seeing Pandora in the middle of a Lucifer series when it was released, because after that the episode number would skip at times, indicating when there was a filler episode that wasn't related to Lucifer. You can see that at the bottom of the playlist it also suddenly skips up to episode 57 from 38, which means there were a lot of side stories or filler episodes that were probably just more advertising or fanservice folly.

As for the main storyline itself, I had been intrigued in Lucifer's origin story like I had mentioned before. However, things went downhill by the time Lucifer got the stone that controls the Sugrat weapon. Not only did the villains win by episode 20 and the next three episodes I saw before dropping out were just battle filler that had no impact on the overall story, but there was important exposition that could have been explained much earlier when Lucifer and Xaphan first met Beezlebub, or even when Lucifer found the stone. You mean to tell me after the stone was destroyed that it had Sugrat's mother in it? Why didn't you say anything five episodes ago? And whoever the annoying ca-ca-ca guy is needed to be nerfed, there was no way he could have been defeated if he can just regain and redistribute his mass however he pleases. After he and fire boy opened up some inter-dimensional gate, I decided that I had enough and dropped out. It is sad that I dropped out now because I wanted to know how the little red guy was going to get involved, but honestly even though I liked it and it was cute and I wanted to give him a birthday present, there was unfortunately no need for him either. Overall, I am very disappointed and I would not recommend this to anyone.