Cestvs: The Roman Fighter

As an Anime-only watcher, it is a enjoyable series for any martial arts fan.
The fights so far are actually pretty good and pretty 'realistic' which is rare for anime shows.

Ofcourse It's CGI which for most people is a downside, but imo the (unique) setting and the fight scenes make up for it.

Story wise, nothing really special, it's about gladiators, what else to expect right.
currently it's ongoing on episode 6/11. It would be cool to see a longer series around the same time period and setting.

...

TLDR: Cestvs The Roman Fighter is an enjoyable watch for anyone who likes martial
arts/fighting sports anime.

Yes you can say this Anime is trash, why wouldn't you? it butchered the Manga, BUT...

I'm an Anime only and saw this anime is getting a lot of hate, then I got to know that the studio skipped about 60% of the story. For Manga readers, yes this is such a let down.
Although I think in the future (if they continue regardless of the hate) they will cover the rest as a flashback, that would probably make it a lot better; so I'm being optimistic here.

The use of CGI is a lot more than I expected but it doesn't matter much to me, ofcourse ... 2D looks a lot better and enjoyable but it's okay with CGI too. (in my opinion)

We see some good fighting styles that were quite enjoyable, and the next season is gonna have a lot of them, so that's a plus point for me (atleast)

I don't know why everyone is taking this too seriously.
Also, I hope Bandai do some justice to the Manga in the next season even as the flashbacks.

I decided to watch this anime because I'm a sucker for history and I'm a huge Hajime no Ippo fan, which is an anime about boxing. This sounds like the perfect anime for someone like me, right? Let's start off with the visuals.

Animation:
1) CGI usage most of the time. Character movement seems incredibly slow, clunky and worst of all, it breaks immersion;
2) Not a fan at all of the character design


Sound:
1) the soundtrack is okay
2) Most of the voice actors hired are incredibly experienced and famous. However, the seiyuu chosen for Cestvs is a rookie and I find that interesting. ... He did a solid job, giving a believable performance to the role.


Story and characters:
1) It pretends to be historically accurate by throwing random pieces of trivia to the audience;
2) The characters are boring and so is the narrative. Ancient Rome's brutality and violence are absent from this anime. Slaves, fighters and gladiators weren't killed easily for no good reason. The Roman nobility loved violence and gore. To have Nero, a real Roman Emperor and one of the most vicious ones, be confused and scared of violence was a major turn off. This guy used to doom ancient christians to serve as torches to light up the roman streets at night. Even as a kid, he would already be numb to violence as a roman noble. There are too many examples but this gives you an idea of what to expect throughout the 11 episodes;
3) I didn't read the manga but I was told (and certainly seems that way) several events were skipped between the 1st and 2nd episodes. These events aren't addressed again, except in very brief flashbacks with little to no explanation. It's a major flaw in storytelling and hurts the flow of the story. It's hard to feel connected to a character and his struggles if you don't get to experience it. This is one of the major flaws on this anime;
4) Slaves interactions with roman nobles is way too inaccurate to take this anime seriously
5) Some episodes begin with some very obnoxious and long flashbacks. Some of them took about 4 minutes in total just of footage already shown previously.
6) The ending is obviously trying to get a sequel announced but I honestly hope it doesn't happen. If you want to do a story set in a historical setting, you have to respect certain historical aspects because otherwise it feels that the audience was tricked into watching something entirely different.


In conclusion, it gets a 4/10. Awful visuals, boring characters, historical inaccuracies and skipped important events that later on the audience is supposed to understand through very brief flashbacks.