The story starts off with a call-to-action for the hero, Alma Tandouj, to fight against the Darkstones that threaten the general population. Alma has the power of the Sacred Seven unlocked when he meets Ruri Aiba, a wealthy young girl set out to destroy the Darkstones and save her sister from a state of deep sleep. For now the setup of the series forms a standard formula: hero meets girl, girl unlocks powers, and they go fighting monsters together. There’s additional subplots thrown in about the history of the butler that serves her or how her sister is frozen in a crystal or why Alma has all these anger issues, but I never make any connection to the characters from these side stories.
Bear in mind, the characters are all incredibly shallow. They’re one-dimensional stock characters who motivations and personalities can be summarized in two or three sentences. There’s the main character with the dark past, the forgotten childhood friend who likes the main character and does everything to support him, the butler who was taught to have pledge everlasting loyalty, the ditzy girl who tries to make everyone happy, the brooding antagonist with equally dark past, the ally who’s actually a villain, etc.
Honestly, my favorite character was Hellbrick, and that was because he was the only one to put any emotion into his lines. He was a brick who could talk and that alone served to be more interesting than the rest of the characters. At one point, we find out that there is some suspicious research conducted by the “friendly” scientist guy, and part of the episode develops the ambiguity on whether the patient or the scientist is telling the truth. I got excited at the first possibly of character complexity before the scientist is revealed to be evil and begins doing evil things for evil’s sake. This is not how antagonists are supposed to be created. Sacred Seven isn’t trying particularly hard to come off as a children’s show, but it certainly will rely on the mechanics of one to get through the series.
The pacing of the series was a serious issue as well. Initially, I had the impression that Sacred Seven would fall into the monster-of-the-week routine with a new Sacred Seven power revealed. (I’m assuming there were seven of them.) The first few episodes are packed with action, and all of a sudden, we’re slammed with another school festival or beach episode to break it up. Don’t get me wrong. The fights are gorgeously animated and very well done. The problem is that everything else that surrounds the scene is just boring. Sometimes, I just feel unsympathetic to what the characters are experiencing. Sometimes, I have no idea what they’re doing. The direction of the series just meanders around between a few monsters and encounters before pulling a super-villain card in the end to up the stakes. In the final battle, I got the impression that the writers remember that there were several powers they hadn’t gotten the chance to use yet, so they tacked on layers of scenarios for the hero to use them.
The series is average overall. The story and characters aren’t terribly exciting and full of flaws while the action scenes are visually pleasing. The ingredients to make an excellent series were all here, but Sunrise somehow slipped when putting it all together. And this is baffling when looking at the animation quality of the episodes. Good money was put into animating the fight scenes especially, enough to the point where it makes me wonder how much money was pulled from the other departments to pay for it. For any other studio, I’d consider the series a wash and move on. However, this is Sunrise, as in they-make-the-Gundam-series Sunrise, as in Code-Geass Sunrise, as in Cowboy-freaking-Bebop Sunrise, as in the-studio-that-excels-at-making-excellent-mech-and-fighting-animes Sunrise. I’m not saying I’m mad at the studio for making this. I’m just disappointed.
