Zetsuen no Tempest

Yoshino Takigawa, an ordinary teenager, is secretly dating his best friend Mahiro Fuwa's younger sister, Aika. But when Aika mysteriously dies, Mahiro disappears, vowing to find the one responsible and make them pay for murdering his beloved sister. Yoshino continues his life as usual and has not heard from Mahiro in a month—until he is confronted by a strange girl who holds him at gunpoint, and his best friend arrives in the nick of time to save him.

Yoshino learns that Mahiro has enlisted the help of a witch named Hakaze Kusaribe to find Aika's killer. However, the witch has been banished to a deserted island due to infighting within her clan. Hakaze's brother, Samon, selfishly desires to make use of the Tree of Exodus' power, in spite of both his sister's opposition and the impending peril to the world. With Hakaze out of the picture, it is now up to Yoshino and Mahiro to help her save the world, all while inching ever closer to the truth behind Aika's death.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Fuwa, Aika Main

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Takigawa, Yoshino Main

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Kusaribe, Hakaze Main

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Fuwa, Mahiro Main

Toyonaga, Toshiyuki Japanese

Yamamoto, Evangeline Supporting

Mizuki, Nana Japanese

Kusaribe, Samon Supporting

Koyama, Rikiya Japanese

Hoshimura, Junichirou Supporting

Nojima, Hirofumi Japanese

Kusaribe, Natsumura Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Hanemura, Megumu Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Kusaribe, Tetsuma Supporting

Yoshino, Hiroyuki Japanese

Saitou, Shunsuke Producer

Maeda, Toshihiro Producer

Furukawa, Shin Producer

Yonai, Noritomo Producer

Reviews

Apr 7, 2024

ArchangelEST

Recommended

Zetsuen no Tempest is an ambitious Shakespearean psychological suspense drama that tackles mysteries and romance in a contemporary world with fantasy themes, and isn't even afraid to drop in whole loads of comedy for good measure. It swaps focus between its various genres and themes on the fly, but does so beautifully.


Animation / Art / General Visuals - 9/10
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The show brings top notch visuals, with beautiful scenery, and well animated action scenes and character expressions. Because the anime touches on so many different genres, and has such a high focus on psychological themes with its characters, the animation quality is needed to give those themes ... enough weight. You can really see and feel the emotions the characters go through in their struggles and joys.


Sound / Music / Voice Acting - 9/10
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Great OP's and ED's, mixed with beautiful classical music themes through-out the show, coupled with top tier voice acting for several of the main cast. There's little to nitpick.


Story - 9/10
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The story of Zetsuen no Tempest is not a simple one to condense into a review. It a Shakespearean story of a fantastical concept that threatens all existence, enveloped in a story of mystery and romance, revenge and acceptance, executed through psychological drama that keeps you guessing what happens next as you try to get a handle on the characters and their histories and deeper personal stories.

Zetsuen no Tempest contains so many different genres and themes within itself, that it might be off-putting to some people. You can go from deep psychological drama and mystery, into pure romance, into pure comedy and slice of life, into shounen-esque action on a dime.

But the way these genre and theme swaps are done, is in my opinion very impressive. It never feels out of place. When a mystery is revealed to have a romance component, it only makes sense for the romance theme to be expanded upon. When the romance theme is expanded, it's only natural for comedic moments to arise as teenagers interact with one-another in casual settings. And it's natural for all that to immediately fall back into deeper psychological themes when the story needs to progress further.

It is a beautiful mix of different genres that never over forces itself.

The mysteries keep you guessing for the entirety of the show, the romance themes evolve till the very last scenes, the psychological dives into the human mind are always in discussion. It's a great ride.


Characters - 9/10
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While the show has one character that can be consider the main protagonist, in truth there are multiple characters who share a lot of screen time and have leading roles to play in the story.

Yoshino and Mahiro are two teenage boys of vastly different yet similar personalities who have developed a unique friendship.

Yoshino is more laid back, allowing himself to get caught up in life, while Mahiro is head strong and energetic, looking to take on the whole world.

When the story forces both of them into action, they struggle with the emotional whiplash of losing a loved one, trying to deal with it in their own way, all the while trying to sustain their unique friendship in the process. Yoshino opts into bottling up his emotions, struggling to see any reason to take actions because the world is what it is. While Mahiro seeks revenge, refusing to accept such an irrational concept of a loved one being taken away from him without warning or explanation.

Mahiro's younger sister, and Yoshino's secret girlfriend, Aika, whose death is the catalyst for the story, is a truly unique character that adds a complex layer into the trio's relationship and the story that follows.

Hakaze, a fantastical magic priestess tasked with saving the world, makes a mutual deal with the boys to help one another. She's head strong and capable, but also a sheltered young girl who cannot help but to get swept up in the romance drama of the two boys and Aika whose existence and demise is the catalyst for it all.

Several additional characters also have prominent roles and while many of them are less explored, their personalities and actions make proper sense and are easy to get a handle on. Nobody feels out of place in the story, and everyone has their roles to play. A sign of a good cast.


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Total - 9/10

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Zetsuen no Tempest is an amazing anime that effortlessly mixes several different genres and themes into one coherent and enjoyable ride that should please fans of many preferences.

Whether you like fantasy stories, or mysteries. Psychological drama or romance. There's something for everyone.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Aug 20, 2022

OneFaintingRobin

Mixed Feelings

This feels like a tricky one to talk about, because my feelings on it drastically change depending on which part of 'Blast of Tempest' we're talking about. In fact, the two halves of this show feel like the beginning and ending of two similar but ultimately different shows entirely.

The first half, in all honesty, is pretty fantastic. It's got an interesting tone, a little melodramatic, with solid worldbuilding, and a really solid premise. It's something of a road trip story, with three different but complimentary protagonists, a solid antagonist, and a great mood that lets itself have levity but is also pretty dark and interesting. ... It all leads up to a final confrontation, at the midpoint, that perhaps takes an episode longer than it needs to be (it takes up the best part of six episodes), but even then just about gets away with it with incredibly solid character writing, and a very fun battle of wit and logic, that has plenty of fun dipping into some more philosophical places, giving a satisfying conclusion to that part of the story. Honestly, if the story had ended there, with a couple of tweaks to iron out some final plot points, I'd have had basically no notes.

The second half, in comparison, is... mixed. Not bad, definitely not bad. There's a lot that I do like. I'm generally a fan of stories drastically shifting their premise after key events (I'm a RWBY fan for a reason), and I don't think it was a bad tactic here. Unfortunately, the issue (I'd assume largely stemming from the source material) seems to lose sight of what it was actually trying to be as it goes. The first four-and-a-half episodes of the second half feel incredibly light on a lot of meaningful events, and the story feels a little meandering for a lot of this second half. Things do happen, technically, but it feels like it's been stretched out over more episodes than it really had need for. Things to pick up a little going into the last couple of episodes, there are some decent revelations that managed to feel satisfying, if not entirely surprising. But then the last couple feel a little aimless again, or, at least, a little confused.

But it's the character side where it really starts to get trickier. One character, a very self-assured and interesting person in the first half, with a huge amount of personal character details that could have been mined for drama, slips into primarily being driven by romantic feelings, a somewhat disappointing move that removes some dimension from her character. And the two protagonists, while still being at the front-and-centre of the story, somehow also manage to seem superfluous to it. The framing is definitely that they're key parts of the conflict, and certainly they don't have NO impact on it, but as the show ended, I realised that they were almost entirely unimportant to the final conflict.

But, after the dust settles, there also is a pretty satisfying set of conclusions for the characters. I certainly didn't question where anyone ended up, those places felt generally character consistent, it was absolutely fine. Which leaves me feeling very mixed about this show (MAL's new review rating system coming in handy). At points, it's fantastic, but overstretched material leaves the plot feeling very thin in places, that ultimately made it very difficult to settle into the drastic shift in premise. And, at the end, it leaves a muted impact, a ending satisfying enough, certainly not frustrating, but without giving me anything to make me think I'm going to think about this show much in the future.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 16, 2023

MongoDB

Not Recommended

Really disappointing ending. Finishing this show will leave you with a feeling of 'That's it?'.

All this tension and build up over so many episodes just to be shrugged off and thrown in the trash in the last few episodes. A total shift in genre and story that feels so out of place and unwanted.

I leave a 6 for the interesting moments it had. But like many works of art, the ending falls flat and leaves a feeling of longing, an expectation for something much better, something to fill the missing gap that the show leaves.

A dozen of episodes of teasing for big things and ... when they are revealed, the 'twists' and climax end up leaving you speechless and shocked, not out of awe, but at how simple, nonsensical, and uninteresting they are.

Somewhere along the story the author clearly lost motivation to finish writing an enthralling story. And they just tossed in the most basic and meaningless conclusions and answers, completely disrespectful of the audience's intelligence.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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