Blade & Soul

When it comes to video game adaptations, there’s an incentive when it comes to please fans. Blade & Soul is a good example based off a game and one that failed to live up to any expectations. Based off a Korean MMORPG game produced by NC Soft, there’s a truckload of problems I find that didn’t do well when adapting such a genre. But really, Blade & Soul isn’t anything special especially when the main characters are generic to the core. It’s soulless per se.

For starters, we get a fantasy setting with beautiful landscapes and the feeling that you’re actually in a fictional world. That’s ... the initial impression the show first makes but it quickly loses its praise when we are introduced to its cast of characters – beautiful women wearing skimpy outfits. One such character is named Alka, with a very cold personality and a thirst for vengeance. From the beginning, we find out that she’s on a quest, to deliver vengeance as a way of revenge as result of someone that killed her master. Although the premise sounds promising, it derides itself with its setup when most of Alka’s persona is setup as solely being a warrior. As the titular character, she wields a dangerous blade along with a tattoo for a gimmick. And if that wasn’t cliché enough, she is hunted down as a bounty that countries has set up to claim her head on a plate.

Throughout the series, Alka suffers not just from characterization but also value, a sense that makes people underappreciate what she is doing. In the beginning, she is chased by some soldiers with guns (yes, guns in a series when blades are a prominent feature). But of course, she is able to avoid death with superhuman feats. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it all happens far too fast and makes the audience wonder what this purpose is. Really, a girl with a soulless personality wielding a blade and on a quest for vengeance should deliver more than just showing off her moves. The only hint we do get is some of the flashbacks we see between Alka and her master. Unfortunately, it feels subtle and lacking compassion because we don’t feel attached to their relationship. And speaking of relationships, Alka is on a sinking ship when it comes to forming one with any character. Literally, almost every character she meets during her quest dies. In retrospect, she is walking death flag that triggers your fate of doom.

As refined as the premise may be, the show feels less more of an adventure or quest but more like a cat and mouse game. From the first episode, it’s clear that many people want Alka’s head on a plate. Although she hunts Jin Varel (her master’s murderer), Alka becomes the hunted nearly every episode with pursuers. For a girl with such a cold personality, she doesn’t hesitate to defend herself and draws out meaningless fights. The action itself feels lifeless and solely seems to function as a way to show that Alka needs to survive in order to carry out her revenge. In short, Alka is a character that is hard to get attached to or sympathize about. In fact, many people in this show suffered more than she has so why does she get any more special acclaim?

The rest of the cast members doesn’t do much well with their characterization either. For instance, there’s Dan Roana who serves as the leader of the Pleasure Gang, a group that opposes the Palam Empire. While their motivations are different, its goal is the same as Alka; to carry out revenge for what they did in the past. Cliché as it sounds, the show also neglects any development as the premise of revenge is delivered with a lack of emotional attachment. Similarly, most characters seems to have mental breakdowns or suffered some sort of grim past. The key failure here is not just a lack of attachment the audience will feel distanced from but their characterization. Almost nothing is explained by some of the characters’ motivations and their stale influence towards Alka’s adventures is hardly memorable. Similarly, antagonists are generic with stereotypical inspirations and in general, a lack of focus in their persona. On the other hand, there’s some character development but not on Alka. Instead, they only come and then soon goes away like the wind as characters are killed by this show’s shenanigans.

As an adventurous series, the story is also plagued with weak direction and senseless action. There’s little purpose to what most of the characters do throughout each episode. For delivering a series about survival and revenge, there’s a lackluster development in any sense for Alka. It genuinely dismiss any sort of change with her character because her soulless personality. Even when the show tries to deliver some charisma such as Jin Hazuki’s bounty hunting ways, it ultimately fails to achieve its general purpose. It’s just the basic face value of the hunter and the hunted. Only the strongest survive and the weak perish. It’s generic and lacks melancholy from a series that could be potentially thought tearing. You won’t be shedding tears during Alka’s quest of revenge but rather confusion and despair, the action of shaking your head and wonder where this all goes to in the end. And speaking of endings, the show functions like a time bomb that explodes with destructive results, almost laughable by the conclusive episode.

The only hopes saving this show is its world concept and civilization. Its landscapes are beautiful and the world this show takes place in has a diverse population, especially in terms of races. Unfortunately, none of that really becomes a focus because the majority of the show focuses on Alka and her adventure. With a lack of world building and character dynamics, the only other noticeable feature I can say for this show would be the action. Because it adapts a serious tone with minimal comedy, the action can be a hit and miss. On some scenarios, it is honest with integrity and well-coordinated movements. The way Alka fights proves credibility of her worth and the violence itself is explicitly true to this show’s grim atmosphere. Otherwise, it can feel forceful and devoid of attractiveness when it feels repetitive. Some action scenes are also motivated by a lack of focus in its writing and to be honest, this show just fails to deliver its intentions. Hey, it even tries to do that with some terminology overview at the end of each episode. The key word here is ‘try’ because for whatever reason, they are usually left out from the main story. Shrug.

As a fantasy series, the production studio Gonzo focuses primarily on bringing this show’s world to life. And based on visuals, it does live up to its promise when it comes to artistic values and artwork. The world is decorated with thought provoking imagery and beautiful landscapes. Many of its structures also brings the feel of a fantasy to home. Character designs are also flamboyant and crafted to fit with the show’s premise. On the other hand, fan service is present throughout every episode whether it’s the camera angles, revealing outfits, or female character designs that makes them look more voluptuous than they should be. Oh and violence always become a centerpiece at every angle in the show so expect blood pouring like rice.

Soundtrack is hardly noticeable and the only time they seem to hold any promise is during action scenes when climatic events happen. The OST just seems to fade in the background with little emotional value because the way direction characters are drawn out. The cries and agony of despair can only be sympathized when we feel attached to the characters so most of their portrayals feels hollow. The scream of pain and despair feels empty with thoughtlessness. For Alka, her voice is hardly memorable as nearly every conversation she has with others feels monotonous and lacks feeling. The only credit I can give to the soundtrack would be the ED song for its symbolism, style (with the decorative dancing), and catchy tone. Otherwise, it’s nothing special.

Blade & Soul is a disappointment and a show that you should not come in with high expectations. What you get is an emotionless girl that I doubt anyone will feel attached to. Her quest feels hollow with little value besides to deliver her vengeance. Mindless entertainment is what you get from this show’s fragile story and incoherent developments. Forget the majority of the characters because none of them really stands out for more than an episode besides Alka. And while technical visual aspects saves the show from total destruction, it’s still hard to salvage from its own delivery. Such a shame too with a beautiful fantasy world at hand but everything that ultimately delivered is just a big ball of broken gadgets. Be aware.

Perhaps a thing of note is that Blade and Soul does not look nor feel like a video game (as one might have expected), just your standard fantasy fare with the magics, totally not loli/shota/furries and stuffs. Blade and Soul is essentially another Queen's Blade... You know, as in, lots of sword wielding thots and... stuffs. Though, it's nowhere near as sexually rampant as Queen's Blade. Instead, in it's place, Blade and Soul can manage to be more retarded. Whatever semblance of an actual story there may have been has surely been bastardized; but to what extent has it been butchered I wouldn't know. And ... it seems like I will never know for certain either since NCsoft will never make an English release of the damn game. In any case, what we have here are heavy handed conflict and resolutions, and a plethora of awkward brief as well as irrelevant flashbacks (except perhaps the flashbacks we see between Alka and her master) that happen for something the show is entirely alien to. A thing called "emotion".

But that's not to say that Blade and Soul is particularly painful to watch. No, you'll be able to marathon this with relative ease. You will at least not feel like your mind is being relentlessly cut to tiny pieces by an utterly shat-upon pacing and heaps and mountains of contrivances. It still pretty much has every other problem that typically plagues a video-game anime-adaption, though.

Which now brings us to the characters. One loli, three or four shotas, a wannabee cutesy stubborn drunk girl who suddenly turns to psycho bitch and back, a lady bar owner whose not afraid to get her hands dirty and is supposed to play the wise old hag yet is nothing of the sort.... Ugh, why am I even trying? One of the bad guys is a muscle bound oaf that does nothing but grunt! Everyone here changes whatever semblance of a personality they have as the plot demands it, particularly in the case of the obnoxious drunk girl and bar owner to jarring effect. And especially in the case with our dear lead Alka, she plays the role of the done-to-death assassin. One whose apparently supposed to be cool precisely because she's humorless and cold to the point where she might as well be holding a giant poster sign saying, "Please ask me the following question: 'are you even human?', thanks!". Only in her case, someone else would clearly have to write even THAT for her. She may be likable only in the sense that she might one day stop injecting herself with fifteen-hundred different tranquilizers on a daily basis.

The only real positive thing that came out of this mess was the ending theme. Which, curiously enough, is in stark contrast to the content of the show. That is to say, it has a lot of flow and emotion to it. Whatever the story was aiming for at the end of each episode, "RAINBOW" by LEGO BIG MORL took that trash and turned it into something that might make you think you're actually getting emotionally invested in.

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Not recommended. Unless you're in the mood to see nothing more than some boobs along with some silly sword action.

Blade and Soul, when i first knew about it i knew that it would be your typical mediocre anime.

Story - 3/10
The anime has a very weak plot and 80% of the it is just the pointless journey of Alka which has little to no connection to her so called revenge or whatsoever. The story only seems to come back at episode 10 and by then i think everyone has forgotten what the main plot is.

Art - 5/10
The art isn't bad but the design is not to my liking as it makes the characters seems more mature.

Sound - 6/10
I am judging this category ... based on the opening and ending song of the anime since i don't usually take notice of the soundtrack in anime.

Character - 2/10
Correct me if i'm wrong but i think there is absolutely no character development in this anime. Since there are no development, there is nothing for me to say.

Enjoyment - 3/10
I did not enjoy watching this anime and even hoped that it would end quickly so that i don't have to continue watching. (I don't like to drop a anime halfway through.)

Overall - 3/10
Overall this anime is bad. I've already expected it to be mediocre but didn't expect it to be that bad.

This is my first review so i'll apologies if i did anything wrongly :)

Blade and Soul is the latest game that is based on an actual MMORPG and not about people trapped in one. It mostly follows Alka, a mysterious swordswoman who is being hunted by the same people who murdered her master.


As stated the story is essentially about how Alka is trying to find the person who killed her master while at the same time trying to stay alive. To make matters worse, Alka herself has a bounty on her and can be identified easily by a tattoo on her body, meaning everyone is out to get her. On her journey she meets both friends and foe ... as she tries to free both body and soul.

The story background, while standard, sounds decent as a journey of self discovery. It's very hard to talk about why this does not work in this anime without talking about the characters first.

Alka herself has almost no personality at all. She is extremely reserved and rarely speaks. Near the end she gets some development because the story picks up for sake of finishing it and by then the viewer doesn't care. No connection has been made to Alka (or any of the characters) so when something happens to them it's hard to be interested.

It might be not as bad if Alka was the only character without a gleaming personality. The entire cast is bland and one dimensional. It might be said the main villain (Jin Varel) is essentially an evil version of Alka. Also, a couple of major character Karen, and Roana have the same issues Alka has in her development. It comes to late, done too fast, makes little sense, and no connection is made by the viewer to the character. To top it all off, there are reoccurring side-characters that seem to have no purpose at all but to take up time in an episode.

Now we can get back to the story. For the first few episodes things are very loosely connected and Alka is simply getting put into a different situation where she has to solve a problem. In other words, it goes nowhere. However, later on the story takes over and huge changes in the characters take hold. It's almost like watching two different shows. On top of that in the latter half you wonder what the point of anything that happened in the first half was besides simply meeting the rest of the cast.

Finally, we get to something good. The animation is really good and Alka herself is nice to look at. The sound is decent too. Overall the production values of the anime are fairly high. Also, anyone expecting a fan-service anime is going to be disappointed.

Overall the anime just had no balance. It had some decent fight scenes but almost all the attempts at comedy are tired. It doesn't really develop any characters and the couple times it does is ruined by pacing and placement. The show tries to get you to feel emotional but again, too early or too late. It's not even a good show for the sake of watching anime girls with large breasts. The game might be better than this.

First of all I would like to say that I was really excited about this one because we all know the Blade & Soul (game) is a big hit. But then it failed me...

Story: 3/10
The story overall is blurry and I don't think it's really interesting. To be honest I just finished watching the anime for the sake of finishing it. The episodes I think did not fit together to tell the story continuously, I think in general it's poorly made. Even the ending was so dull.

Art: 5/10
It was so pretentious. The characters when closed up are very defined but once it's not you'll see ... how everything sucks, it seems as if the characters are drawn by someone who doesn't even draw manga or whatever. I only did notice these changes come the latter part of the series tho, at first I think it's not there but after some episodes I dunno maybe the animators got bored or something.

Sound: 7/10
I think they did an okay job with the voice actors, they suit the characters well. I also like the ending song with the Proprietress dancing.

Character: 4/10
The characters are blurry at start and didn't even grow as a character at least for me. Except for the Proprietress, I like her characters and storyline. Besides her I think all the characters are poorly conceptualized. I also did not like how the antagonists don't really have something inside them that makes them act the way they are acting, it's just too vague.

Enjoyment: 2/10
If you're a fan of watching an anime with all the boobies bouncing around then maybe you'll enjoy this. I won't rewatch this one, it's a waste of time.
Overall: 4.2
It was a disappointment for me to watch this anime of the game that I wanted to play so much for a very long time. Even the gif(s) I made for this anime suck.

Story: 3
After watching 1º episode I expected a well designed story, maybe not the best, but it seem to be good. It has a lot of diferent powers and characters really interesting and you are waiting to know more about them and.... you will be waiting for it all the anime long. There´s no explanation that reveal the true of the story Thinks happend when they must and thats all. I still wondering why its named Blade and Soul. they only talk about soul in some moments that try to be intense and oving but they end up being crap. So they fucked up ... with the argument.

Art: 4
this anime seems to have some elements computered-animated, personally i dont dislike them, but excetp the main characters, the rest of the characters and the enviroment don´t have a good animation in my opinión. The other big problem with this anime are transitions, the studio thaat made this anime hasnt heard about them, putting the picture on black and turnning off the music isnt the right way to change scenes.( I left fanservice behind)

Sound: 2
I think thats the most important part of an anime, a good soundtrack can make you be glue to the screen and this anime dont have it. It has a pretty high number of songs and the opening isn´t so bad, but the rest of the music is completely generic, it transmit nothing, don´t matter if alka is fighting or about to die.

Character: 3
They are all females, OK. They all have big "OPPAIS", OK. The problem is that the have no history behind them, except alka that you will see some flashbacks about her life, almost the rest of the characters don´t have a past, purpose or a goal, they are part of the anime because the studio cound´t do an anime only with a character.

Enjoyment: 3
If u have nothing to see, or you want to see it while your doing another thing its okey. You won´t probably like it, but it will entertain you. The lastest episoies improve a little bit, and the last one, which is different form the rest, its the best.

Overall: 3

Contains spoilers, but still you should read as I'm telling you why you shouldn't watch this anime.

I'm writing this review just to warn people who come to watch this anime because of their interest in the game, like myself.

Beware, this anime is super bad, in every way, when it shows some good points, it's only let down by something else, nothing good comes from watching this anime, you'll lose interest after the second episode, and half way though you'll be forcing yourself to continue just for the sake of completion. Let me explain why this anime is so horrific:

1. The story... The story has some ... relations to the game, which is obviously expected, but it just doesn't have any punch to it, it's so bland, it hardly makes sense, there is no background story, no history. Sure, you know why Alka (the main character) is after Jin Varel, for revenge, but it's pathetic, it just follows Alka's path of vengeance and there is no plot what so ever here. It takes a twist towards the end of the anime, after Alka supposedly kills Jin Varel, but she comes back to life, but you don't even know she is coming back to life until she is actually up and walking and hunting down Alka again. And by the way, you never do find out why Jin Varel killed Master Hon (Alka's reason for taking revenge). Atrocious.

2. The art... The art could have been the one good point of this anime, and actually not being so bad, it was let down by the poor syncing and the dreadful animation. There were times where the characters were talking in animation, but actually no sound coming from them, no voice over, they were just mouthing or something? I doubt that was intended, it happened multiple times and it was so frustrating to see, it was cheap. There was another time, where a character was just walking on the spot, doing the same animation over and over, while they were talking over the top, like a game that had froze. So despite the art not being too bad on the eye, it was let down dramatically until the point where it was frustrating to watch.

3. The sound... Over dramatic breathing, makes you think you're watching hentai, and have to turn the volume down and be on the edge of your seat constantly listening out for your parents. At least the closing song was good (in my opinion).

4. The characters... Oh my gosh, where to even get started, the characters were so BORING. They had nothing about them, no history, or very vague history at most. There was no explanation as to how Jin Varel came impure, and how Alka was born into the clan of the sword. The main character Alka, hardly said a word, it was watching her static face and hearing her over dramatic breathing as things happened around her, she is utterly the most boring main character I have ever came across. The proprietress shows potential, however nothing comes of it, you don't really learn much about her, other than the fact that Alka killed her man in the past, you don't know how she developed her fighting skills, or how she became the proprietress, and that can be said for every other single character in this anime.

5. The enjoyment... Huh? There is none. I was bored throughout, despite one scene which looked like the producers put all their time and effort into, a battle between Alka and Jin Varel, and it still wasn't even that good to be fair.

Overall, if you're coming to watch this anime, because you play the game, you'll find some relations, but you won't learn anything about the game, and you certainly won't enjoy watching the anime. And that's my review, it turned into more of a rant, but how can that be helped, watch and you'll see. But please save your life and watch something more interesting.

The animation for the particular art style they chose, was THE LAZIEST I had ever possibly laid my eyes on. This show was atrocious overall. The story seemed fairly interesting in the first 2 episodes, but as it carried on everything became the question of "What the hell am I watching right now?" and not in a good way. The art was basic, but as the show progressed it got worse, by becoming more and more inconsistent and lazy. The animation quality was inconsistent. The same case as previously stated, as the show progressed, the quality dropped significantly, and in around episode 10-11--after I ... saw them animate fire the way they did, which in itself was pretty laughable--I was so done. Sound was probably the only thing about this show that was passable. The characters in the show had such generic personalities, it was hard to make a connection with any of them. it didn't even seem like they were trying anymore. It's almost as if the studio itself thought what they were working on was garbage so they decided to do the most minimal job they could possibly get away with.

I was excited when I found out that there is an anime adaptation of my most anticipated
MMORPG, Blade and Soul. Upon watching the anime for the first time, the episode kind of clicked with me but the later episode just feels like chewing a flavorless piece of gum for hours but I was interested of what will happen next to the emotionless character. Speaking of emotionless character, I don't particularly hate the anime for having an emotionless main character because she's a heartless assassin with a tragic past (how many times have we heard of this trope before?). What I hate about this anime ... is that it was unnecessary to be made because the story in the game was more well elaborated rather than a rushed 10+ episode story. I also find it funny that the main character speaks LESS than the side character, seriously! I think if you were to add ALL of the dialogue choices in the game (because you are mainly a silent protagonist), you'll have a longer script than the main character in the anime. As for animation goes, it was meh. In some scenes, the fire were so bland and texture-less that ANYONE can tell the problem with the fire right away even if they have watched one or two anime in their life. The opening theme song was pretty catchy and it fits the whole atmosphere and setting with the anime. What I found distasteful of the anime is that through out the story, the main character goes through her journey and learning how to become a better person and speaking more as a result but later was ruined by a distasteful generic anime beach episode solely for fan service. The animation team COULD HAVE removed the last episode budget to give their fire a little more texture (if you know what I mean). Do I recommend the anime? No, absolutely not.

In this videogame-adaptation, sexy badass ladies fight each other in a vagely described dark fantasy-/spaghetti western'ish/steampunk'ish world. The main character is a freakin' ninja-lady without any sort of emotional connection when it comes to killing people. And she's out for revenge on a magic bitch who killed her master, all the while being persued by bounty hunters and an evil organisation hellbound on finding her for various reasons.

This sounds awesome, right? I mean, it's all there: badass chicks, a cool and interesting world to explore, a studio that knows how to handle crazy, over-the-top fights between ridiculously busty ladies just fine (see Vandread and Witchblade). ... And y'know what? It is! It absolutely is...
... for three episodes, before this series turns into one of the most depressing and disappointing trainwrecks I've ever seen.

Y'know, off the top of my head I can only think of exactly THREE anime that made me legitimately angry...:

... Burn Up! Scramble, which was a fucking chore to sit through after I had a lot of fun with Warrior and Excess, despite their respective flaws.

... Master of Martial Hearts, and the less said about this piece of shit the better.

[btw.: Honorable mention goes out to Wizard Barristers, for ARMS pooping their pants in the last two episodes - but I wasn't really angry at the show, I was angry at ARMS. And I still am. 'cause fuck ARMS.]

... and this one.
I started watching B&S (appropriate abbreviation) because of one thing only: GONZO was involved. And I used to love GONZO, no matter how much my friends hated them. Some of my favorite anime were made by them (Blue Sub No. 6, Welcome to the NHK, Pumpkin Scissors), I defended a lot of their output because I genuinely liked their ruthless approach at animating stuff - shit, I even dug the ending of the Gantz-series.

But B&S broke me. B&S not only broke my spirit in terms of defending GONZO, it almost made me quit watching anime alltogether. I wanted to like it, I really did. I accepted a lot of its drawbacks (increasingly bad animation with each new episode, horrid CGI - even by GONZO's standards -, the severe lack of clever dialogue and interesting characters by the time the series lost its way like the damn song in Kill la Kill...) with a handwave, just hoping it would get its shit together, bounce back and be as awesome as its first three episodes. But it didn't, until the very last episode - and by then it was way too late for me to give a crap about anything, really. I was done by that point.

It starts out like a really cool, oldschool revenge-tale in a fantasy world and comes right out of the gate with decapitations, a village burning the fuck down, guns blazing, people dying by the dozens, a The Good, The Bad and the Ugly'esque standoff-sequence and an amazingly well-choreographed fight scene between a ninja and a gunslinger that reminded me of 90's-hongkong-wuxia flicks á la Butterfly and Sword or Hero (the 1997 Corey Yuen-film, not the other one).

But then, someone in the writing department had the bright idea to introduce a plot that went beyond "Find bitch -> fight bitch's lackeys -> fight bitch -> kill bitch -> roll credits". And I was fine with the series taking a more serious approach at first - but little by little, B&S stopped being fun. And then it became annoying, boring, dull, stupid and anger-inducing at the same time. Especially the latter took over at some point (around episode 9, I think), and I sat there in front of my TV, shouting numerous swear words at the screen with every new stupid, mind-numbingly boring sequence the anime threw at me.

The problem is not the fact that anime wanted to tell a serious story. Again, as with Martial Hearts, B&S took the completely ass-backwards approach of introducing the serious shit at the most inappropriate time and in the most jarring way possible. One does not simply introduce a pulpy fantasy world with pulpy fantasy characters who fight each other in pulpy ways for about two hours worth of television time, only to swerve into a weirdly composed episodic format with a "moral lesson of the day"-plotline, disregarding the main plot ("Find bitch -> kill bitch") entirely for hamfisted drama surrounding our protagonist's lack of ambition and emotion. You can TRY to give your main protagonist emotional depth by, oh I don't know, maybe not having her be a lifeless vessel of a human being whose only characteristics are her appearance and the fact that she's really really good at killing shit.

Most of the time the melodramatic bullshit, that starts around episode 4, doesn't even fucking involve her at all! She's just a bystander looking at people debating over whether or not they should plant fantasy-opium (yes, fantasy-opium) to gain money, looking at people who become obsessed with being the good guys, looking at people obsessing over a family member she might've killed - she just looks at shit as if she was Kim Jong-Il looking at things, she does jack shit most of the time to prevent bad things from happening, she doesn't learn shit every time she messes up, and she sure as shit doesn't evolve as a character until the FINAL GODVERDOMME EPISODE when she has her freaking Shinji-moment and goes "Hey, guys, guess what - I AM ME! I'M HUMAN! YAY! OMEDETO, ALKA-KUN!".

The writing and pacing in this show are fucking bad, 's all I'm sayin'. It breaks the show's neck four episodes in, and then GONZO tries to kinda fix it by the time B&S ends with an admittedly well-choreographed wuxia-fight scene. But was that scene worth waiting for, like, ten freaking episodes? Hell naw, by the time you get to it you're already desinterested in ANYTHING the show had going for itself when it started. You just want it to end. And when it ends, it's as disappointing an ending as you might expect.

Too bad it turned out this way, because up until B&S lost it I was really surprised at how good everything looked (except the horrible CGI). The fight scenes are engaging and fun to watch, the setting makes for a cool atmosphere and some really nice background art, the character designs are average but still acceptable, the soundtrack is pretty cool and Yuki Takao's performance as the heroine Alka - despite her being a useless twat most of the time - is one of my personal highlights in this show (the rest of the cast is alright, I just wish they would've taken the entire thing a little less serious and went a little bit more ham). There is merit to be found here, it's just burried under the writing staff's complete lack of talent.

It's really too bad, there was a ton of potential to just give us a kickass dark fantasy-action romp with cool characters, badass fight scenes and an overall schlocky low budget-wuxia-atmosphere. Instead, B&S went for the angsty route - and failed miserably. And it was the fact that all this talent (the director of this also helmed the direction duties for Steins;Gate, Texhnolyze and Vampire Hunter D - Bloodlust) and all this potential was flushed down the toilet that made me so angry and bitter and made me turn my back on anime for a month or so. Well, maybe the fact that I had completed two anime prior to that that I really didn't like at all had something to do with it. I think the first one was Burn-Up! Scramble, and the other one was Master of Martial Hearts, if I remember correctly.
...
Huh. I had a really bad run back then, didn't I?

Luckily though, I got what I wanted out of this piece of crap a year later with Shingeki no Bahamut - Genesis. Thanks, MAPPA.

tl;dr:
To quote a very famous critic: I hated this show. Hated, hated, hated, hated this show. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it after episode 4. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

Goddammit, GONZO!