Seisen Cerberus: Ryuukoku no Fatalités

One-word-review: Garbage.

Are you a fan of adventure anime?

Do you want to be entranced by a fantasy?

Are you looking for that cool and strong main character with interesting side characters?

Hate to break it to you, but you're in the wrong place. The more I watched, the more I thought that it was complete trash. That is, until about episode 8. Then it picks up and becomes a slightly below average series with a bunch plot conveniences EVERYWHERE for the last 5 episodes. I have seen numerous anime and usually give high ratings. I think that this is actually not worth wasting your ... time on. Adventure and Fantasy tend to be my favorite genres, but this...

To emphasize to you how bad this show is: Take a typical cool and strong main character of your choice, remove all of his coolness, strength, intelligence, skills, charisma, and ALL other good qualities. After you're done, take whatever bad characteristics you're left with and add in the personality of a whiny 3-year-old. In fact, might as well make him a Jinchuriki like Naruto while you're at it. Finally, after He-man descends to help and train the main character, you have this series' protagonist who still ends up being a failure.

Story: (2/10)
The show introduces the main character as this mysterious apparently strong guy. Despite training, he gets almost nowhere in terms of individual skill.

Here's a synopsis of what you're getting into:
Dad: "We gotta seal away this ultimate beast, OH NO IT'S TOO STRONG! I... must save my 6-year-old son.................... WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO BE ON THE BATTLEFIELD!"

Son: "Mom, Dad---- NOOOO!"

Dad:"Don't worry, I'll make you a 1-dimensional spoiled knockoff of Naruto before I go!"

Everybody dies and the 6-year-old is now driven by revenge to kill the ultimate beast and most likely has some sort of secretly powerful skill or ability or something, or at least that's what we are all hoping for. (Sound familiar? That's because it's the overused cliche.)

Unfortunately, the reality is that the main male character actually is one of the least attractive main characters that I've seen since school days' Makoto. He's similar to the main character from Tales of the Abyss before he recognized how terrible he really was and changed for the better. I originally dropped this series at episode 7 but decided to give it another chance since my original review painted this series as pretty terrible. Luckily, it did pick up slightly, but it's very boring and slow. The main female character has trouble speaking complete sentences and is very aloof, weird, and illogical. I was hoping she would be some sort of mysterious beauty with a deep background story, but it didn't end up that way.

Art: (4/10)
I only began watching this show because of how interesting the characters looked visually. But the art itself is not that great, it's on the below-average side of standard for newer anime. Battle scenes are kind of dry. Background art is pretty good, though. The animation is absolutely terrible. Welcome back to the early 2000s. Just bad. Overall, the art is on the not-so-good side of average, but since I like the character designs I bumped it up to a 4.

Sound: (5/10)
I must say, I think the music is most satisfying part of this anime. That says a lot about the anime since the music isn't really that good at all. There is nothing special about the sounds. Battle scenes are fine and the music is fitting for a fantasy-styled anime. Character voices are fine as well. But the music is pretty good. To be honest, I'd rather listen to the music on repeat than watch this poor excuse of a show.

Characters: (2/10)
1-dimensional zero-effort characters. No character is interesting or has any real backstory. The main character is a spoiled 3-year-old in a cool-looking older body. All of the characters are pretty bad. As the series progresses, it only gets more unbearable. However, you may start to get attached to them if you watch it until the end.

Development? What development? Let's just make the characters do random things and have a ton of plot conveniences.

The main human villains look very weird and are psychologically just strange. The main girl is pretty bad as well. The side characters are all pretty bad and I don't feel any interest in any of the characters in this show, so I didn't bother to remember any of their names.

Enjoyment: (2/10)
I most likely would've dropped this show around episode 4-6 if I weren't writing a review on it. It's really not worth the time. Towards the end, it wasn't COMPLETE trash, but it was unbearably slow. It could've been worse, but it's nowhere near good or decent.

Overall: (3/10)
The first 7 episodes of the series were very dry and boring. It started to pick up a bit after episode 7, but not anywhere near close enough to a point where I would watch it if I weren't reviewing it. First 6 episodes 2/10, the last 6 were probably around a 5/10.

Have you ever watched a show that was just so bad that it was actually enjoyable? Has there ever been a time that the entire runtime of the show, the series just simply did not give any fucks as to how or what it was actually doing? Well, let me tell you the tale of Cerberus, a Spring 2016 anime that looks like it was made in the early 2000's with a plotline so bad that it can't decide whether or not it wants to rush to the end, or drag shit out longer.

Story: The continent of Kuna'ahn is a place ruled by ... the evil dragon Dagan Zot. After the Balbagoa Disaster that happened many years ago, the world is left in fear, terrified if the evil dragon will return. We follow the story of Hiiro (Translates to Hero. Yes, that is ACTUALLY his name.) on his journey as a wandering swordsman to kill the evil dragon and return peace to the world, all while the evil Nambuuko has an agenda of his own.

Ok, I'm just gonna lay down the truth here. This show is TERRIBLE. I'm not sugarcoating it either; this show is really, really bad. The main story is trying to follow Hiiro on his way to defeat the evil Nambuuko as well as defeating the supposed main antagonist and fearful creature Dagan Zot. But instead, what we get is a story that can't decide whether or not it wants to slow down to get a feel for the world, or speed up because they need to finish up the story. The pacing is largely to blame for the story's problems because well, there is none. The show goes ALL OVER THE PLACE and rarely decides to stick to one pace. We spend a good 4 episodes on just the first town, meaning about a third of the series is dedicated to just staying in one place and not dealing with the supposed immediate threat that we're supposed to fear.

As a result of the pacing issues, a lot of the show's aspects fall extremely flat. Due to its lack of screentime, the evil dragon is a plot device rather than an actual threat to the series. Hell, the dragon does absolutely NOTHING in the way of actually harming our main characters, acting more as the scapegoat to the majority of the situations that our protagonists are thrown in than actually doing anything. They also attempt to do a fair bit of world building, but guess what? That ain't there either, or it's missing/incomplete. I feel as though the creators were just trying to chuck a bunch of cool ideas together and hope that they sticked. A lot of the things that we're presented feel like they were made just on the spot and pray to god that everything just conveniently falls into place. Hell, the ending was the epitome of "THAT WAS EASY" because of just how convenient everything fell in place.

Overall, the story of Cerberus is a generic, predictable piece of work that fails to do anything right. It can't decide whether or not it wants to be a turtle or a rabbit when it comes to pacing, it can't flow a story correctly, it can't tell us anything about the goddamn world we're in, and hell it can't even get the terrifying evil dragon thing right. Just make it pop up and blow up a town or something instead of having it struggle to get its damn heart back!

Overview:
- Generic story
- Terrible pacing
- Fails to world build
- Predictable

Characters: Yeah, don't lie to me, these are not characters, these are puppets. Puppets put on this stage of rotting terribleness.

Hiiro. Oh boy. What to say about this one? Hiiro's character is that of a selfish, entitled brat that can't seem to understand the basics of progressing his own storyline correctly. Despite him being the main protagonist, Hiiro is a character that's just thrown around a lot and never seems to do anything right. He's an extremely weak character in the sense that he can't defeat a baby slime, yet his entire spiel in the series is him shouting "I WILL DEFEAT THE EVIL DRAGON!" which given the fact that he has protagonist plot armor, well, you can kind of guess what happens. He can't really do anything right aside from run his mouth and as the audience, there's just no incentive to root for a character that just acts like...that the whole time.

Then there's Saraato, the female protagonist of the story and quite possibly the strangest one here. Saraato is...an odd case. The usage of Saraato is just for purely plot purposes. She doesn't really do anything aside from participating in the plot when needed and smile off to the side. Of course, as the series goes along, we actually get why she's so strange and peculiar, but quite honestly, it's not much of a surprise when at that point in the series, you'll just about accept everything since nothing really makes sense anymore and everything that happens just seems to happen so conveniently, it's a wonder how they even had a chance of losing in the first place.

Then finally, Nambuuko, the big, bad antagonist to the story. Not the dragon (because lord knows we're not gonna get anywhere with THAT thing), but this asshat arms dealer who's a crook more than anything. To be completely honest, I...don't...actually...know what his plan was to begin with. This isn't on the pacing to blame as it is just the story. Nambuuko fulfills the trope of "Muhahaha, I'm Evil!" sort of character cause his plans change, quite a lot. In one scene he wants to enslave a town to make more money. Another, he decides, let's control the dragon! A third, he wants to make all of the armies fight so he can get money and they all gather in one place for an evil ritual. The final, "Screw that, ULTIMATE POWER IS MINE!!!!" As such, the only real explanation I can actually give to what this guy embodies is just "Lol I'm Ebil (evil)" because quite honestly, there's...not really much else to say that could even remotely describe this hodge podge of a villain. (Also, his fashion sense could use a little work.)

The rest of the cast is split off into two categories. We have the fodder who deserves no mention because they're there to movie the plot along, and the rest of the merry band of adventurers, involving Giruu, who is basically Hiiro's bodyguard, Timotte, who comes into the group for some god unknown reason and is virtually worthless, Erin, the nekomimi info broker who carries around a...harp thing that shoots arrows (I don't get it myself), and Palupa, who is probably my favorite character out of the bunch. (I'll get to why later.) Oh yeah, and there's that evil loli Sharisharu who's just sort of...the series's annoyance.

Overall, the characters are in a word, disappointing. There's not much to say about them cause you could probably sum up each of them in about 5 words and even then it's probably too much. The side characters are admittedly more interesting than the main cast and villain, but honestly, I nor you have the time to talk about them.

Overview:
+ Side characters are somewhat interesting (or entertaining)
- Irritating main character
- Plot-based female protag
- Muhahaha I'm Nambuuko, I'm evil! I'm totally a threat! MUHAHAHAHA!

Art: Cerberus was an original series made by Bridge, a company who is largely unheard of, and with relatively good reason; the animation is bad. Well, that's being a bit harsh. More like...the animation is like stepping back in time in terms of quality. While this largely unheard of company is no Ufotable or A-1 Pictures, the art for this show just doesn't even stack up to the supposed 'standard fare' that we can consider as standard hand-drawn japanese animation today.

The color scheme for this show leans towards a brooding and dark color palette that just seems both lazy and lifeless. The colors just seem extremely bland and uninspiring that I felt like I actually stepped back in time to a show from the late 1990's early 2000's era. There's just nothing really all that positive to say to such lazy animation.

Overview:
- Low-quality animation
- Lifeless color scheme

Sound: The soundtrack, I don't even bother with. Trust me, there's nothing really that interesting with it. They're ok but...not really worth the time.

Personal Enjoyment: Ok, the show has a fucking AWFUL storyline that's both predictable and bad, the main character is annoying as fuck, the art is lazy, the dragon does nothing, and the antagonist just screams "I'm evil! I'm evil cause I'm evil, lol". So with all of these terrible, eye-gougingly bad qualities for this show... Why. Am. I. Smiling? Well, the simple fact of the matter is, this show is fucking hilarious. Sure, you'll have to turn your brain off, but if you don't think too hard like I do on a daily basis, goddamn is this show just the best thing I've seen. It sort of belongs in the 'It's so bad it's good' category because it's clear that the makers didn't give a single fuck about what they were making. I had a blast watching this show and man that was entertaining.

Did I like this show?

I liked it for the sheer reason that it was just bad and it sorta knew it was bad. Also Palupa. Palupa is the one character I cared about in this series simply because he's that one character that had common sense. Despite what happened in the series, he always seemed to be self-aware of the situation at hand and was able to know whether or not things were a stupid idea and how well their current plan would go.

What didn't I like about this show?

Hiiro. Hate the guy. He's that one guy who's so arrogant and full of himself that you could push him off a bridge and not feel a single shred of remorse.

Would I recommend this show?

No. Just. Straight up. No. Personally, I'm used to watching bad shows, and I get a kick outta stinkers that just seem like they had zero fucks given to them when they were made. But quite honestly, it is not worth the time to even remotely consider this show to be anyone's list just because of the sheer amount of negative qualities that this show has. (You see the overviews? There is only ONE positive out of all of the categories combined.)

Seisen Cerberus: Ryuukoku no Fatalites...yeah "Fatalites" is right as in it's fatally BORING.

Seisen Cerberus: Ryuukoku no Fatalites is by far one of most boring by the numbers anime LA has seen in a while. Seisen Cerberus: Ryuukoku no Fatalites follows a typical "revenge" anime under a fantasy world...sounds similar to another horrible anime with that setting *cough* Chaos Dragon *cough*

With characters who are extremely stereotypical and a hot-blooded main protagonist with NO combat skills in swordsmanship yet gloats about his "combat skills", well the main protagonist Hiiro is an annoying, whining main protagonist and to go with him is Saraato a mysterious girl who has ... NO personality, Giruu, the guardian for Hiiro who although he gets a backstory doesn't get developed enough and has your typical "mentor" tropes to him, we also have Tomitte and Palupa who are pretty useless to the anime. The ONLY character LA managed to like was Erin voiced by Maaya Uchida only because she was slightly smarter than the rest of the cast. Since this is a revenge anime, you'd think that the dragon Dagan Zot would be the villain right?.....however this anime brings in a rather generic "money and power motivation" HUMAN villain by the name of Nambuuko and just comes in a just produces obstacles for the "heroes" and just elongates the anime further, really Nambuuko, his presence makes this anime even harder to get through considering how stock and plot grindingly incompetence he is and how his motivation is just STUPID.

In terms of animation by Bridge, the animation is just "meh" all throughout, from the character designs to the battles to the backgrounding, heck to even the monster designs are merely "meh,though LA did see lower quality in animation across the board and stiff battle animation by the halfway point...-sigh- LA just doesn't have anything good or bad to say...it's just..."meh".

The voice acting?...you know what, it feels like even the voice actors are board stiff in this anime, they give out half-hearted performances with some exceptions to the villains especially Mariyse Ise who voices the Nambuuko's henchwoman Sharisharuu and Maaya Uchida seemed to do ok as well, but overall the voice acting is just lackluster.

The ending and the culmination to the ending was just a whirling hole of stupidity from both sides of the main cast of "heroes" and "villains", the ending made the entire "adventure" part of this anime utterly pointless if Nambuuko can just teleport ANYWHERE in the world and just kidnap the heroes, sure the ending finally brings us Nambuuko's "master plan" (in which this plan has soo many plot holes on the central focus AND on Saraato and add in the fact that the entire culmination to this ending was rushed as hell, also pro tip Nambuuko, how about caring for your red shirts and minions otherwise they just might turn on you fucking idiot) and just really the ending was anti-climax on top of anti-climax with coincidences just given to the "heroes" for them to easily win.

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SPOILERS AHEAD (LA really just wants you to see Nambuuko's stupidity full force here)
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*Why would Nambuuko tell Baffaloopa to make Saraato (in secret even to Nambuuko later on), throw Saraato away then use Saraato again AGAINST Hiiro and don't say that Nambuuko was trying to be smart, he ordered Saraato to DEATH, yeah...master plan there dumbass

*Why bother fusing with Dagan Zot, yeah sure it's his main motivation in the entire anime here but for this to work, he had to get the ONE thing that might kill him in his fused form and have a confrontation with Saraato's dark form and Hiiro (who has Dagan Zot's heart) in order to lure Dagan Zot to Nambuuko in order to fuse with it (you know if Hiiro did suicide as Dagan Zot's heart is in Hiiro thus if Hiiro sacrificed himself the fused Dagan Zot and Nambuuko would also die), again Nambuuko is a dumbass

*The entire point of the inflation of weapons and growing fear for a war was pointless if Nambuuko would nonchalantly USE HIS OWN RED SHIRT ARMY and residents of his castle including Sharisharuu in order to get the power for the fusion of Dagan Zot, also if it failed at all or Baffaloopa would betray Nambuuko, he would have no army (or they would TURN on Nambuuko for this if it failed) or no power or both, *ahem* Nambuuko is a dumbass through and through

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SPOILERS END
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Seisen Cerberus: Ryuukoku no Fatalites is just an extremely slow slog through a fantasy world that really doesn't care about it's plot or it's characters and by that end even if Hundred is also stock and cliche at least it can play to it's cliches, Seisen Cerberus: Ryuukoku no Fatalites on the other hand is just lifeless, mindless and just plain doesn't care and just ticks off whatever checklist it needs to get through it all and brings in soo many rushed plot holes and utterly stupid motivations especially on the part of Nambuuko, LA will say that Seisen Cerberus: Ryuukoku no Fatalites was dead on arrival and NEVER improved. LA deems quite easily that Seisen Cerberus: Ryuukoku no Fatalites as the worst anime of Spring 2016.

And here I thought I could not find any anime worse than konosuba. Boy, was I wrong.

Let's start with the title. "Seisen" means holy war in japanese, and I assume that they call it cerberus because it's a war between 3 countries. But seriously, there's nothing holy about this war. The reason the armies were about to fight each other is because all of them heard a RUMOR that the other two countries are exploiting the power of an evil dragon. Naturally, this rumor was spread by our antagonist the weapon dealer so that he could squeeze out their money. Seriously? You should have bothered ... to verify the rumor first before you do something this detrimental. And oh, the stupidest one is the king of the elves. Her lackeys said she was praying in her altar for 3 days straight, and their god didn't bother to tell her anything? their god must be a fake one.

Next, the character. Our mc is a useless piece of shit, and he's not even an mc from a harem anime. Basically, he's an arrogant whiny garbage who thinks he can take on the evil dragon when he can't even kill a baby slime, and he had the nerve to call himself a wandering swordsman.

To be honest, I got nothing against weak mcs. Look at osamu mikumo from world trigger. he's weak, and he knows he's weak, so he trains himself a lot to become better. Sure, his skills are still disappointing, but at least he is thinking up strategies to cover his weakness. compared to him, the mc here is a stupid loser who refuses any form of instruction. Naming him Hiiro is his father's biggest mistake.

And there's his bodyguard, Giruu. Overall, i like him. he's a good swordsman, unlike the failure, he's good in cooking, and he's kind of cool. the only issue i have is the way he take care of his baggage. After a few episodes, it turned out that the garbage is a failure as a swordsman, but very talented in magic. but did Giruu trained him in that direction? NO! the reason being the garbage would become dangerous. "Right. he's dangerous, so we won't let him touch magic, so that he could have a chance in losing control and blow up everything one day!" learn a thing or two from naruto, damn it. (and speaking of naruto, there'a a hint of that anime in here as well).

Lastly, there's the walking and walking triceratops who acts as the accountant/ purse who does nothing but nag and rant, the kid who does nothing at all, the neutral information broker who won't hesitate to betray anyone (the only character i like in this anime), the android who loves to sticks to the mc, and the villain who can't maintain his agenda (you'll know what i mean when you watch this anime). Yup, this is one horrible, horrible anime.

Lemme tell you a story to put into perspective how trash this anime really is. I watched the entirety of the 2016 anime while they aired and this show stood out as one the worst produced, and close to the top in the shitty stories department, all this considering 2016 had some horrendous anime (endride and clones and also that blood anime about the people surviving in a lab with monsters idk). 0/10 but recommend watching just to laugh at how bad it is, for sure top 5 comedy of all time. The animation is TERRIBLE and i'm p sure I could have made a ... better story in about 20 mins and that's stretching how much it would take me to be done with it.

To tell you the truth i have no idea where to start on this but lets try.
Have you ever watched something so bad it was watchable but not more than once or ate food that smelled horrible but was palatable. Well this is like one of those choices.
*The main character for him all i could think was what..no wait...nani kore? Ughhh okay whatever.
*Liked the love interest kind of because her emotions actually changed in a good way.
*Side characters mostly annoyed me (seriously he is so stingy and doesn't teach them just yells all the time) but with a ... few good parts with certain characters in between, and the "evil" guy was just crazy and not in a good way. (kind of like sao's crazy elf dude whose attitude and face makes you want to slam yours into and through a wall although he did not look bad you get my point i hope)

Okay, so I literally just finished watching this anime a few minutes ago and I will just say that it is definitely very average. There's nothing really intriguing about it in my opinion. The creators barely even tried to make the storyline deep at all. I know it seems like I'm just bashing it for no reason, and its kind of hard to explain without spoiling the anime itself, but trust me when I say this anime isn't "horrible", but I can't see it being anyone's favorite either. This anime is what you would watch when you're bored out of your mind and have nothing ... else to watch.

I will say though, it does have potential to be better. If only the story and the character's backgrounds were given a bit more detail... I think the word I'm looking for to describe this anime is either "rushed" or "shallow", which I know sounds harsh, but I just felt like there was so much more that could've been said or explained.

(( SPOILERS ABOUT CHARACTERS AHEAD BUT NOTHING MAJOR))

For example, the main antagonist Nambuuko and his relationship with Sharisharuu could've been explained. I was actually genuinely interested in how they met and why Sharisharuu loved him so much. Also, I seriously don't understand why the creators felt the need to make Nambuuko such a shallow villain. Basically he's a merchant who wants to create chaos because chaos means people buying weapons from him and that equals money in his pocket. But what I wanted to know was "why"; what on earth caused Nambuuko to become so greedy and heartless in his life? I mean, usually the backstories of the antagonists don't matter to me, but in this anime, their was only ONE main antagonist and he was just made out to be so... boring and cliché

And then there's the side character Tomitte... I seriously don't know why the creators decided, "hey let's have the useless kid join them on their dangerous journey." Like I'm not even kidding when I say the kid was more of a drag to have around than anything else. Now that's not to say that he held them back all the time, but he really just didn't need to be there, and it was frustrating seeing him around with the group not even knowing what his purpose for being there was.

And don't even get me started on Giruu, Hiiro's guardian: there was only one episode where I was actually starting to like his character because he actually was starting to make sense. It was the episode where he basically told off Hiiro for thinking he could ever be powerful enough to defeat Dagan Zot with his over arrogant attitude and horrible swordsman skills.... But then nothing like that ever happened again. The "wakeup" call from Giruu didn't really do much to fix Hiiro's ignorance in his lack of sword skills at all. In fact, Hiiro remained exactly how he was before for practically the rest of the anime, and Giruu went back to treating Hiiro like a child where he basically never corrected Hirro when he stated that he was a great swordsman.

And then there's the main protagonist, Hiiro... so basically, he just seems very spoiled and arrogant. And it wouldn't be a stretch to say it was mainly Giruu's fault he turned out like this. Now don't get me wrong, I understand that raising a child that you ever expected to have to raise is probably way more difficult than it looks. But just... with Giruu's personality I would've expected him to be a bit more harsher and not just coddle Hirro by telling him only what he wants to hear so that his feelings aren't hurt. The only GOOD thing I liked about the main character was when he turned into his dragon form (which still wasn't too impressive to be completely honest).

Overall, the story of this anime felt overly cliché, rushed, and very shallow. The characters weren't anything impressive either. Would I call this anime unwatchable? No, it wasn't absolutely appalling to watch or anything like that. But I would only recommend watching it when you have absolutely nothing better to watch.