Ulysses: Jehanne Darc to Renkin no Kishi

I've just watched ULYSSES :JEHANNE DARC TO RENKIN NO KISHI and I wanted to share my thoughts and takes about this anime :

I absolutely loved it !! I would recommand the story because it is different : I believe what's makes the story special is the fact that the main characters are not overpowered, there is humor, and also dark content which makes it roller coaster of emotions and an enjoyable ride !

As for the story, alchemy and fantasy makes it more intresting because mostly everyone knows what happened during the Hundred Years War but here these magical elements make way for unexpected scenes and ... so the story becomes even more intriguing !

The music is also captivating and the piano is really great for emotional scenes throughout the epidodes!

I really like the charcaters developping from the 1st to 12th episode and how they change! You can see them turn from kids to adults episodes by episodes all while keeping humor !

The animation and drawings are beautiful, especially the charcaters design along with the ones for fights and emotional scenes.

Overall I would truly recommand it for an audience that what to see something different. It is a special anime in it's own way and that difference is what's makes it intriguing and captivating at the same time !

Honestly I really do believe that it is an enjoyable anime due to the fact that the characters are compelling, showing emotions, along with the music, it makes it even better ! Also we can see the characters grow as persons through the entire story by what they say along with the actions they are taking.

My favorite part about the entire anime it is that despite taking place during dark times during the Middle Ages, the main characters are inspiring because they support one another during difficult time and never let each other down. As a result I believe people watching it can be inspired by it. It is a great attitude to have during difficult times (to help others in need) and in my opinion I think the anime does an excellent job emphasising this character's trait (whether it is with main characters : Jeanne and Montmorency, or with secondary characters such as La Hire, Richemont, Charlotte, etc..)

To conclude, I would say it is by far the best anime I've watched this year and I can't wait to see what's coming next (hopefully a next season or even a spin-off hopefully!

Ulysses: Jehanne Darc to Renkin no Kishi started very decently to me & ended up far better than it was during most episodes. My review will contain minor spoilers.

Indeed, the plot takes place in a quite unused period in a quite unused country. Usually France represents a lovely place or even the city of lovers in most anime but this time, please take a seat in the Middle-Age battlefields, opposing English & French soldiers. I really appreciated the... first 3 episodes because they introduced an interesting & original part of History (a major one though) with reverse genre - most males characters becoming (busty) females ... - and the addition of supernatural, magic and mythic stuff.

These first episodes really caught my attention, particularly because it seemed to have a darker atmosphere you don't usually see in animes. For example, Jeanne, one of the main characters, historically & here set up as a pure maiden fighting for France, will basically be stabbed episodes 2, right after a group of fairies gets slaughtered. When I watched this scene, my mind switched to "oh it's a cute historical anime with fan service" to "oh it's a dark bloody anime with a really interesting main loli character".

However, as you can guess, following episodes were either average, either bad. I have to admit my attention dropped for the last episodes... luckily Ulysses: Jehanne Darc to Renkin no Kishi only aired 12 episodes so I kept watching. You must wonder why and how did it happen. The answer is easy : absence of consistant line. I mean, the anime appeared to be quite dark (respecting the historical reality of Middle-Age battlefields) but turned out to be naive and passive to the point you can't fully appreciate it.

It's fairly easy to understand the fact they could not just create an easy plot by respecting History AND adding magic, I get that point. But still, most episodes quite frustrated me because it was impossible to find out what was interesting. Example : episode 10 introduced a new threat, also known as a God. He will then call spatial ships (for real) and have a kind of dark power / spirit. Ok, but what's his point ? He just dies 2 episodes later, slaughtered by the power of love (most likely). I couldn't care less about his death.

So finally, most episodes will lead us to boring battles or boring fights (justified by the fact someone can only become Ulysse for 3 minutes). You expect something epic ? It will end abruptly. You expect something to be short 'cause it is not interesting ? It will take up half or even an entire episode.

Last 2 episodes made me raising my grade from 4 to 5, because it came back to its funny / cute version. In my opinion, the mix between dark / funny side was not exploited correctly. You want to either have something dark & serious for the whole episode or something cute & funny for the whole episode, not both in the same one.

I do not recommend this anime, because of its mindf**k scenario (going from an historical animation of Jeanne d'Arc to a God possessing someone and starting to spread apocalypse with his spatial warships). There were no very interesting scenes (aka epic battle, epic fight, plot twist or anything) but just a succession of weird moments you can't figure out why they exist.

Remember that time when Darling in the Franxx and Seikon no Qwaser almost had a bastard baby, but decided to have an abortion when it was clearly too late? Somehow the embryo survived and got raised by Fate/Apocrypha. Then, at the age of 9, it discovered that its upbringer and role model is not the only thing that exists in the world, and learned about Tokyo Ghoul, JoJo and FMA. That baby is Ulysses.

Jokes aside, I may be a bit too harsh on the show in this review, but it reflects my personal opinion and what I saw in the show. Some spoilers ahead, not ... that you should really care.

Plot: what plot? The plot, as the premise makes you think, is on a level of some pseudo-historical smut fanfiction written by a 12 year old edgelord, except I've seen better pseudo-historical smut fanfiction than this. The main idea is that Jeanne D'arc can go Super Saiyan after receiving a kiss from the MC (who is Gilles de Rais, just saying). Those kisses are called "baisers" in the show, which is unneeded and cringeworthy use of French and could make my score lower by a point itself, if only it had somewhere lower to go. Then, apparently, it's supposed to follow Hundred Years' War, which it doesn't really do, only showing fragments of real history in the beginning of the first half of the show. In reality, the show is about people who want to have philosopher's stone, which is split between MC and Jeanne. At some point the show literally pulls a Franxx on us, with random aliens on spaceships trying to destroy the Earth and everything, though I wonder which came first because apparently the original novel is a few years old. Overall, the story is an incomprehensible mess and doesn't know what it wants to be at any point of the show, which results in it being either mindbogglingly boring or unbelievably dumb, and I honestly don't know which is worse. There's no ending, either, so it ends up being a LN promotion, though I can't see anyone saying "Yes, I'm going to read this".

Characters: okay, let me say this straight: this is a show where plot drives the characters, not vice versa. While I don't think there's something inherently wrong with it, this anime definitely doesn't understand what to do with those characters. This ends up in them being randomly in and out in the plot, being pushed on the sides and forgotten as quickly as they made their appearance. Most are based on some historical personalities, but almost none of their original documented traits remain, and in some cases, not even their original gender. Sadly, that's all there is to them, because the show doesn't even try to do any characterization, and any kind of development that may happen fails miserably because there's no character to develop, just a carton cutout. Also, it has an Astolfo from Fate/Apocrypha. I mean, he looks, dresses and behaves like him, but he isn't Astolfo. Amazing, isn't it?

Art: is horrendous. While the first episodes were decently animated, the quality rapidly declined in the second half, to the point where anime almost fully consisted of panning stills and ugly CGI soldiers in the end. The worst part that stills weren't even drawn properly. Montmorency's character design gave me cancer. Cute lolis were the only thing that kept me going, guess what, one got in-universe sudden boobs and ass expansion. Apparently that's a thing.

Sound: voice acting was average, the opening song was fine, the ending song (well, 10 of them, it has a new version in almost every episode) was good, and the background music wasn't really noticeable. I can't really say much about it, but it's definitely the strongest part about the show.

Enjoyment: trainwreck but it was fun to make fun of it on Discord. It's not the good kind of fun, though, as you feel your brain is slowly dying. Some scenes were rage-inducing, for example, MC saying "I want to save the girl I love so go fight for me" and army of peasants going berserk easily slaughtering professional full armored soldiers after that. Thoroughly unenjoyable even ironically.

Overall: no/10, almost the worst TV anime with normal length episodes I've ever seen (Lord of Vermilion from last season still exists). Go watch literally anything else and it probably would be better. Or try this - I don't even want to call it a trainwreck because there was no train to begin with - and maybe you'll like it, although I certainly didn't.