Monster Strike The Animation

A sort of continuation of the Monster Strike series of animation shorts found on their official YouTube channel, this series is broken up into several arcs loosely connected by shorts featuring Oragon and a mysterious girl version Oragon that all build toward a single conclusive chapter. I'll talk about each of the arcs separately and what I liked and what I think didn't work very well.

We're first introduced to Lucifer and a whole host of other angel type beings. It's all very loosely based on Christian folklore, the kind you won't find in the Bible but might find in something like Dante's Inferno or a ... Dan Brown book. While theologically I can't give it any points for accuracy, I did think it was an interesting section, telling a pretty grounded and human story about corruption within positions of power and betrayal from the people who are closest to you. It wasn't the most exciting thing in the world, but there were definitely worse arcs to come.

There was one bizarre and seemingly out of place episode in the middle of the first arc that introduced a minor character who wouldn't come back until way later. For this one episode the animation suddenly looks way worse, like it was done cheaply in MikuMikuDance or something. Like I say it felt really out of place and kind of ruined the pacing of an otherwise competent arc, because it completely derailed the story for an episode and wasn't about anything in particular.

Next we meet the Saber Class Heroic Spirit herself, King Arthur Pendragon of Camelot. Her first story isn't that interesting, and serves mostly as an introduction to her character. And if I had a quarter for every time I've seen a Japanese video game series portray King Arthur as a blonde woman I would have 2 quarters, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice. After a brief catch up with Lucifer and friends we get into what I think is wannabe Saber's first real character arc, fighting against the obnoxious disco diva lady.

I know that sometimes villains are portrayed a certain way to make it easier to hate them. They may be arrogant, flamboyant, over the top annoying, but it's okay because we're not supposed to be rooting for them or anything. When executed well these kinds of villains can actually be fun to watch, take all those classic Disney villains as examples, but I am not exaggerating when I say that every single excruciating moment where disco lady who's name I refuse to remember was on screen I contemplated giving up watching anime ever again. She is the worst. A team of top-of-their-field scientists working around the clock for decades in a lab to produce the most obnoxious character archetype ever gave up because they realized they couldn't outdo what was created here. Loud, narcissistic, petty, self-centered and loud, she's an amalgamation of everything I hate about the internet since it was given to teenage girls. Smarts phones were a mistake.

The worst part is that there is actually a really good story about redemption and learning to live without vanity that would have worked so well if the villain weren't so unbearable. I understand creating a narrative foil to the journey the hero is going through, but they didn't have to go so hard in that direction.

The next section of note is with King Solomon's granddaughter. It's confusing because her name is Solomon, but she's supposed to be descended from the actual King Solomon of Jewish history, like from the Bible. Does that mean the Arthur we met wasn't really the King Arthur from English folklore and just his daughter or something? I don't understand why they were fine gender-bending some historical figures but not others outright. I liked the story regardless. The rivalry between Solomon and her childhood friend was great. There's a reason rival characters are so common, it just works. With the villain I think it's funny when they try to paint a bad guy's motivations as sympathetic later on in the story like, "I had no choice I needed to convince the real bad man I was on his side or he would have killed you," and that's just supposed to make all the horrible things he did okay.

Noah's section was an interesting one. Noah is not typical someone you think of as a hero, and you certainly don't picture a shounen protagonist. All the leads up to this point were female so it was interesting to see a male character run the show for once. Despite it being an odd pick amongst the other historical and religious figures they actually kind of made it work, and he really did manage pull off the action hero vibe. I think the strongest emotional turnaround in this whole series comes from this arc in the form of the littlest devil Chesed and his little redemption arc he goes through. It's a perfect example of how this series manages to put a lot of heart into each story, to try to get you as invested as possible with these characters in the short time you have with them so that when they show up again you actually care.

There's another Lucifer arc right before the final confrontation that was actually really good. It was a murder mystery type affair with a countdown and a group of increasingly suspicious people all turning on each other. Really fun to watch and to try and guess who the real killer was. My money is always on the true culprit not even being among them, or it being all of them but the show still managed to surprise me. I won't give it away here.

When all the characters get together at the end it feels like quite an event. Not quite Avengers Endgame, more like the first Avengers when it was novel just to have 4 characters from different movies you liked on screen together at the same time. Looking back on how films have changed over the decade since that first Avengers movie it can seem quaint, but I remember at the time how completely blown away everyone in the theater was. It was kind of that same feeling with the end of this show after 50 or so episodes of build up. Seeing them all work together was cool, but as with the Avengers movies there is the problem of creating a villain that can stand out in any way beside such an ensemble cast. If you don't give your villain just as much build up as your heroes the audience is obviously not going to care much about their conflict. I just felt that it fell flat a little, like they were just fighting the generic concept of evil and not a real threat.

Overall I think I've changed my opinions somewhat having been forced to look back at this show a little more critically. I had it at an average 7 from me but I think I'll boost that to an 8. It was a good show, but it's going to feel more like watching Saturday morning cartoons than a real serious action show most of the time. There's a lot to like, but it's not so amazing that I can't look past it's flaws. I'm amazed that of all the reviews I've written this was the one a moderator singled out as being "spam," but I'm glad I took the time to rewrite it, as it gave me a fresh perspective. I'm sorry for saying tits.

8/10