Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi (The Idaten Deities Know Only Peace)

Eight hundred years ago, terrifying demons threatened mankind's existence. On the brink of extinction, humans prayed to their gods, calling out for someone to save them. Emerging from these desperate pleas for salvation, battle deities known as the "Idaten" were born. Possessing unnatural strength and endurance, the Idaten managed to defeat the demons and an era of unprecedented peace was finally ushered in.

Having never encountered demons before, the present generation of Idaten knows nothing of the demon's brutality, but they have instead only lived a peaceful existence. Training under Rin, the only remaining Idaten from 800 years ago, the new Idaten find ways to survive in a time where they have seemingly outlived their usefulness. However, when the tyrannical Zoble Empire resurrects a demon, the misfit crop of gods are called to the battlefield against their natural enemy once more.

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Kimura, Makoto

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Takeeda, Yoshinori

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Noda, Fuko

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Kidokoro, Seimei

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Opening Theme

"Seija no Koushin (聖者の行進)" by Tatsuya Kitani (キタニタツヤ)

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Ending Theme

"Raika (雷火)" by Akari Nanawo

Reviews

Sep 28, 2021

KANLen09

Recommended

This show is the reason why 3 of the most notable entities exist: Interspecies Reviewers, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, and MAPPA. What, you still cannot figure out what sets Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi a.k.a "The Idaten Deities Know Only Peace" apart? Then go figure and find your own peace treaty in a wild wonderland world.

Written by Amahara, illustrated by Cool-kyou Shinja (of which this is the 3rd work of 3 featured in this season, damn this author is rekting the Summer season hard) and produced by MAPPA. Announced as one of many shows at the MAPPA Stage 10th Anniversary event under debut director Seimei Kidokoro's ... direction, Idaten tells the story of humans and demons co-existing in a fictionous world where demons drive mankind nuts, only to have literate gods in the form of deities called "Idatens" for humans to pray for salvation and extinction upon their kind, and attain peace for an exchange. And damn is Idaten-tachi such an uncanny, other-worldly anime, if not already hinted by both Amahara and Cool-kyou Shinja's expressions of interest at weird-looking demon and deities with the same aforementioned traits from the series they've worked on, much less all the fast-paced frenetic action. Combine that with MAPPA's production that animation-wise, looks identical to Jujutsu Kaisen and the visuals full of psychedelia, Idaten is grotesque, rapey, and in all ways condescending, but to stomach all those, and you'll see an experimentation show like no other (well, count Dorohedoro one as well).

A deity, or an Idaten in this matter, is made out of these things: Adding your own thoughts to a nascent existence in order to shorten the amount of time required for manifestation. As a result, the personality of one who draws the newly chosen Idaten has a certain level of degree of influence shapen from the summoner. If you couldn't get that scientific-level explanation, just remember this trait: a common shared desire between beings thirsting for abilities that would help defend those worth living a life. That story is told through Rin, a young 800-year old Idaten who has witnessed the battle between Idatens and demons, and sealing them on a vast desert statue/monument-like location so that the peacetime "treaty" can be maintained for years and generations. Protecting this seal for 800 years has the Idaten gods rendered tiredness at their job, because their role is to eradicate demons, and since there're no demons to kill, they need to kill time somehow to remain for that one purposeful day, where demons have an uprising to prove their usefulness towards mankind once again. But as Magneto of X-Men once said: "Peace Was Never An Option", and indeed, demons acted on that thanks to a nation known as the Zoble Empire, stacked full of demons at their disposal to wreak havoc at both mankind and the Idaten gods they pray to. So, it's the conquest of the Idatens to finally have their purpose-driven life be served to give the demons a beating-down and wash, rinse, repeat the same commitment held for those 800 years of peace past. It's quite the simple "as molasses" story, but Cool-kyou Shinja's illustrations truly take the manga (and now the anime) to the next level.

It's of no doubt that Amahara knows what his characters want to be, and is thoroughly exemplified through the manga and anime. Starting off with the Idaten deities crew, Rin is the 800-year old Master Shifu Idaten who has crossed her life at doing the one sole, important job of not letting demons have their way, and she is OP by default, learning from the experiences of the elder gods who went before her. Her understudies are Prontea and Hayato. The former is a mix of both strength and intelligence, while the latter is this normal-looking boy who's quite brash and proud, and is one who've suffered most with Rin's unrelenting training sparring sessions, becoming the usual "no-reason" Shonen-ish trope of a strong OP character to protect those who can't defend for themselves. Paula is the same as Hayato, though she's forced to become like him because she is an Idaten in name only, and walks alongside Hayato in companionship. Ysley is truly balls-to-the-wall intelligent, I'd reckon that I can refer to him as their world's Albert Einstein. Alas, where there lies a yin, there must be a yang, and the demons equalize the Idatens in every regard. There is no shortage of powerful demons, but intelligent ones are far and few in-between, so for the lead group led by Dr. Oobami (better knows as Demon Lord Over-M for a disguise), the higher-up demons are posed to follow his political totalitarianism and make that ideology work. Some demons like Takeshita and Brandy (king and queen of the Zoble Empire) take that into heart, while others like the sex-crazed Miku envelopes that and comes up with strategists Zhuge Liang style to see their objective towards the end. Miku is a crazy-ass archetypal character (like the rest), and given Amahara's fascination for fictional rough sexual favours, I have to admit that Miku is the closest resemblance to Interspecies Reviewers in almost every way, and "come one, cum all" if we all have a lil' bit of Miku in our lives.

Not surprisingly, MAPPA has come under the spotlight recently for the unapologetic practices of overwork, and if the Attack on Titan's director Yuichirou Hayashi's now-infamous panda black eyes meme at the MAPPA Stage 10th Anniversary event is of no consolation, then the studio itself is in deep trouble of angering fans the wrong way. Speaking of the event, this show was one of many works featured at the event (with the biggest highlight of course all given to Chainsaw Man), and the reception was decent. Even then, I feel that MAPPA has been pushing their employees way too much by pumping out lots of works (just like all other studios except KyoAni), and while Idaten's production values are on the high-end, you can't really tell the backbones of how this anime managed to shine with its outlandishly unique visual aesthetics, hiding the inherent flaws of a studio whom has regularly pumped out hit after hit action-heavy shows like Jujutsu Kaisen.

The music is just simply *chef's kiss* fantastic, and by the way, it's not Akari Nanawo's ED, but Tatsuya Kitani's OP, which is just pure banger, and one of the stand-out OPs of the season. The OP visuals are on a whole other level resembling the likes of Dorohedoro, only if it wasn't CG and a lot more color to bring that trippy, seizure feel. I'd never get tired of watching such a creative OP done very well to complement the high beats of Tatsuya Kitani's excellent vocal range, and for a female-like soprano no less sung by a male. Visuals are top marks across the board, and Akari Nanawo's ED is fine I guess.

Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi is pure uncensored wildness like Interspecies Reviewers, has character designs like Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid (when it comes to the busty boobs part), and debut director Seimei Kidokiro's first outing is truly a great step in the right direction. Definitely looking forward to more works that this director will helm in the future, and for the rest, Idaten is not for the faint of heart with its R17+ rating of violence, profanity and sexuality at the core of it all. I'm speechless that MAPPA has done another wonderful job, but that should come as of no surprise. Just get the inner workings sorted out and let everyone have some rest from working hard to give us more anime. Meanwhile, watch Idaten, it's a very good godly show that doesn't know peace in it.

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Sep 28, 2021

SingleH

Mixed Feelings

The only other manga from this creator with an anime adaptation is Ishuzoku Reviewers, and my problem with this show is the same as my problem with that one. In both cases, you read the premise and think, “that’s genius,” but then you actually watch the show, and it’s just mediocre. The idea is that once upon a time, demons ravaged the Earth and drove humanity to the brink of extinction, so deities came down to seal them away and save humanity. Centuries later, humans have become their own worst enemy, killing each other for politics, power, religion, militarism, expansionism, the usual. However, the deities ... don’t intervene or pass judgement, because in their eyes, the only way you could save human lives is to take other human lives. This moral detachment is a surprisingly mature worldview for an anime like this to have, and the story at first seemed like it would capitalize on this completely. The villains are this group of degenerate fascists who wage indiscriminate wars of aggression, raping and pillaging to their heart’s content. This is obviously a case where the deities should step in, because these people are inflicting untold amounts of death and destruction, so even though the deities would still ultimately be killing humans to save other humans, the amount they’d save versus the amount they’d have to kill speaks for itself. As Winston Churchill once said about the Nazis, “we can’t breathe the same air as these people.” They simply have to go. But just as the deities begin stepping in to smite the aggressors, it’s revealed to us at the end of episode two that the fascists are actually demons in disguise…do you see why this ruins the thematic message? If those responsible for instigating the conflict are demons, the embodiment of all generic evil, then the moral grey area becomes black and white, and all our analysis regarding the ethics of human conflict gets thrown out the window as humanity is completely exonerated of its greatest crimes, because it turns out demons are the ones to blame. I mean, it’s not like the evils of humanity have engulfed the world in untold amounts of death and destruction in real life before, right? It’s not like the soldiers in this show dress like Fascist Italy and act like Imperial Japan, right? Anyway, if you don’t think about it that seriously and just forget the themes, this show isn’t bad on the surface.

The crazy colorful artwork looks awesome, but unfortunately, the animation is rarely there to back it up. There’s one or two flashy cuts of action sakuga every now and then, but the production is super messy, so even these cuts can sometimes be surrounded by speedlines or completely unanimated stills. It also does that annoying shit MAPPA does now where they’ll hire freelance animators without correcting their stylized drawings at all, so in the finalized episode, certain scenes will look totally different and out of place. I saw people defending this when they did it with Jujutsu Kaisen and when A-1 Pictures did it with Fate/Apocrypha and Grancrest Senki, and I won’t fault casuals for thinking it looks cool regardless of technical shit, but let’s not be willfully ignorant and pretend this is an artistic choice by the animation staff when it’s clearly a consequence of poor scheduling and outsourcing foreign animators from Twitter. Not a joke, by the way. They seriously outsourced from Twitter. The sound director doesn’t have a bad record, but the audio mixing in this show is really uneven. I bring this up because the music is amazing, but sometimes it gets drowned out by the action, and other times it’s just as loud as the dialogue. The opening is badass, and it’s filled with bizarre imagery and tons of personality, but it just makes the show seem like a let-down by comparison. The writing is fine, and the director obviously cared, but while many comedic moments can be genuinely hilarious, most of the humor is slapstick. There’s a scene where this woman makes fun of a nun for getting gang raped, so I can’t say there’s no memorable characterization, but the main protagonists are all dull and underdeveloped. It’s for this reason the series can honestly be accused of making its villains WAY more likable than its heroes. It doesn’t stick to tropes and actively tries to be as irreverent, vulgar, and objectionable as possible—to the point emotional moments feel unnatural and obnoxious—but daring doesn’t equal engaging, and the show is often boring. Some say this is a bad adaptation which butchers the flow of the manga and suffers from heavy censorship, and this may be true considering its odd pacing issues and anticlimactic cliffhanger ending, but frankly, I don’t care. What I care about is the anime in front of me, and the anime in front of me is underwhelming, if watchable.

Thank you for reading.

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May 15, 2023

CheezusChrist

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (5/11 eps)

This show presents sexual assault about as well as hentai. It's just so bad that I found the show to be completely unwatchable after episode 5, which is a shame because the rest of the show is pretty good. The SA in episode 1 was pretty pointless and gratuitous, but at least it didn't have the hentai shit where people like getting raped which is what happens in episode 5. If you can tolerate that garbage, then great there's a lot to like about this show; if not, then skip.

Everything ignoring the sexual assault: 8/10
Not ignoring the sexual assault: 2/10

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Poll: Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 ) KANLen09 - Sep 20, 2021	68 replies	by zerodths »» Apr 6, 11:44 AM
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