Hametsu no Oukoku

I’ll be the first to admit I am an inconsistent writer. My life is a constant barrage of new tasks and distractions that keeps me from accomplishing, well, pretty much everything I set my mind to. Things get especially difficult to manage around the holiday season but here I am, back in the game, because over the past 13 or so weeks I’ve been subjected to one of the most indefensibly piss-poor, psychologically agitating pieces of “art” I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Hametsu no Whatever, Who Actually Gives a Shit About the Title of This Garbage is the rare kind of complete and ... utter disaster that only surfaces once every few years, whenever anime studios have to really start scraping the bottom of the barrel for content. It single-handedly snapped me out of my depressive stupor because of how eye-openingly bad it was. It even inspired me, in a way, to never produce anything on this level of quality, lest I never call myself an artist again in my life. I’ve started writing and illustrating again thanks to Hametsu, and I at least owe it or the author of the webcomic or the staff behind the adaptation a bit of thanks by trying to interpret this work of pure schizophrenia before I inevitably sink back into the oblivion of daily apathy.
Hametsu is an anime where not a single aspect of it is pleasant or inviting. It shocks you in with a bleak, cynical first episode full of rape, slavery, genocide, and just about every one of humanity’s worse vices before shifting gears and psychotically jumping between genres every single episode like an ADHD kid who managed to ingest a red skittle and keeps trying to entertain himself with whatever’s around him. We go from EXTREMELY fucking edgy revenge fantasies where characters unironically say stuff like “I don’t even feel like raping you so I’ll just kill you” that sounds more like an Anal Cunt song title than real dialogue while standing waist-deep in pools of blood rife with faux-philosophical melodrama about how “humanity is…LE BAD”, to corny shoujo shenanigans where the unbearably annoying main girl fawns over the edgelord bishounen MC and gets scared by a spider or something and turns into a chibi while silly comedic music plays. It genuinely feels like a series that was on the brink of getting axed every chapter. At a certain point I should’ve discerned that there was nothing of value on display here and moved on, but it’s hard to look away from a trainwreck.
From the very first episode, Hametsu wants you to know that this is a serious show. The comically evil and petty human emperor genocides every witch on the planet because modern technology has made magic obsolete (the emperor actually says “the fruit of our wisdom, the smartphone” is superior to fucking magic that can level cities) and sexually assaults Adonis’ mentor/love interest in front of him before shooting her in the head while thousands of people salivate like animals. Adonis is then placed into stasis (for some reason, they never really explain this brilliant little moment of bad writing) to let his hatred marinate for a few years until he’s ready to kill his way to the emperor. Want to understand the complex mechanisms at play that led to all of this happening? It’s simple, really. The queen is actually a time-traveling witch who has the power to mind control everyone on earth except for other witches, who are all female and reproduce asexually using a magic tree on the moon, and the other female MC is a reincarnation of her from the future who has the same magic power as her or something according to the author Yoruhashi’s previous work (which is untranslated so I’m doing my best to try and interpret it using what meager Japanese I know) so she decides to mind control the king and everyone under her rule into hating witches so she can wipe them all out and end any competition to her reign, and also the anti-witch technology is giving everyone super cancer.
Got all that? Good, because after Pinkshit (I’m not even going to dignify this character by calling her by name, you’ll learn why later) manages to execute a prison break by stealing the controls from a wildly out of place caricature of a transsexual, Adonis breaks out and decides that instead of killing the emperor, he’d rather cause 9/11 2 and gun down thousands of innocent people (children included) onscreen because they’re guilty by association. From there, the show descends into misery porn and over the top wangst for the next 5 or so episodes. They go to the moon, all the witches want to revive Adonis’ mentor and kill him, he summons the humans to kill them instead and revives Pinkshit (an annoying nag he’s known for all of a day), kills a guy named Yamato who wants to fuck his sister or something, burns down the magic witch tree and leaves. Is this Alpha Male behavior or blatant stupidity? Also, remember the king? The queen brainwashes him into an heroing by throwing himself off a building because he got super cancer from the anti-witch technology. He’s not important after all. What is important, however, is her becoming an Idol of all things, because it wouldn’t be a product of the absolute dregs of the anime industry in 2023 without idolshit being forced in even when it makes zero sense in-universe. Now the two are suddenly back on earth and the show takes a few episodes to devolve into a bunch of thinly-connected shoujo-lite moments where Pinkshit and Adonis are radically different characters out of nowhere and there’s an unfunny quip or silly moment every 5 seconds.
This is where the series’ two main issues become clear as day; firstly, it can’t commit to anything. The tone shifts around with little restraint in between episodes, sometimes multiple times within the span of 2 minutes. It introduces a dozen new characters every single episode and either kills them off before they can meaningfully grow or develop or blatantly writes them out of the story once the writer gets bored of whatever subplot they spawned from. Even Adonis’ revenge plot gets phased out halfway through the fucking anime. This is not how you write a compelling story; this is a teenager’s emotionally charged fanfiction you’d read on LiveJournal in 2006 where every character is based on someone from their high school.
The second glaring issue of Hametsu is how unlikeable each and every character is. I don’t think Adonis requires or deserves an in-depth explanation; he’s a one-dimensional perpetually emo dipshit with zero critical thinking skills who can’t even seem to remember his own motivation. He gets his ass kicked in every single fight and only manages to win because of his tremendous plot armor. No one ever refutes his insane rhetoric outside the other worst character, Pinkshit, who is honest to God one of the most insufferable characters ever written. She is a walking woman moment; nearly every single line of dialogue from her is her whining and crying about how Adonis shouldn’t kill the enemy combatants who are literally trying to murder and/or enslave the both of them and their entire race at any given moment. She doesn’t shed any tears for the innocent people Adonis slaughtered earlier in the show, but she’s more than willing to slap him in the face and bitch him out for defending her from the never-ending onslaught of armed soldiers and cyborgs who want nothing more than to see them hanging and literally killed off the last members of her entire fucking race a few minutes ago. Pinkshit’s even more out of touch with reality than the guy who wants to commit mass murder, and she’s supposed to be the moral high ground of the anime. Every 5 seconds she’s whining about how “we can all still live in peace!” like a braindead hippie who reduces every single complex human thought process down to the simplest possible rationalization. Sure, she may have a point, this conflict is only arbitrary and would’ve been avoided altogether if anyone in this setting wasn’t staggeringly retarded, but just because every character is a slave to their own emotions perpetuating a totally pointless and dumb as fuck battle doesn’t mean we need a character pointing out what’s already obvious every single minute they’re onscreen as if that isn’t the most annoying thing a writer can do. I’m not sure if Pinkshit’s intentionally written to be out of touch because you can never be sure of anything with this show, but if she is it shows the author has only an incredibly shallow and cursory grasp on the concept of pacifism. Writing a character who is both naïve and likeable is admittedly difficult, and Yoruhashi decides to forgo that entirely by writing Pinkshit to be so comically stupid and braindead that any sense of likeability is automatically thrown out the window whenever she opens her hole. The only thing she really excels at is rabidly simping for Adonis and taking the brunt of his abuse, because pandering to the “I can fix him!” crowd is a guaranteed way to print money.
Meanwhile, every other character in Hametsu is some kind of raving degenerate with no moral compass or a weird sex pervert. They’re all shallow, one-dimensional psychopaths. As a matter of fact I couldn’t tell you any of their names, but I can tell you what atrocities they engage in, because every character in Hametsu would feel right at home in the Dirlewanger Brigade. And the more savagery and inhumanity gets thrown in your face, the cheaper and emptier it starts to feel. There is no moral gray area here outside of Adonis; everything is presented in extremes. In Hametsu, you are either a good guy or a remorseless monster who will gladly inflict any type of suffering onto whoever you can when it’s convenient. The only in-between is Adonis, whose mass-murdering behavior gets portrayed more like a he’s just a tortured bad boy making a few mistakes rather than a victim warped into a mass murderer by his circumstances. He has no depth. If the story even bothered trying to explore his thought process and rather than trying to gloss over his atrocities, there’d be at least some semblance of humanity to him. But then his previously defined personality gets thrown out because Pinkshit’s intolerable idealism starts rubbing off on him. At the end of the day the only character I can say I thoroughly enjoyed watching onscreen was Shirousagi, the white guy with dreads and an absolutely baller hat who beats Adonis so hard he looks like he’s about to cry and gouges out Pinkshit’s eyes onscreen. What a Chad. He is exactly what he’s presented as, and in his case that’s alright because he’s a stone cold badass and the closest I came to actually rooting for a character in this entire anime. Hametsu is probably the only anime where a guy who looks like Brian Welch rips out a Mori Calliope clone’s eyes and then crushes them, so at the very least you can’t call it unoriginal.
You’d think I’d at least have something good to say about Hametsu after I spent nearly 2000 words railing on it harder than a Thailand ladyboy, maybe some words of praise for the production quality of the anime? Woefully, there is none. Yokohama Animation Lab is just about the very bottom rung in the anime studio society; almost every project of theirs is rated a 6 or below on here, and that’s probably not an accurate gauge considering how many users wantonly hand out 10s to every anime they watch. The opening animation is probably where 99% of the show’s budget went, and if I’m being truthful it’s not that bad. The song (Kieru Made by Hana Hope) is far too pretty and refined for a show like this. It almost feels dishonest; I was expecting something more like Musashi Gundoh’s infamously deranged opening, that’s a clear and present indication of exactly what you’re about to watch, but Hametsu’s opening feels like it belongs to a much more refutable anime. And on that note, I can’t bring myself to praise its extremely shitty animation and presentation. I’m not sure what I expected considering the source material was almost entirely unknown outside Japan before the anime was announced, but this anime treats drag and drop animation like a fucking Olympic sport. Every fight is a slideshow where off-model characters slowly move across still frames and jitter around. There’s a scene in episode 11 where Pinkshit drops to the ground that’s utterly weightless, and she looks completely stiff. This scene was so ridiculous looking I had to pause the episode and get a drink to steel myself into finishing it. The anime was directed by School Days director Keitarou Motonaga, a guy who is infamous in this day and age for fundamentally not understanding the source material of the projects he directs (see: Digimon Adventure tri, an incredibly pretentious borderline fanfiction-tier movie series that almost killed the franchise in terms of animated projects).
Hametsu is a show I can’t fathom anyone taking seriously, even the people behind it. The part of my mind that’s still trying to comprehend why this even exists can only rationalize it as being some kind of avant-garde parodic work. It is one of the few anime I’ve seen that goes from comically overblown edge and misanthropy to goofy preschool humor within the span of a minute every single episode. There’s a scene in episode 3 or so where Adonis brutally kills a bunch of soldiers onscreen and within 20 seconds or so it cuts to one of the villain generals chibified and dancing around while making stupid noises. That’s basically the thesis statement of this anime. Either nobody had any idea what they were doing behind the scenes, or they knew exactly what they were doing and none of us are intelligent enough to grasp this kind of cutting-edge satire.
Either way, tl;dr: https://i.imgur.com/WYNwMyK.png

While I thought the anime would be decent, and maybe slightly interesting, considering there isn't many series related to witch extermination, especially with that much cruelty. (there're some manga with similar concept, but they're 18+ and completely whacked) The more we go into each episode, the worse the writing becomes.
I don't know if this was messed up by the mangaka himself, or the studio animating it and finalizing it as a product, but the actions of every single character, their emotions, their train of thought, and reactions are all terribly written, as if done by a teen who's bad at writing essays... At this point ... I'm gonna drop it, the writing is just so terrible.
Thought it will be some 6.5 series, nothing great, but fine to watch, but well, at this point its about 5 or 4 for me. I would not recommend this to anyone.

This is some quality “so bad it’s good” content. It is so insanely edgy that it becomes impossible to take seriously. The (many) tragic scenes are so over the top that it’s hilarious. The show feels as if some kid was pulled from a Call of Duty voice chat on Xbox to write the story.

There are just about no likable characters here. The main character attacks civilians for extremely petty reasons. Our antagonistic force is the empire who’s running a genocide because… well they’re evil that’s why. This sounds like a certain megahit series featuring an evil protagonist seeking revenge on the world for genocide, ... and that’s because this might as well be that if someone watched it and their only takeaway was that it’s edgy and all the nuance is lost. Kingdoms of Ruin has quickly established itself as truly abysmal television, and it’s a fantastic comedy for that reason.

First two episodes were like a strong 7/10, maybe even an 8. The hook is really there and you wanna see how this epic revenge story pans out. But unfortunately the overall quality and writing just falls off one cliff after another. Every. Passing. Episode.

The animation gets awful the last half of the season and they essentially just keep throwing dark themed plot twists and blood fiestas in your face for the sake of it, hoping it will be enough keep the viewers interested. Sadly it doesn't, at least not for me because if you keep trying to plot twist your way out of ... every given scene, the fact that a twist is coming will even that eventually become predictable.

It's such a shame because the premise is actually good, the world seems well thought out and interesting and I somewhere genuinely like this kind of character dynamic between two main characters. One drowning in hatred and cynism, the other kind hearted and hopeful to the point of being very naive. (Almost Naruto and Sasuke'esq) With proper development I was looking forward to them eventually meeting somewhere in the middle or just one proving the other wrong. But not now when it's apparent the writing just isn't there, at ALL.

If you're not picky about well paced story or character development, writing that makes sense or animation quality, you might actually still find it enjoyable though.

I've never in my life seen someone manage to destroy their plot so well, so constantly and so fast as this anime did. Whatever made you like the 10 minutes of the first episode will be butchered, ruined and destroyed if you so much as stay awake while watching it. Nothing makes sense, nobody is enjoyable and they made me hate the beautiful setting that was the only reason i kept watching this in the first place.

The pacing is the equivalent of Sonic overdosing on cocaine, plot is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the balls and the characters are the equivalent of an orphan's ... parents.
The only way you can enjoy this is if you don't watch it. Don't finish it, drop it before anything that *seems* entertaining is about to happen and maybe, maybe you'll look back and think it is good.
It is so bad it made me come here to drop a review. it is so bad i lost 1 pounds of weight.
If you ever thought writting wasn't for you, remember that this exists.

This one started out really strong. I was all in for a "kill them all" type anime. And it seemed like that's what we'd get. It was easy to get invested in the demise of the human race. They were horrible. The humans were jealous creatures that hated witches because they were not as powerful as them, so sought to destroy them. They hated magic. They used science to overcome the magic and the witches. However, within a few episodes, the humans attacks seemed more like magic than the actual witches. Their techniques would be hard to ... distinguish from the magic jutsu BS from Natuto, down to the calling out of the attack name as they do it. Alll of the characters are unbelievably dumb, and it feels like everything is done just for the shock value vs any semblance of a plot. At this point the story is so disjointed that its hard to see (or care) where it is headed anymore. After week 1 it was near the top of my rankings for the season, and now I'd rank it somewhere in the middle.

This show is so bad it actually made me write a review for the first time. And the reason why I'm more annoyed with it, us because it had a somewhat interesting premise that lured me in.
But the whole plot was reduced to an edgy, boring anime with zero character development, zero world building, zero logic, over used plot armour for the main character, mindless killing and gore. No character is interesting enough for me to care about their deaths.

The main character comes off as just an edge Lord protected with ridiculous plot armour. The supporting girl is an annoying pure girl archetype, written ... so badly that it hurts to watch.

7 episodes in, and I still don't know where the plot is going. It's like random stuff are just happening with several unimpressive attempts at giving viewers shocking moments/plot twists at the end of each episode.

The Kingdoms of Ruin - Extreme hatred built on nonsense logic that perverses the idea of justice, but it being "so bad it's good" to play the bad guy and get some mind-numbing satisfaction due to it being over-the-top edgy? I highly question the "novel" concept.

When was the last time we had an extremely over-the-top gory and violent series filled with extreme hatred to the point of nepotism? For many, the classic series of Lynn Okamoto's Elfen Lied would come to mind, being the Summer 2004 anime that would, for one, grow to be infamous for its violent mess of gore, cruelty, and nudity. Even ... after 20 years, its effect on AniManga can still be felt for millennia as a cult favourite, inspiring many others like Ryukishi07's Higurashi franchise and Sakae Esuno's Mirai Nikki a.k.a Future Diary to name a few.

Well, for one prolific author who goes by the name of yoruhashi, he/she thought otherwise to create something that would capture the attention of those reading the one and only work that would get people riled up in a frenzy: Hametsu no Oukoku a.k.a The Kingdoms of Ruin. The work that is unapologetic to its vulgar themes of gore and violence will definitely make one feel VERY uncomfortable and disgusted from its premise alone, from the typical war between entities to pure genocide. Side note: This is actually the sequel to the unknown prequel series "The Kingdom of Caliburn", in which some of the characters in this series had more prominent roles there, which spans 175 chapters. How does both series link to each other? Read on to find out.

In a dystopian world where God created humans and witches, the latter were more advanced thanks to their magic, which is used to help people and maintain prosperity between the two entities. However, with the rapid advance in technology akin to the Industrial Revolution, the human Redia Empire took control and immediately declared that the witches were rendered obsolete, ordering the assassination of all witches with no plea for mercy. And for one such witch by the name of Chloe, she raised a human apprentice by the name of Adonis, who is still taught the old world's tradition that humans and witches live together in harmony. But the reality could not be farther from the truth, for soon Adonis learned about the Empire's ruthless killings of witches, Chloe included, as she is stripped and humiliated before the humans before meeting her cruel death. That sent Adonis into a rage, and with the magic that he learned from Chloe, the capture by the Redia Empire unleashed his rage, though it would not take until sometime in the future that someone would coincidentally get him to escape from the Empire to enter a revenge party against humanity.

You can already tell that everything about this show is not meant to be likeable. From the outset, the characters are all either a bunch of pure-hearted and naïve, or set for disaster with their heart-filled egos, trying to fulfil what's best for the people and for themselves. Let's start with Adonis, the pure-hearted human who still wishes for reconciliation between humans and witches; that objective was long gone with the public execution of his teacher Chloe. With his magic pen, which was the last gift given from her, that is the human apprentice's only tool to invoke magic against anyone who is in direct conflict with his interests. The revenge-filled heart has no remorse or any hope because reality is shoved in your face, and that's Adonis's reason for living — to ensure that he only gets the last laugh. Needless to say, there will be at least a comrade alongside him who wants to make her own live count as well, and that is the witch Doroka. Like young Adonis before his world thinking was tarnished, Doroka is nothing more than just the typical witch, sold for the Redia Empire's slavery and got saved due to perchance, only to unconsciously release Adonis from his stranglehold. But her character development is definitely one of the most bizarre I have seen in anime this far, going from the kind-nurtured girl to one who has no conception of reality, even in the face of cruelty, and Adonis acting as the antithesis of the world. It's certainly frustrating to see Doroka act the way she does, always being the damsel-in-distress for Adonis to save her, apart from being a burden just by her presence alone.

That said, apart from the other human profiles ranging from the Redia Empire's nobility to the side profiles of the witches, the most prominent from the Empire's leader of Emperor Goethe to the Queen's helper of Shirousagi (whose relationship is the most "show, don't tell" subtlest of all), the link between both Caliburn and Ruins is quite the fascination and interest that while this is just side cheddar as opposed to Ruins, nonetheless, here it is, and take this information as you will about Doroka:

In every universe, there will always be a Witch of Love, and a Witch Disciple (like Chloe/Doroka and Adonis). And in the Kingdom of Caliburn, Dorothea and Alfred have to defeat the Queen (which is another Witch of Love from a different timeline). Unfortunately, they were defeated, and she cut Alfred's head to revive her Witch Disciple (her lover in that timeline). That is also the reason for Dorothea to come to the timeline of The Kingdom of Ruin; the purpose is to revive Alfred in her timeline by killing Adonis, but I guess there are requirements that are not mentioned anywhere because she could have killed him long ago. Basically, it is a cycle. The Witch of Love from this timeline will lose her lover and eventually go to another timeline to save him.

Former Date A Live director Keitarou Motonaga may not have the best track record when it comes to directing shows (see studio A-CAT shows of Winter 2021's Soukou Musume Senki a.k.a LBX Girls, and Winter 2022's Kenja no Deshi wo Nanoru Kenja a.k.a She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man), but for par of the course, he has done the adaptation justice with the minimum of his resources, the most glaring aspect being the rather subpar production by Yokohama Animation Lab. Despite all of the issues, from censorship to iffy animation, partially faulted by the manga's depiction of its violent nature, it looks decent to a palpable degree...provided that you can bear through the anime's repulsive nature.

The music itself is easily the best part of the anime, given its depressive nature akin to a genocide state that sees deaths as common influxes of daily life. Most particularly, Hana Hope's OP has the mystical feeling of hope at the beginning until it hits the chorus, where everything just drops the ball to full-on melancholic misery. And Who-Ya Extended's ED song "Prayer", I just could not think of a better song to express all of the regret and rage that Adonis felt while losing Chloe, then pursuing revenge as his full-time job to eradicate humanity, or anyone that does not lean to his philosophy. I for sure did not think that the ED song would become one of my favourite songs of this season, because depressive songs, ironically enough, make for banger songs (listen to Enen no Shouboutai's Season 1, 1st Cour's ED song of Keina Suda's veil as a great example). Latom.

At the end of the day, you and I both know that Hametsu no Oukoku a.k.a The Kingdoms of Ruin is a trash/garbage-tier shit anime/series, let's not kid ourselves. But I'd like to think that for as much as Elfen Lied had done the same to break my heart and soul watching something as gut-wrenching, this show has surprisingly done the same for me.

You can treat my review like a bludgeoning troll, but to me, experiencing this show has been a sorrowful, but engrossing, yet "entertaining" ride like a Highway to Hell...or appropriately, a Crimson Skies of the High Road to Revenge's memory burn that I will never, EVER, forget.

While not without its flaws, Hametsu no Oukoku was one of my favourite shows of Fall 2023 and the year as a whole. A really good dark fantasy story with an interesting world. But, it’s not for everyone.

Many of you will have seen clips of the first episode of Hametsu on YouTube, IG or another social media platform and for good reason, it’s insane. It is one of the most infuriating and emotionally gripping premieres I’ve seen in a long time. The tragic ending sets up what promised to be one of the more entertaining revenge quests in recent anime. Does it live up to ... that first episode? Well, yes and no. Hametsu does indeed follow through on giving us an MC who just goes absolutely insane and tries to kill everyone in his path which I loved. We have so many cardboard cutout MCs that you could pickup and drop into another series and not notice a thing. So it’s nice to get an MC who doesn’t subscribe to the traditional moral high ground stuff. Adonis says, you know what, you take my girl, I take your world. Sadly, that only went so far in the anime.

Adonis being the disciple of a witch as a human and not a witch himself makes for an interesting situation. While he has access to many spells that only the witches would normally, he’s still a human and has to work within those confines. He’s got some very powerful magic, but he’s limited with the extent he can use it. It’s a cool way to make him strong, but not overly powerful to the point where the story isn’t fun anymore.

The main complaint you’ll hear about the story is that what starts off as an interesting revenge story turns into a more slower “boring” fantasy story. Now, in truth, that’s not entirely wrong. After about the halfway point in the series, Adonis gets a travel companion and things slow down quite a bit. While he’s still an edge lord, there isn’t as much plot development. There’s a few episodes dedicated entirely to character relationship building, world building and dialogue. This is not a bad thing to me for a couple of reasons. 1: in a long running story, there’s always going to be lulls in the story where characters have to actually develop. Otherwise this would just be God of War where Adonis goes full Kratos killing everyone without speaking or actually thinking. Which, for some people might be appealing, but I like my stories with a little more substance at this point in life. 2:I really like Doroka and her relationship with Adonis. While her being a damsel in distress can be a little annoying but at times, she’s cute as hell and helps Adonis to see there’s more to life than just his quest for revenge. If their relationship were not in the story, it would be substantially worse off in my opinion. But if constant action is your thing and you just want pure unadulterated rage, this one isn’t for you.


Now while I do unabashedly love this show, it’s not without its flaws. My biggest issues here are the production values being pretty subpar to bad depending on the scene, and frequent use of sexual assault or sexual assault bait to create villains. I’ll clarify what I mean by that in a second. First, I’ll clarify the production value situation. There’s quite a few action scenes in this that look really bad. Like amateurish. Particularly the big fight in episodes 10-11 which is meant to be one of the more hype moments of the series, yet it’s marred by animation errors, stiff animation and more. I mean at one point, the studio doesn’t even draw Doroka consistently. She’s wearing stockings in one scene and the next she’s bare legged. Not to mention how bad Adonis looked floating through the air against the antagonist’s flying hand attacks. It’s kind of odd because the art and designs look amazing, but that was lacking.

Following up on the near sexual assault point, there’s several times in the show where villains rip the clothes off female characters for seemingly no other reason other than humiliating them. I mean we as the audience don’t even get to see any semblance of an anime tiddy during these scenes, so it just begs the question what was even the point? It’s always been one of my pet peeves when SA or stuff similar to that is used to make viewers dislike a villain. I think it’s cheap and overdone. From what I’ve heard this is somewhat of a recurring theme in the manga too, which I own but have not yet read, so keep that in mind. It’s not a massive deal, but it did irk me a little.

My overall experience with Hametsu was positive. It’s not a show for everyone, it does at times feel like an edgy teenager is writing it, but I like edgy. It’s enjoyable to me and opens up some cool possibilities with storytelling. While we only briefly touched the surface of it in the anime, I believe this world and its characters have a lot of potential. It’s really only a matter of how far the author’s mind lets him go. I look forward to finding out.

Hametsu gets 8, out of 10.

Tell you what. Do not listen to the low rating reviews saying that this anime does not have likeable characters. If you like similar genre of animes like elfen lied, death note, fumetsu no anatae, you are going to love this one. It started off peak, and continues to proceed marvellously throughout the storyline. Every episode has a good storytelling that entails the reason of why the mc acted as he did. Some episodes also were heart-wrenching about the perspective of different characters in the war. All in all the story is good, the production value for music is high, the characters are likeable and ... the plot twist is phenomenal. One of those anime's that attracted me to read the manga. Beautiful.

The story so damn mess, power creep not consistence, character motive so naive, in human side no one think about the logic behind killing the witch (Like come one, they help humanity and no single character think this is wrong to slaughter a witch or living creature).

Witch have magic, but I'm not see any of them use magic at all. Magic defense is basic, they should have that as passive which always activate but can be destroy depend on the attack and defense level. But no they can't even use defense magic.

Also they can't even cast attack magic, they cast magic that so long like ... its channeling not instant even so slow compared to someone walking behind them and still have a time to lay an attack. Also in the beginning Chloe can detect someone from far away with mana, but here no single witch can detect presence within 1 meter.

Suddenly human have power suit that can regenerate a body and weapons, like where the suit draw energy.

The head government blame scientist that they do nothing for let some witch alive, thought they got this so far because the scientist. Hypocrite & so dumb.

MC was strong enought to take out near the entire kingdom and military but struggle to kill 1 man. If MC can transform any bullet to be so big & can dodge bullet with defense field. Why he not doing any of that?
Based on his magic, He can just throw a dart and transform to be so big or adding speed with his magic instead he using arm armour with buff on his hand then attack in melee combat. The gun he stole suddenly missing.

Waste of times. This anime has no story, this is just gore, slaughter & try to be edgy but become so cringe

Im still confused as to why they did 12 episodes instead of doing a movie. I wasted my time on this anime. First episode was like damn! From the second to the tenth episode it just went donwhill, and when the climax arrives in the final two episodes I just wanted it to end.

We get animes like this because Chat GPT is out. The story did not make sense. A bunch of scenes put out together and call it an anime.

I have to comment about the art to make this review, but it makes me more angry that I have to write ... about this poor anime.

Review Checklist
Art: Ok
Characters: Cringey
Story: Chat GPT wrote it

If you watch good anime please do yourself a favor and skip this.

Just don't listen to the comments of babies who can't see a bit of blood, it's because of these people that animes have become increasingly childish and sometimes even spoil masterpieces with childishness. In short, this anime is not a 10/10, but it has a well-developed plot, the characters have an interesting chemistry and you feel like continuing to watch and moving forward to see how the work unfolds. For those who like less cliché anime, it's a good choice and I would really like to see a second season. for me this anime easily get a 07/10 or more.

Easily the worst anime I've sat through. This series is just flat out soulless in both its story and production.

Storywise there isn't anything at all. The fuckass MC wants to commit genocide for a reason that is fucking petty as hell given he didn't give a shit about the main problem that led to that reason in the first place. The main girl is an insufferable pacifist that honestly comes off as a genocide apologist, especially given a scenario that happens during ep 5-7. Not one other character is likable or memorable, mostly due to being killed off minutes after their introduction. And don't ... get me started on the world building that boils down to repetitive misogyny.

As for the anime's production it's somehow worse. The animation (especially in the later half) is a slideshow that rivals SDS S2+, multiple animation errors that went unchecked, many of the brutal scenes from the manga are heavily censored or are hardly given any impact, the use of cliffhangers were hit or miss, and too much budget was spent on getting A-list VAs on the project (one even had to get replaced mid-production). They didn't even try to make this anime look presentable. And the worst part? It aired in Fall 2023 amidst the best seasonal lineup that year, against other edgy revenge plot anime like Ragna Crimson (watch that instead since at least that isn't a burning landfill) as well.

I'd say to not bother watching this atrocity but no, please watch it in full so you'll have an idea on what qualifies as a 1/10 anime.

It's one of the most awful animes aired this year, it is almost as bad as Good Night World. The characters have no real motivation or development. The story is all over the place, there is no coherence to it and at times it feels like the anime is trying to be a harem anime like some horrible attempt at a gag. The story is really unpredictable, not because the story telling is complex but rather because it isn't well executed. Character interactions are poorly executed, none of the conversations actually flow and it seems like they exist solely for info dump.

The fact that ... so much talent, animation and time went into creating this abomination is heartbreaking.

This is without a doubt the worst anime of the season. It's worse than the pig isekai. The first half of the first episode is pretty interesting. The show sets up well at the beginning despite being edgy it shows some promise. Unfortunately the promise dies right there and never shows any signs of life again. The characters are beyond stupid but not seemingly intentionally. The show also seems to want you to be emotionally invested when characters get injured or die but it does absolutely zero setup to make you actually invest or care about those characters. ... The pacing is awful in both directions, the overall plot is moving way too fast yet the individual episodes are paced incredibly slow. All dialogue and action is incredibly slow and tedious to sit through, it shows long flashbacks of things that were seen as little as one or two episode(s) prior, and the way the characters behave just makes absolutely no sense.

To be honest i was excited at first. But, the inconcistences of mc dropped my expectation. He yelling about revenge, vengeance, etc. But he seems like doesn't willing to do so. Remember when all of us had shown the angry expression of the mc, i thought it will be rousing. But, what we got here? An impotent mc?. Oh god please...
You wanna show gore, so show it. You wanna show thrill, then show it. You wanna show revenge, a vengeance? So let show it. Don't show us a drama comedy.
You said you hate sugar but you still eat it, dring it! Don't made ... laugh..

So edgey it makes me reminiscent of Redo of a Healer. It tries very hard to be "dark", "grim", and "brutal" with no regards to the "too bleak, didn't care" effect. The over-arching pattern with the show and writing is that everything is set up to move in the direction that can produce the most blood and dismembered bodies on screen. There's little to no substance outside of shock value here. In an attempt to be so edgy, the entirety of the plot is predictable as you need only be in the mindset to guess what would be the edgiest and bloodiest outcome to happen, ... and that's either exactly what happens or you're damn near close.

With how one dimensional the plot develops, every single character is also incredibly one dimensional. Motivations and decision making are all meant to just set up more "shock-value" gore so there are zero likable characters for you to root for. If there is a bad or selfish decision to be made that can lead to more gore, that's what'll happen. You're really just watching to see where the trainwreck goes unless you actually enjoy the needless gore either seriously or comedically. It does not help that every character design just fits their whole shtick even more and thus pigeonholes their entire existence to their shallow purpose elevating how one dimensional everything is. Pink haired girl is the obvious innocent and peace-loving archetype. MC, complete edgelord with red eyes to show their rage and want to burn the world.

If you're buying into the whole "magic vs science" shtick, don't. It's barely the focus. There is no nuance in strategy here. It's just people throwing rocks at each other; one just so happens to be called "magic" and the other "science". Both weapons end up also being massively underwhelming. Magic, for the most part, is only beaten by deus ex machina writing as in characters go from massacring an entire squadron to literally doing nothing to defend themselves in order to lose to "science". Likewise, power scaling of magic is not consistent at all as it bends to if a character needs to die or not either for shock value or to push the plot forward. It's almost purely a gimmick. There is zero strategical thought to any fights or how MC plans to enact revenge.

The writing is very much reminiscent of a bad amateur teen writer who attempts to write an "adult" setting by spamming swear words, death, blood, and taboo ideas (usually sex and rape nowadays for some reason). It's got the vibe of the author saying to the viewer, "Yea, I went there, I did that. Bet you weren't expecting that huh?" Except, we totally were expecting it because that's just how bad the writing is. It's just shallow writing.

Likewise, I can't tell if this show is trying to piggyback off if Redo of a Healer vibes where that author admitted he wrote Redo purely for outrage media as there was a market for it, or this is legitimately supposed to be "good". I can only guess the target audience of this one is of those who see violence, gore, and etc. as provocative/avante garde regardless of quality for the execution. Or those who see how one dimensional it is and are just riding to see where the trainwreck goes (I'm more of the latter).

The only plus to this show is that characters and the show's overall animation quality is solid. That's about the only good thing I can give it and that hopefully the studio can pick up better work. However, a score of 5 meaning "average" on the 1-10 scale, this shoots below.

I don't usually write many reviews, but I had to share my thoughts on this anime. "Hametsu no Oukoku," or "The Kingdoms of Ruin" – even the name, unrelated as it is to the anime, feels overly edgy. It ticks all the boxes of what makes an edgy anime, featuring a protagonist with black hair and red eyes. Let me be upfront: I just don't think this anime is good, and if you're over 18, chances are you'll agree with me.

Let me quickly break down the basic plot. God creates humanity, realizes it was a mistake, then creates witches and shares his powers with them ... to help humans, and they agree. However, when humans no longer need their help, they decide to purge all the witches. Here comes our edgy main character, Adonis, a human who despises his own race for their treatment of witches. Chloe, the witch training him, tries to change his perspective, but they get captured by humans using teleportation before she can say much. Apparently, we've become so advanced as a human race that we've mastered physical transfer technology, something even the witches, with the power of God, can't use. I know, right? The witches, who have the power of God, can't do something us humans can. Things unfold, and Adonis embarks on his emo arc.

You probably understand the show's central theme by now: humanity is portrayed as a big mess, and not a single human has ever stopped to think that mistreating the beings who once saved us might not be the way to go. But at least it gives Adonis a target for his resentment. Then there's Doroka, our deuteragonist, who is the complete opposite of Adonis. Witnessing two women fighting over bread, she doesn't advocate violence; instead, she selflessly gives away her own loaf to prevent another girl from being chosen as a slave.

The animation is surprisingly well-done for what seems like a trash anime with no substantial story. Though in the later episodes in does start to go down. I'm genuinely impressed by the quality of the animation, arguably the only redeeming aspect of the show—filled with intense, bloody scenes that's always on the screen. Here's a game for you: watch episodes 1-5 and count the amount of blood you see. Trust me, it'll be a lot. The funny part is that the show doesn't even attempt to establish a convincing power system. Adonis's magical abilities involve just thinking of whatever nonsense he wants, and it happens. Everyone else shouts random ability names, presumably to make it look cooler. The show doesn't try to conceal its primary target audience: a group of kids with short attention spans, likely influenced by TikTok. And you know what? I'm not above exploiting that audience either—use those attention spans all you want; it works. I'm just saying, if you're not in the right mindset going into this anime, you'll probably hate it. But if you are, you might just love it.

MAL gave this show around a 6.6, and I can tell you it's going to drop down HEAVILY after this review, but I give it a 6.

Empty, edgy, watching this anime it feels like the author just drew his edgy daydreams into reality, the humans are all evil for no reason theyre all npcs, sure you can be brainwashed but no way in hell theyre just cheering as a woman gets violated, even the king admits he just wants to be the superior race and witches did nun wrong, and yet literally every human in the show cheers as she gets her brains splattered right infront of them, after that the MC apparently plans his revenge for 10 years, but then he reveals himself and makes a giant golem in the ... middle of a market, when he couldve just done it near the base thing with all the military in it, and the world here really feels empty, it had that feeling right from episode 1 and will probably stay that way after episode 12, even the most basic of isekai has a less empty feeling in it.