Eien no Filena

This isn’t much more than an awfully written and presented bland fantasy. The dialogue is poorly written, stiff and boring, with no purpose other than to deliver exposition. Which makes some sense, considering its length, they try to shove in as much as they can, but it doesn’t make for compelling storytelling.

The characters are bland and generic, and the attempts at making them more nuanced or inserting grey morality feel juvenile because of this and the poor writing.

There’s no understanding of how to build tension either, neither in the writing nor in the direction. The exposition does most of the job. The first episode ... mostly revolves around a battle scene, which we’re put into before we get any idea of who Filena is (aside from her backstory). The show then proceeds to ruin any sense of urgency we might have with extensive flashbacks, making the use of the cold open completely unnecessary.

There’s also the show’s idea of what building tension is. When Filena is about to be attacked, there’s a quick zoom in (like a few milliseconds long) on her face, which is then repeated twice. This isn’t a very good representation of how one would feel in that situation, which is probably why it doesn’t fails at making the audience scared.

The only good aspects of the direction come from the heavy use of visual metaphors and the bits of good storyboarding and colour usage that happen every now and then. Otherwise, it’s pretty unremarkable. There’s heavy use of flashbacks as well, ones that don’t serve much purpose but to pad out the runtime. A lot of the times the soundtrack doesn’t suit the scene and actively harms the tone the show’s going for. The fight scenes, rather than being exciting, feel like a chore because they’re very stilted. The show’s poor art and animation doesn’t help much in that regard either.

The ending is completely unsatisfactory. It wasn’t worth sticking with it even for that. I don’t know why I bothered finishing this tedious piece of trash. Maybe it was out of some warped sense of responsibility towards the fansubbers (seriously, thanks to Orphan Stardust for doing it, but some things are obscure for a reason.). I could say a lot more negative things about it, these were just the broad strokes to warn anyone thinking of watching it.