Clevatess: Majuu no Ou to Akago to Shikabane no Yuusha

Surrounded by four armies of dark beasts, five humanoid races strive to push the known boundaries of the world. Unfortunately, the 13 heroes dispatched to the southern region are easily wiped out by Clevatess, one of the Lords of Dark Beasts. Determined to get revenge against humanity, Clevatess bursts into the capital of the Kingdom of Hiden, leaving a trail of death and destruction behind him.

Although the situation looks desperate, humanity still has a chance to appease Clevatess' anger. Alicia Glenfall, one of the 13 heroes, is revived by Clevatess to help him raise a newborn infant, Luna, whose choices shall shape the fate of the human world. Although reluctant to help the dark beast at first, Alicia understands that Luna is the only thing that stands between humanity and complete annihilation.

Hiding himself by taking on a human form, Clevatess sets out in search for a wet nurse with Alicia and Luna. With Clevatess unwilling to reveal his identity, it falls on Alicia to slay all enemies that stand in their way. Meanwhile, the neighboring countries prepare to advance on the weakened Hiden, aiming to control the only forge capable of producing the heroes' weapons.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Glenfall, Alicia Main

Shiraishi, Haruka Japanese

Clevatess Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Nelluru Supporting

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Chiffonlits, Naie Supporting

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Carme Supporting

Fairouz Ai Japanese

Royes, Rhode Supporting

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Luna Supporting

Aizawa, Saya Japanese

Miquel Supporting

Uemura, Yuuto Japanese

Zavthier Supporting

Han, Megumi Japanese

Swann, Meynard Supporting

Shigematsu, Chiharu Japanese

Iizuka, Aya Producer

Takahashi, Kanako Producer

Yonai, Noritomo Producer

Ooba, Miho Producer

Reviews

Sep 17, 2025

Ugapiku

Recommended

Clevatess is a hidden gem that could easily be a top anime of 2025, despite its lower popularity. As an original story, it shines with a unique premise that feels fresh and unpredictable. I went in expecting to drop it after one episode, but its grounded take on real-life situations hooked me , making it my favorite anime this year so far—only Kingdom S6 might top it, but that’s a sequel, and this is an original (based on manga ofc).

The characters are well-rounded, each with clear strengths and flaws. They’re neither overly perfect nor inexplicably foolish—their decisions and reactions to events feel authentic, making their ... growth compelling. Naie Chiffonlits best girl (perfect VA choice).

Others might enjoy Clevatess for its originality and character-driven plot, even if they’re not into the genre.
For me, it’s a 10/10, and I’m hoping for a Season 2!

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 17, 2025

ZeroMajor12

Mixed Feelings

Funny

Clevatess, in a nutshell, is an extremely ambitious show. Clevatess is like one of those stories that has some good ideas and initially starts out great, but it's drastically hindered by the format of the medium and the lack of structure in the show. It would have been better if the anime had learned to cut out some story elements in favor of more development in the main narrative, because it felt like the anime was trying to build too many things at once without proper planning.

The good is that the anime had a strong start and good production, thanks to the anime's first episode ... being a 45-minute foundation that built interesting narration and good characters to boot, with some nice dialogue. The production and direction helped cement the show as another sleeper hit of this Summer, which I honestly didn't expect to be, but it was a nice surprise nonetheless. Clevatess was the main highlight of the show because he has a lot of interesting things going for him, caring for a human baby, reviving a human hero, watching the human world through the lens of a protectless maiden, etc. After all, I wanted to see how Clevatess can gradually learn to acknowledge humanity through the action of taking care of a baby. Albeit stereotypes are present to drive the story, such as making Clevatess portrayed as a conceited nihilistic being or creating douchebags as stepping stones, as the norm for some shows nowadays. Still, part of me was amused by the action and drama the anime introduced in its first episode. With little time to progress, the first half of the story is solid, as it introduces a couple of interesting characters like Neruru and Dorel while providing quite nerve-racking action for Alicia during her climaxes (I don't mean it in a kinky way). As for Dorel, I'd say the story does a decent job at fleshing out this character, showing him as a fearsome general along with some notable fight scenes, which help him stand out as the series' antagonist for the time being. Now with all that being said...

The bad starts mainly because of its pacing, and by that I don't mean it's sluggish; it's too choppy and rushed. Part of that came from the show's attempt to explore its multiple story ideas, but it does so quite clumsily. It's an example of what scope creep is to a show. I'm not saying that the show didn't make any notable progress. It was able to deliver good character development when the story took it slow, primarily looking at Alicia, for example. Her backstory and scenario were already interesting, a revenge story coupled with the disgraced hero narrative, besides even Neruru was also interesting, but instead of trying to solely focus on that, the story wanted to include more lore and exposition, hence churning the story into a rushed war climax that later stopped delivering character development during that arc. This, unfortunately, results in the following action sequences lacking emotional impact, and some characters start to feel more like plot tools (like Dorel, who starts to act more like a backstory dump during crucial action sequences) than actual characters as it later progresses. Another issue I had with the story is the baby, since he's nothing more than a plot device in the entire anime and lacks plenty of baby personality despite the anime desperately trying to show you a lot of crying scenes, and I mean A LOT. I'm confident that if the baby didn't exist and somehow were to be replaced by a secret key, it wouldn't change a damn thing about the story at all. Long story short, many of its story aspects needed more time to flesh out, but due to the show's format of only allowing 21 minutes of storytelling and exposition, it feels oddly rushed in the end. I think the story could've worked if it had lowered its scope, which would have helped create more breathing room for the more interesting story aspects it managed to flesh out, like Neruru, who got sidetracked for the sake of the story.

But wait, there's more! We need to talk about the ugly, too! It stems directly from Clevatess. Yeah, it turns out they actually don't know how to write Clevatess in his own damn story. He's directly the main source of my complaints, because Clevatess has reached the maximum level of wasted potential; it's like watching the boss when you play him as a playable character. The story's decision to make sure to turn Clevatess into a useless character in the later chapters was utter garbage for a direction, because it cuts Clevatess away from more unique and interesting interactions, thus he's far inferior as a character compared to others since the story desperately wants to build him as its own surrogate. If you need a reminder, Clevatess nuked a kingdom because its domain was attacked by its heroes, then later shown to be extremely fragile and useless in human form in the SAME EPISODE! Whenever Clevatess (as Clen) tries to apprehend an issue through action, he ends up getting thrown around like a ragdoll, even though it's shown he has shadow powers! I really did not like what they did to Clevatess, especially looking at how rushed and straightforward Clevatess starts acting more 'human' without any needed development. It's pretty obvious that the story wanted to make sure Alicia gets all the screentime for action, but all it did was make me wonder why make Clevatess the main character, if he's not going to do anything in the first place? Might as well turn the title into The Adventures of Alicia.

Long story short, the anime fails at trying to keep itself grounded, since it wanted to be a narrative masterpiece for some reason, despite lacking the creativity or writing to pace the series, so it ends up being a disjointed mess that tried too hard to go beyond the scope it's supposed to go for. So it's not going to feel satisfying for any ongoing watchers. Although I have to give credit for the way they handled the first half. Alicia and Clen were interesting at that time since the anime had a valid reason to keep up the human facade that terribly backfired at the end of the series. However, I am pretty drained after the show, even knowing the show will get a Season 2, I don't think I can continue watching when the show did a flimsy job at delivering a war arc when it mattered most.

Thank you for reading.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 29, 2025

C4bs

Not Recommended

Funny

For as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of fantasy stories. It's definitely my favorite genre, and practically all of my favorite stories fit into it in some way. Even works that aren't very good overall but feature some interesting fantasy element end up finding their way to me. However, it's true that after reading so many fantasy stories, my critical sense of them has considerably improved, so these days I can't stand any of the generic crap that's released every anime season.

So, when I first heard about Clevatess, I was surprised by its positive critical reception, coming from people who didn't ... talk much about anime but recommended it to everyone. And recently, a major anime website declared the anime one of the best fantasy series released in recent years, which further increased my desire to watch it so I could finally experience a fantasy story that breaks free from clichés and features a truly good narrative and captivating characters. However, before even reaching the halfway point of the season, I managed to sum up Clevatess in a single word: disappointing.

In *Clevatess*, humanity faces dark beasts until the 13 heroes sent to combat are defeated by Lord Clevatess. Seeking revenge, he devastates the Kingdom of Hiden, but revives the heroine Alicia Glenfall to help him raise Luna, a child whose destiny could save or destroy the world. Disguised as a human, Clevatess travels with Alicia in search of a wet nurse, while neighboring kingdoms prepare to exploit Hiden's fragility and claim his borrowed forge.

First and foremost, Clevatess is truly a bit different from other fantasy works, as at least here there's an attempt to create an original world with its own fantastical elements. But make no mistake: every cliché found in any other story of the genre is there, but glossed over with different names—and sometimes not so glossed over at all. There are mysteries related to the distant past of the races that have repercussions on the future of the world, which is interesting in creating a sense that everything happening on screen is "alive" and not simply created to be shown to the viewer.

But all my praise ends there, as Clevatess managed to waste all its potential due to a basic narrative error that occurs in many fantasy fictions: excessive exposition through dialogue. It's clear that the original author of the story lacks the ability to present the story's events to the audience in an interesting way, falling into the trap of simply having the characters explain everything—and I repeat, absolutely everything—that just happened, what happened in the past, what might happen in the future, and what is happening now. There simply comes a point where I felt like I was being treated like an idiot by the story, as everything was explained as if it had been nothing more than a neuron in my head.

Because of this extremely exaggerated exposition, much of the screen time that could have been devoted to character development, world-building, and building anticipation for future plot developments was simply replaced by small talk about mostly completely insignificant events. For this reason, by the final episodes, I felt like the story hadn't progressed at all and little had actually happened, contrary to what the anime intended.

As a result, all the elements that had potential for depth were reduced to dust. The worldbuilding becomes a blur, the political plots lack weight because we don't care about the characters involved, and the mysteries are poorly developed, culminating in meaningless resolutions simply thrown at us without any impact. After a few clever episodes, it almost seems like the writer no longer wants to tell the story, as everything is resolved in such simplistic and idiotic ways that leave the viewer questioning.

In short, Clevatess had relative potential and doesn't even compare to other generic fantasy anime. While these at least know how to tell a story to their target audience, Clevatess still manages to present its plot in a way that makes sense. In the end, it seems like the author had a lot of cool ideas in mind but didn't know how to distill them into an interesting narrative along with the characters we care about. The result of all this is a work that promised to be a renewal among generic releases, but which ends up losing out to its own representatives and leaves the feeling that it had some potential, but lacked someone captivating.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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