Reviews

Jan 16, 2015
Mixed Feelings
"Which way does the wind blow? To tomorrow!"

Shingeki no Bahamut is a pre-apocalyptic show about fate, destiny and what it means to change your fate, thrown into a cast of very unique characters and a power struggle between angels, humans and demons. The show is very promising from the beginning, builds up a lot of excitement in the middle, but ultimately ends in a rather anti-climactic fashion with insufficient resolution.

TL;DR
Story: 5/10
Art: 7/10
Sound: 5/10
Character: 7/10
Enjoyment: 6/10
Overall: 6/10

Good points:
+ Very unique character and setting designs
+ Good and varied main and supporting cast
+ Exciting and interesting from the beginning
+ Good plot twist towards the end, though it may be obvious
+ Some good comic moments

Bad points:
- Very underdeveloped antagonist characters
- Fails to have a good resolution
- Anti-climactic climax at the end of the anime
- Many plot holes left unexplained
- Lack of development in supporting characters

Story: 5/10

I'm going to tackle this plot analysis in a slightly different manner and instead of focusing on key plot arcs, I'm going to structure this on the various plot merits. The story itself is rather simple. Two bounty hunters and childhood friends, Favaro an Kaisar are at odds with each other. By chance or fate, Favaro meets Amira, a half-demon half-angel, who has just stolen the God Key and received instructions to go to Helheim. Favaro then promises to help Amira to bring her to Helheim but himself doesn't know a thing about where Helheim is or whether it actually exists.

1. Ingenuity / Interest

The story starts off with the main conflict right from the beginning. Constantly, we are being reminded that everything that the protagonists are trying to do, is to stop Bahamut's impending revival after the God Key was stolen. This same old story of imminent doom is repeated over and over again, as if the audience was too forgetful to remember how deadly Bahamut actually is. (+1 for overarching conflict)

Bahamut was in fact, so deadly, that most of the cities managed to rebuild themselves sufficiently within the next 6 months, which is much shorter than it took Haiti to recover from the 2010 earthquake, and Sri Lanka to recover from the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Clearly, Bahamut does less damage in 15 minutes than natural disasters can do in mere seconds. So, not that big of a deal actually.

The anime did do a good job of attempting to fool the audience into thinking that Bahamut was very powerful though. There were numerous scenes throughout the anime, and in almost every episode, of the angels in heaven creating a barrier made up of tessellated hexagons, struggling to keep Bahamut's pre-awakening power in check. The angels constantly make remarks like, "We can't keep this up... at this rate, we won't last..." Archangel Michael even once says, "If this is the power of Bahamut before he awakens, then how much more when he actually does?"

The old "the world is coming to an end" overarching conflict is not an original one unfortunately, so the story gets no points for that. Also, as far as plot is concerned, I was never really very excited about seeing Bahamut in action, neither was I very concerned about whether or not he would revive in the first place - because by half of the anime and due to all the constant reminders of Bahamut's terrifying power, it was obvious that he was going to revive anyway, and then get beaten by a random hero anyway.

2. Depth / Development

In this case, the story didn't offer much depth behind it at all. While Favaro's random musings about what his father said was interesting, all his talk about fate and changing your fate just sounded very cliched and fell on deaf ears. There was nothing remotely thematic about the rest of the story.

Also, the story was so simple that they really stuck to the classic protagonist and antagonist stereotype. The main antagonist, Martinet, the ultimate manipulator's, real motives were basically to watch the world get destroyed, which is a very shallow explanation of his evil schemes. The protagonists on the other hand, simply want to do the opposite - prevent the world from getting destroyed, and nothing much else. It lacked a lot of complexity and depth in this area.

The only plot development came in the form of the forced suspense at finding out who the real mastermind behind Amira's stealing of the God Key was. And I say forced because they basically used the same old "masked figure" who goes about doing obviously evil stuff in Anatae but they intentionally don't show us his face just because they want to keep us asking who it is. But this is repeated so many times that we're no longer interested to find out, or, the more perceptive would already know that this was Lavalley. So again, very limited plot development beyond the main plot line. (+1 for a little development)

There was one good plot twist though, that Martinet was actually Lavalley, even if it was already hinted much earlier in the Anatae arc, when Lavalley first secretly meets Amira out of sight of everyone else, suggesting that Lavalley was actually a bad guy in disguise. Also, the anime tried not to make it too obvious, by making Lavalley fabricate a fake back story for Amira, as well as making him look like he was trying to stop Jeanne D' Arc's burning at the stake. (+1 for plot twist)

3. Coherence / Logical Sense

There are a whole host of plot holes in this story, but at least the main assumptions of the story are believable - that there are 2 parts of a key that awakens Bahamut when they fuse together, and that it is prophesied that a hero would be able to stop Bahamut, that there exists angels, demons and humans and that Amira could be born of both demon and angel (+1 for believable assumptions)

The way the plot progressed also at least made some sense, and there were no super obvious flaws in the way the main conflict was presented and dealt with. Plot lines also progressed smoothly without any major anomalies. (+1 for making some sense)

Unfortunately, there were many instances where Kaisar reacted very unbelievably and unnaturally, even given his characterization as a narrow-minded person who is greatly affected by everyone around him. From things like crying for Rita, to being over-protective of Amira, to trying to kill Favaro numerous times without even bothering to clarify what happened, to suddenly become super cooperative with Favaro.

Bonus Points: Not awarded due to 9 plot holes.

In episode 1, Favaro and Kaisar are pictured on horseback, jumping off a bridge and falling 15 times their own height through the air (roughly 27 metres) before the horses landed on uneven roof tile surfaces. There is no possible way that this stunt could be performed without inflicting some serious injury on both the horses and the rider, and it is definite that the horses wouldn't be able to continue galloping on top of houses either.

In episode 3, Kaisar cries over Rita's zombified body when she turns into a zombie after being bitten by one of her own undead units, but Kaisar literally just met Rita in this episode, and it's quite far a stretch to say that Kaisar has any feelings for the young girl at this point in time. All he really did was tell Rita about his backstory and have Rita tell him how pathetic the story sounded.

In episode 4, Kaisar has only just met Amira, but suddenly wants to "protect" and "save" her for no real apparent reason, other than the fact that she is a girl. Kaisar seems to have this weird inclination to protect any girl that he meets, doesn't he? Or maybe that's part of his characterization as a noble knight, but it still doesn't make sense whatsoever.

In episode 5, Azazel claims that the New Orleans' Knights were lying in ambush for his demon ship in Sword Valley, but in the show it clearly shows most of the knights on horseback, holding their flag and emblem high in plain sight - it was clearly a direct confrontation rather than an ambush. It's not possible that Azazel's scouts only managed to catch sight of the entire army after they were attacked, since most of Sword Valley's terrain is flat and there is no terrain cover whatsoever.

In episode 6, the three archangels, Michael, Raphael and Uriel, decide that letting the humans take care of Amira, who is currently also sought after by the demons, is a lot better than personally sending angels down to guard Amira themselves. I don't believe the angels lacked manpower since in the last episode, they clearly still had tons of reinforcements and sparing a few to look after Amira would have been a much better idea.

In episode 11, archangel Michael somehow realizes that the small little unnoticeable purple ball that Rita threw at Jeanne, which bounced off a flying duck, was the antidote for Jeanne's demon transformation, and decides to give up his own life to turn Jeanne back to normal. There is no way, that Michael would be noticing a small ball in an aerial combat situation between Jeanne and Bacchus, also there is absolutely no way Michael can deduce even remotely that this ball is an antidote that works on Jeanne.

Episode 12, Favaro decides that cutting Kaisar's forearm off to fool Martinet into thinking that he was still under his control, and then using the bounty hunter tool on Kaisar's arm to capture Martinet, was a better option than having Kaisar simply use the tool himself. All Kaisar needed was just for Favaro to block Martinet's view of Kaisar for long enough for him to suddenly shoot out the wristband in Martinet's direction and say the commands. It was unnecessary drama and in Rita's words, "Letting your arm get chopped off, that's stupid."

Also, if all Favaro did was to stab a Barb of Bahamut onto Bahamut's head, then honestly couldn't any random flying angel or demon do it? All they had to do was pass Favaro's barb to any flying ally and it was a done deal. From the angels' point of view, it seems like it was a lot more difficult trying to defend against an awakening Bahamut than an already awakened one.

Plus, if we look back at Martinet's plan closely, we can see a key plot hole resurface at the start of the anime. If Martinet's plan was really to get Amira to steal the God Key and then have her bring it to Helheim, why did he simply leave Amira wandering around herself, trying to find a way to get to Helheim? Shouldn't Martinet have at least given Amira the other half of the pendant so that she could find her way, from the beginning, rather than have some random, unreliable bounty hunter clumsily try to help her find the way there? Martinet made pretty much no effort on his own to positively ensure that Amira would end up and find herself in Helheim, he just basically somehow believed that Favaro would magically lead her there.

Overall the plot suffers in every department - it lacks a whole lot of depth, it isn't particularly interesting or exciting, it's poorly developed and it also suffers from a great host of plot holes. Unfortunately for this 13-episode anime, they couldn't really pull off the plot well enough.

Art: 7/10

OP Sequence: 2/2
ED Sequence: 0/2
Animation: 2/3
Aesthetics: 3/3

The OP Sequence was very well crafted and was beautiful, but I really didn't like the artistic style for the ED Sequence. On the aesthetics side, I loved the character and setting designs that this anime used - really quite unique styles - from Favaro's afro to Kaisar's weird hairstyle to Bacchus and his drunk look and Rita, the kawaii zombie girl, was really a joy to watch. The animation side suffers just slightly a little because I thought Bahamut himself was quite poorly animated and made him a lot less threatening than it could have been. He continued to seem frozen in stone because Bahamut never moved anywhere away from his original location.

Sound: 5/10

OP Sequence: 1/2
ED Sequence: 0/2
Background Music: 4/4
Additional Themes: 0/2

The OP Sequence sounds good at first, but after awhile gets really jarring and I kept skipping it after that. The ED Sequence was basically as boring as the animation they put for it. Background music was good though, with a good mix of both eerie and action-packed music. I also liked how they used a lot of vocal orchestra in this - keeping to the Bahamut's "ancient" theme. No points for additional themes though, because there were none.

Character: 7/10

The main characters are Favaro, Kaisar, Amira and Rita in that order for the protagonists, and Martinet and Beelzebub in that order for the antagonists. The rest of the cast - Bacchus, Hamsa, Jeanne, Azazel, Michael are supporting characters.

Favaro definitely is one of the most unique characters I have ever come across. More than just having a weird afro, his constant switching between serious to playful, his style of not wanting to do more than he should, yet knowing that he will regret it, and his general ability to joke around even in the most direst of situations really make you want to love him. You can tell he also changes slightly - from going to simply being happy go lucky to actually taking responsibility for his actions and for Amira, whom he learns to really take care of, like a younger sister (+1 to uniqueness, +1 to growth) His backstory though is kind of insufficient, since we really don't know what exactly happened when his dad and the bandits attacked Kaisar's dad.

Kaisar as a character actually falls short of almost anything. He's a cliched noble knight who fails at doing everything precisely because he keeps trying to uphold these noble values without being able think straight and to make reasonable judgements about the situation. He's also fairly useless in the entire anime - his only use being to save Favaro from the demon-state of mind at the end - because besides that he does nothing but get in Favaro's way and is a complete burden to Rita, who can do much better without him. Even while protecting Amira he gets caught together with her and gets locked up in a cage where he could do nothing. Still, at the end he finally learns to put aside his differences with Favaro and managed to, as a team, defeat Martinet in an overly dramatic manner (+1 for growth). His backstory was as insufficient as Favaro's, since they basically share the same backstory, but at least his "childhood friend" link to Favaro shed more light into his interactions with Favaro and explains how he both wants and doesn't want to kill him (+1 for character interactions).

Amira is also a rather interesting character, with superhuman powers of transforming into a one-winged demon and basically just brutally punching her enemies down. She's also later on revealed to be young, in fact, so young that she technically qualifies as a little kid in spite of her looks. The plot tell us that demons made her age faster using the cocoon, so that her body develops faster and is several years older than her mind. That's not a bad explanation, but it basically robs Amira of any characterization whatsoever. She becomes a complete and total pawn in this anime, used by Martinet, used by Favaro, used by everyone else essentially, and has hardly any views, opinions of her own, and merely gets told what to do. While she does have an awesome transformation ability, the fact that the anime only made her out to be childish really diminished her role in the plot.

Rita is by far my favourite character in this anime, and also one of the characters that was better developed than the rest. Rita is a young girl who turns a necromancer after discovering a book, and then uses her powers of reanimating the dead to "play village". Apparently she's played village for at least 15 years already and is basically getting sick of it. She eventually runs into Kaisar and Favaro and after failing to kill them, turns into a zombie and starts following Kaisar around. Her visibly nonchalant-looking character and blunt remarks are well-weaved into her "more mature than she looks" archetype. If Amira is the girl who looks older than her age, then Rita is the opposite, a girl who looks much younger than her age, but of course, a more mature character is a lot better for main character types. Rita manages to not only become useful in every situation using a reanimation ability - saving them from soldiers, putting up distractions - but also manages to uncover Martinet's concoction and, as a somewhat professional herbalist, manages to create an antidote that counters it. What's not to love about this adorable little child whose only goal is to save her friends? Even though she's acts rather coldly and cruelly to Kaisar, she shows that she really does care for him, even helping to bandage up the stump of an arm he has left at the end. (+1 for cute amazing character, +1 for multi-faceted nature)

As for the rest of the supporting cast, they were also a host of very interestingly conceptualized characters. Bacchus, the self-proclaimed god, who basically only drinks a lot and pays bounty hunters whenever they get a bounty, and his amazing duck Hamsa who is more than just a little pet, but proves to be able to fly and deflect projectiles by expanding his body. There's also Jeanne D'Arc, who is awesome sword fighter capable of wielding a huge-ass sword that can unleash such a devastating blast that it forces Azazel to retreat. Jeanne also sees some character development in the form of her righteous, unwavering nature when she was tempted to take the concoction. Unfortunately, once she turns evil in the later episodes, even after Michael's sacrifice to restore her normalcy, she ceases any further usefulness in the plot whatsoever. (+1 for interesting, varied cast) And of course, there's Azazel, who did nothing but get ambushed and took his revenge on Beelzebub. He's not very developed either.

On the antagonist's side, we have the one-dimensional Beelzebub who is so stupid that he doesn't even know that he can't control Bahamut even if he bestows upon it the Transcendent Key that he made. Beelzebub basically is a power-hungry monster but ends up getting, and deservedly, brutally incinerated by one of Bahamut's blasts. He's so poorly developed that I can't even consider him a character.

Martinet is just slightly more interesting because he's the one doing all the ground work, making sure his evil schemes fall into place, manipulating an angel from long ago, the demon working with him, and various other humans including Jeanne, Favaro, Anatae's King to make his plans go smoothly. But still, not a word is said about his character or backstory, and his motives for plotting all this evil is even worse - "I just want to watch the world get destroyed." Way to go, another crazy apocalyptic lunatic.

For characters, the anime suffers quite a bit from poor character depth and development for a lot of the cast, including main characters, and the antagonists are just so poorly developed that they were basically ignored this entire time. Still, the uniqueness of many of the characters really pulled through and made me enjoy watching the characters interact with one another.

Enjoyment: 6/10

For humour, the anime has done quite well. There is a lot of slapstick on the part of Favaro and Kaisar, who get into trouble plenty of times and have to have their fellow allies save them. Bacchus and Hamsa are also a pretty comic duo, because both have very peculiar sneezes. Also, Rita's monotonous and blunt remarks at all the stupid situations just make me laugh a lot more. (+2 for comedy)

In terms of action, the anime also doesn't fail to deliver. While there isn't a lot of actual action and fighting scenes per se, there was a decent amount of close combat fighting, sword fighting, all of which were rather well animated and was exciting enough to keep me watching. (+1 for action)

There were also some hints of emotion in the anime, especially at the part where Amira finally gets to meet her own mother, but in very dire circumstances. Still, she presses on stubbornly to give her a hug, and at the end says that Favaro was right that her mom would recognize her just from the hugging alone. Her kiss with Favaro was slightly unnerving though but at least it gave their relationship a good finishing touch. (+1 for emotion)

Pacing-wise, the anime was pretty exciting from the beginning, and really set the mood of being an action-comedy flick, as well as introduced our two very interesting important characters of the show. (+1 for pacing) Towards the middle though, as the story slowly progressed and we slowly started to see who was the evil mastermind behind the entire evil plot, things got a lot less interesting as things became obvious and I honestly just wanted to skip to the part where Bahamut awakens. And finally, at the end when he finally does, the resolution was just super anti-climactic, I never even go to know what happened to Rita or the other supporting characters, I only ever saw Favaro and Kaisar.

This anime has at least earned itself 1 bonus point for not having any filler episodes (not counting the recap episode 6.5, even though it's useless).

While I did enjoy most of this anime, there were honestly some parts where it did feel repetitive and got a bit too boring for my liking.

Overall: 6/10

Altogether, I thought that the plot could have seriously had more thought put into it, while the characters Kaisar and Amira really need a lot more character development as part of the main character cast. It was a fairly enjoyable watch, though I was admittedly disappointed after reading some really rave reviews about this show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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