Rokka no Yuusha. For starters, the Crunchyroll tags for this are misleading. It's tagged as "action, fantasy, adventure," and while it does contain all of those things, that's hardly the genre of this first season (and I hope it doesn't get more than one season). This is essentially a mystery 'whodunnit' anime in a fantasy setting with some action-adventure elements/scenes.
What's the setup? In the land of Rokka no Yuusha, there exists a demon that lives on an island. This demon cannot be killed, only contained, sealed, and put to sleep (at least, according to the backstory given). Every 300-400 years the demon re-awakens and begins an invasion of human lands, and at this time, the "goddess of fate" of this land selects 6 people to protect the land and re-seal the demon.
Our protagonist is Adlet, self-proclaimed strongest man alive, who is chosen to be one of these 6 Brave fighters, which, coincidentally, is his dream/goal. After some basic setup story, we arrive at the designated point where the 6 adventurers are supposed to meet... only to find that a total of seven people bear the mark that shows them to be selected by the goddess. Moreover, it appears that someone, presumably the fake seventh Brave, has engaged a trap to keep all of them confined in the forest surrounding the temple that was to be the rendezvous point. Due to some unfortunate circumstantial evidence (that does appear highly suspicious from an outsider's perspective, admittedly), Adlet is suspected. In order to prove his innocence, disengage the trap, and get the 6 Braves out, he must determine who the fake seventh Brave is and how exactly they fooled everyone.
A good setup, right? Done well, this setup has the potential to lead to Game of Throne-esque intrigue levels, with everyone suspecting everyone else and no one able to trust one another. Perhaps it's for this reason that Crunchyroll lists Fate/Zero as a related anime. In any case, I thought it sounded interesting and gave it a shot.
The first few episodes were a bit slow, admittedly, but that's not the issue, as after all, we need to meet the cast and start suspecting everyone. Admittedly, it would've been nice if there weren't a literal roll call scene, but the setup for it was both natural and believable, so I'll give it a pass.
My problems with this show are twofold - the buildup and the ending.
The buildup of the mystery is, in my opinion, done well overall. Unfortunately, it does mess up a few key things. For starters, the cast contains a character who is blatantly "the shifty, suspicious one." This almost immediately exonerates that person from being the culprit, as it would be too obvious. Moreover, nothing he does ever makes us suspicious of him other than his profession and his... sparse background information, shall we say. Secondly, for some reason, the show thinks itself clever by using camera angles and such to "hint" or "foreshadow" the true culprit. Unfortunately, to anyone who's actually aware of such cheap tricks, that just ruins the tension. Why would you focus on that otherwise perfectly normal (at least within context) moment if it didn't carry some kind of weight? It would've been fine had you at least somewhat explained it away, but you didn't even do that with a throwaway line of dialogue. You focused on an otherwise inconspicuous moment for no apparent reason, either at the time or post de facto, which just screams "plot twist." This is further reinforced by how much they focus on the character who is implicated by that particular shot and their suspicious actions. And I apologize for being so frustratingly vague, but if I were to say or change anything there, I'm certain it would be too easy to give away the ending. In addition to that, there were some characters with completely insufficient screen time and characterization to ever be the culprit. They could be eliminated by the time you get to the last quarter of the show, simply because to make them the villain would rob all impact from the twist. However, literally, were it not for these three things, the second more than the others, the buildup would've been perfect. Indeed, even as is, I was doubting that conclusion I had drawn from that second flaw right up until the last episode - "Perhaps it really was just a meaningless shot they focused on for no reason? Bad art direction is a thing, I suppose..." - but then my prediction was correct. /sigh.
Next, the ending. Even ignoring the Shyamalan-esque "what a twist!" nature of the ending, it was not an easy one to swallow. This ties somewhat into the above criticism of the buildup, but despite the predictable nature of the identity of the culprit, the manner in which they're revealed felt more like a deus ex machina. Here is some sudden new information, not available literally until this episode, that all but spells out who the culprit is! Aren't we smart. No hinting at even the potential existence of this information, it just pops up out of nowhere to close up the plot. And then, to add further insult to injury, not only does the story end without a resolution to THE DEMON KING WHO HAS JUST AWOKEN, which at least would be somewhat forgivable considering it's an adaptation (even if literally every single anime seems to do this "read the manga/LN" ending with no confirmed follow up seasons), but they also end it in such a fashion as to make the entire mystery of this season... utterly worthless. My reaction to the ending of that last episode was "OH GODDAMMIT." As a firm believer that an ending makes or breaks a show, this one definitely broke it for me.
Final conclusions? It was definitely entertaining. It might be worth a single watch. However, if you're any avid watcher of mysteries, this one isn't going to be any mystery to you, and there is little to no rewatch value here.
