The story is actually pretty interesting. A young girl named Chaika Trabant is looking for the remains of her dead father, emperor Gaz. At the start of the show we are introduced to our two main characters through and interaction in the woods. A deal is made between them and for the rest of the show we follow this party of people as they go out and seek the remains. Along the way we learn about the mysterious past of Chaika, the basic overview of the post war world, and the interest surrounding these remains.
Many things happen along the way, and though there is some filler, the story progresses at a solid pace. The filler has some back story on some characters and doesn't feel intrusive or out of place. The ending is satisfactory for a first season, and I'm definitely interested in the second season.
The art looks poor on the cover image, however its not bad in the anime itself. The animation is pretty fluid, there are a lot of fight scenes and they all play out nice and smoothly. The music and voice acting are pretty standard and nice.
The characters are really well done, at least some of them. Chaika at the start is really well done. She is rather ditzy, yet a very powerful mage. She speaks oddly and he charm is that of a defenseless little girl with a large task, feels a lot like Frodo and the ring. Acura, Tooru is a Saboteur who lives with his childhood friend who he calls his sister. Tooru is powerful, but he is very balanced in terms of story. You never know if hes going to win a fight. He also manages to stick to his Saboteur character, being better at laying traps, being agile and mostly cold and calculating. Acura, Akari is his childhood friend who is also a Saboteur and is skilled with the hammer. She likes Tooru and follows him wherever, but not in a possessive annoying fashion. Fredrica is a Dragoon that gets picked up near the middle of the show, shes really a convenience and doesn't have a large role to play.
The side characters are another party of people who are trying to capture Chaika.They think she is going to try and bring together the destroyed Gaz Empire. I wont list everyone as mostly they are rather unimportant. Gillette, Albéric though is the leader for this group and again we get to see some really well written character. Gillette feels like the typical pampered prince character who only seeks "justice". Though this is a central part of his role he takes time to think over his actions and questions his own outlook on justice. He often will go against the typical spotlight of all the good in the world and make decisions like a normal person might, admitting his weaknesses and his faults too.
I enjoyed this anime far more than I was expecting to. I gushed a little in the character section, but it truly deserves more praise than I'm giving it. I hate shows with static good and evil, cut and dry characters. The story itself was interesting but as it didnt get finished this season I cant really tell if its going to be good or not. Some really annoying moments pop up from time to time however. Chaika becomes more steadfast and leaderly later, however only showing this character trait to get tricked by some person or persons and making work hard for her and the Saboteur's. She also has an odd mini melt down towards the end that doesn't really mesh well with previous events. Viivi is attached to Gillette and acts exactly like a possesive snobbish brat and really is tedious to see her come on the screen. However that's most of my gripes with the show.
TLDR: Great characters, decent art, interesting story. Give this a shot if you like fantasy, its way better than I thought it would be.
