One of the most unique and intriguing features is the realism they try to embrace in the show. It shows the everyday lives of early 11th century Europe, the cultures of the time, and actual historic events. Unfortunately, this makes all of the unrealistic elements that much more jarring. For example, a guy throws an axe beheading multiple people without deviating course in the slightest. Also, a man throwing rocks the size of watermelons half of a kilometer gives it a battle shounen vibe breaking the realism they’ve attempted to construct. Getting rid of some of the physically impossible scenes and toning down the "OP MC"-ness of Thorfinn could have gone a long way.
This also is a problem with the art style. Although some of the scenes are beautiful, many of the CGI aspects stick out like a sore thumb, especially when they are in the same shot as 2D cel-shaded characters. A random object with depth which looks like it’s in a room with completely different lighting clashes harshly with the otherwise minimalist cel shaded characters and more traditionally animated backgrounds. The first episode has CGI hail falling on boats floating on CGI water (which was its own problem) that makes a Mary Poppins-esque visual contrast against the characters. Fortunately, this gradually, albeit only slightly, improved as the series progressed, and it wasn't so obnoxious that it took away too much from the anime. Even though it was the very first thing to annoy me in this anime, in the end, it's only a minor nuisance.
However, by far the biggest disruptor to the realism was the characters e.g. their motivations, their actions, their interactions with others. The nonsensical actions taken by the characters completely discomposes the authenticity they try to construct. When it is trying to go into an exploration of the nature of war or revenge, the characters have to act in a way in which a normal person would act. When you can’t make characters actions believable it’s hard to explore revenge as a motive or much less care about them. If this was a shounen, it might have gotten away with this as this is pretty widespread in shounen anime, but even the actions of the characters in Naruto were not as decoupled from realistic human behavior as in Vinland Saga (at least in one particular character’s case).
Similarly, people do not have massive personality shifts (essentially from one hyperbole to the opposite hyperbole). Outlooks and ideas may change, but when a completely new person is created, it just does not feel believable. *If* it were to be believable, the background of that character and their relationship to others needs to be flushed out to the point of believing it.
One of the other issues Vinland Saga runs into is the spoiler of knowing European history. Future seasons of the show have already been spoiled to an extent if you know which Danish kings ruled at which times.
Perhaps the most frustrating element was what it didn't do. It didn't make me particularly care about what was happening and even less about the people involved. Every time it felt like it wanted to be deep, it stayed not only away from the deep end, but they essentially stayed out of the pool entirely; yet the very serious atmosphere during these scenes came across as ostentatious, as if the producers and writers saw themselves as being the next Hegel or Kant for merely having mentioned the idea of what makes a death meaningful, the nature of a deity/deities, or what it truly means to love.
Despite these criticisms, it did a lot of things well. As poor as the visuals can be at times, the visuals were also a strength at other times, especially in the non-battle scenes and landscape shots. They pull off the Viking atmosphere very well. Some small slice of life moments capture the 11th century Europe feel without becoming a distraction from the story really brought the setting to life. The fighting scenes capture the brutality of the battles of the time without ever feeling like it’s resorting to shock gore. Even though this was largely a negative review, it was far from horrible, but I expected a lot more from a show which, going into watching it, felt like it had been made to specifically cater to my interests. I've heard things improve from here, so I am cautiously optimistic.
