Let's start with the story, it revolves around this orphan named Teito who's enrolled in this military when at some point he escapes from the academy and ends up at the barsburg church which is a place that teaches the complete opposite from the military but still has combat training except for the good. That already got me intrigued, I've always liked religious relations in animes especially christianity and whatnot because it kind of relates to me since I am a christian after all, and it doesn't stop there, the story gets more complicated as more characters are introduced, and the good thing about it is the fact that not too much information is being said about those characters which leaves so much room for more intense discoveries. Although I do admit there were some episodes where it was purely talking and with an anime that had a "war like" setting you expect more action than blabbering, but it can't be helped the more the characters talk the more important the actions will be. I would emphasize more on the storyline but I'm afraid I'll accidentally say some things that shouldn't be said for people who haven't seen it yet. Overall the story is really good, it's not one of those animes where it's plain and linear, it really gives a lot of mystery and makes you think alot about who to trust and whatnot, I just wish they'd continue it somehow.
I have one thing to say about the art and it's that I don't have a problem with it whatsoever, this anime was made in 2009 so you can already tell by the year that they pretty much advanced themselves already. the colours are beautiful, the choice of scenery and angles that the animators chose are well placed and picked out, nothing seems too out of place, except for those mermaids... like why are there mermaids... whatever lol
The chracters in the anime are very unique and well made. The main chracter could use some more sense, honestly one thing I really hate about some animes is when the main character gets really annoying and that's never good considering you'd have to see him/her in every episode, I mean don't get me wrong it might be annoying to me but might not to others. As a protagonist, he's really doing his job as his role, the growth from the first episode up to the last is really believable, you can clearly see the experiences that he went through just to get that far and the writers did a damn well job on their part.
One character I really liked was Labrador, he's one of the bishops of the church and already that gave him that status of authority and leadership. Already from the name you can tell that he's one hell of an interesting character. He was really into gardening and his powers revolves around using plants and poison against his enemies.Pretty cool in my opinion.
This anime has a lot of biblical references but nothing offensive or anything like that towards the people who are in that religion. The Japanese always know how to make almost everything in our lives interesting and cool and they did a really good job with this anime, next time I go to church, I'll be expecting some crazy shit to happen just like in the anime haha.
cheers
