Kaiko sareta Ankoku Heishi – 01

OP Sequence

OP: 「Changemaker」by (Hinano)

「ダリエル、解雇される。」 (Darieru, kaiko sareru.)
“Dariel Gets Fired”

I got fooled by the premise, thinking the tone would be along the same lines as “The Rising of the Shield Hero” or something similar to fantasy turned relaxing slice of life. Alas, ’tis neither. The tone is, well, inexistent?

I wish I could be a little more generous kicking off the review for this series but it’s left me really uninspired making it difficult for me to write about substance. At the very least, I can give you an overview of the episode.

We open to a council of four who are meeting with Dariel one of the Demon Lord’s soliders, Dariel (Sugita Tomokazu). He was recruited at a young age by one of the council members, now retired. Leaving this council seat vacant allowed his son to take up his spot which resulted in Dariel’s forced retirement from the army. The pretense was that Dariel has no magical abilities and is thus useless to the Demon Lord. Now exiled, Dariel roams around as a vagabond crossing into the enemy (human) territory. He happens to cross paths with Malika (Fujita Akane) as she runs from a beast saving her in the process. Malika invites him home for dinner where he’s welcomed by the rest of her human family. Dariel, having been raised around and as a demon for his entire life, is skeptical of the family’s intentions and is doing his best to hide the fact he’s a demon. Nonetheless, he makes a decision to remain in the village after staring into Malika’s breasts as though it’s a Magic 8 ball or something. The next morning, after an impromptu nightly visit from Malika to ‘thank him’ for his manly feat, he’s prompted to join the villagers and work. Registration can only happen with humans so when Malika’s father, who turns out to be the village’s mayor, places the ‘seal’ by his hand, he’s immediately accepted. And thus it is revealed that this demon soldier was a human all along. In the rest of the episode, he discovers that humans can use aura and embed their tools with them making them much stronger. Dariel has access to all four auras known to humans and can perfectly apply the technique which is apparently unheard of. And so the story begins.

To be completely honest, I had more fun writing a summary of that episode than watching it. Dariel isn’t a very appealing character, not quite relatable, and the script is sorely lacking throughout the entire episode. Malika, bless her, has no real personality and is portrayed mainly by her breasts. It’s hard to want to invest any time in their ‘budding’ relationship or in Dariel who has now become an E-rank Adventurer (essentially a monster hunter) for his new hometown.

I’m not sure there’s tons of potential here and there are other fantasy genre anime this season that might have a little more substance. I might keep my eyes on this one for the next episode release but if the entertainment value doesn’t drastically hike up, I won’t be investing much more time.

ED Sequence

ED: 「Dear Doze Days」by (Akari Kito)