Nanatsu no Taizai: Kamigami no Gekirin – 01

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OP: 「ROB THE FRONTIER」 by UVERworld

「闇を払う光」 (Yami wo Harau Hikari)
“The Light That Drives off Darkness”

Nanatsu no Taizai is the story of … honestly, if you haven’t been following up until now, I don’t know why you’re watching this episode and/or reading this post. This is the fourth season—or third, if we don’t count the piss poor anime-only second season, which would be my preference—so if you’re trying to start here, I feel bad for you son. Also, if you’re looking for a recap, I’m not gonna lie: it’s been long enough that I didn’t remember that King and Diane had left for the Fairy King’s Forest, or why (regrowing wings?), so don’t look to me. The Ten Commandments are in town, the Seven Deadly Sins would prefer they go away, Meliodas died and got better, you get the drift.

As for this first episode of the ~~fourth~~ ~~third~~ current season, elephant in the room: censorship. They did manage to split the different in exactly the wrong way, because no blood? That’s fine. Blood? Also fine. Rainbow blood? Distracting. I have no special affection for gore, it just unnecessarily strains immersion tio have rainbow blood when it makes us all instantly think, “They’re censoring the blood.” My advice: just ignore it. It’s a fact of life for this show not apparently. Moving on.

As for the content of the episode, it mostly served as a reintroduction, with the story of this like Peliodas kid serving to show what the Sins are up to. It was a smack down, no surprise, so let’s talk about the real best moment of the episode: Howzer is the new Great Holy Knight! Howzer has always been a great guy and a fun character, so I couldn’t be more happy. It feels like an actual step forward and a change for the better, which is good from a narrative sense, even though it doesn’t change much on the ground. The Sins are still the only real show in town, it’s all about them versus the ~~Ten~~ remaining seven Commandments, and acting like almost every other human warrior means diddly squat in that equation would be silly. Still, it was a great moment which I very much enjoyed.

Other than that, this episode was fine. A lot of people are worried about this season, since Deen was brought on to animate so this season could be rushed to out as quickly as possible, and while this episode didn’t do anything huge to allay those concerns, it didn’t really worsen them either (censorship aside). It feels like basically the same show as last season, for good and for ill.

I don’t know if I’ll be blogging this, but I will be watching it. Hopefully it’ll bring this arc (story?) home on a high note.

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