Spoilers ahead.

Orient is one of the three shows which marked my return to watching seasonal anime, and out of the three it might be the most disappointing.
I wasn’t originally planning on watching this at all, however I am a big fan of Shinobu Ohtaka’s previous work, Magi, and I was thinking of reading the manga anyway, so I decided to watch this week to week instead. What a mistake this was.

My excitement was high for the first episode of the series, the show looked like it had promise and I was interested in a story taking place in a world inspired by Sengoku period Japan, albeit with a unique fantasy twist to it. However even as early as episode one it became apparent this anime was plagued by all sorts of issues.

The main offender among these issues is just how poorly the source material is adapted. The mystical quality that Ohtaka’s art gives to the world and characters is simply absent, there’s a complete and utter failure to capture the feeling of her art.

The animation is sub-par, the direction is non-existent and the CG is atrocious, although I admit that without it, drawing and animating all those crystalline structures would be a massive pain in the ass.

Even though the show adapts the first five volumes of the manga, it doesn’t feel like the story makes much meaningful progress, I’m not sure that this is simply a pacing issue though. I believe part of why this feeling persists is because the directorial style of the anime fails to contribute any tension or emotion to the milestones we reach within the story. Scenes such as Musashi’s backstory or Tsugumi’s struggle against the Kosameda band are completely lacking in pathos.

Characters are also devoid of the vibrant style they possessed in the manga, instead their expressions are sterilized and their emotions are muted, this is an issue which extends to the world of the show at large.

Despite all of my grievances I still want to believe that there is a good story buried under all this rubble. I refuse to believe that Magi was simply a fluke, that Shinobu Ohtaka captured lightning in a bottle with that story and is now failing to reproduce the same quality in this one. However, until I find that good story, I’m unable of recommending this anime to anyone. I’ll be trying my luck with its upcoming second season and I dearly hope something better awaits me there.