Revenger is a very strange show. It is never boring, it never feels dumb, it is never cringe-inducing and it looks pretty decent. And while the show doesn't do anything very wrong, it doesn't do much right either.

The story starts with a lot of potential, with a group of so-called revengers being an extended hand of poor souls with a deadly vendetta against people that wronged them. Their vendetta is presented in the form of a gold coin bitten by the individual that seeks revenge. The coins are usually handed out by the church, but how that service came to be is never properly explained. The main character of this story, Kurima Raizo, doesn't start as a revenger - but becomes involved in a series of unfortunate events that he would regret for the rest of his life, with only sorrow and bitterness left in his mind. He murdered his fiance's father and as a result of that his fiance also took her own life. In this series of events, he encounters this group of revengers and their leader offers him to join them as his skills as a samurai would be of use to them. Naturally, that is not the only motive that the leader Yuuen Usui has, but explaining his other motives would be going into spoiler territory and would spoil probably the only part of the story done pretty well. Raizo joins them as he is a mere husk of a man that has nothing to lose and everything to gain by getting a chance to investigate what led to him being misled into murdering his fiance's father and in due time potentially gain an opportunity to carry out revenge of his own. He is a very interesting character, well written and with a lot of personality, even if he tries not to show too much emotion. The rest of the main cast is also really well-designed and well-written. Their backstories and motivations are interesting, their personalities are fun. It is a shame we didn't get to spend more time fleshing out each one of them more, but the anime is pretty short, and fitting more would be impossible. The story is where this show really lacks. It's very basic, and while the premise sounds interesting the plot of why Raizo even found himself in the situation that he's in is pretty uneventful. The villains are plenty, but none are memorable and unlike the main cast - have no charm and are poor imitations of much greater villains from other shows. The whole conflict is pretty rushed and it ends in an uneventful way where not every villain even gets their punishment in the end. Raizo's destiny at the end is the only thing that surprised me and felt perfectly done. The fights are decent, and the humor is on point for this type of show... but in the end it isn't enough to elevate a very average story. To sum it up, it's a basic crime anime set in the samurai age that has a lot of very well-written protagonists but is severely lacking in both story and villain department. If you decide to watch it, you won't be bored - but you will be disappointed that more hasn't been done with its potential.