Part 1: Abyssus Abyssum Invocat
The Seven Deadly Sins is an anime that makes me vomit blood.
I originally saw a few episodes of it in 2021, back when I wasn’t into anime. They were so abhorrent that they made me despise anime as a medium for a year, and I didn’t even think of touching the series with a ten meter pole. It is an utter failure of a show from beginning to end, and I have not enjoyed a second of my time watching it.
You may ask yourself (or me) why I decided to put myself through all of it today, and the answer is simple. I do not know. Maybe I had something to prove. Maybe my morbid curiosity wanted to know if my original overtly negative thoughts from two years ago were unfounded or not. Or maybe, deep down, I thought that I had simply deserved it. Either way, I have spent eight hours of my life on this show, and this is not time that I will ever be gifted back.
Part 2: The Story, if You Can Call It That
Ever since the myth of Arachne and Athena, it was a trope in storytelling to portray the traditional force of good as actually evil, and vice versa. This is a trope that was around for millennia and is present in many classic works of fiction. The Seven Deadly Sins attempts to execute this trope - ATTEMPTS - and fails utterly.
The main premise is that a group known as “The Seven Deadly Sins” is good, and a group known as “The Holy Knights” is evil, which is meant to be a subversion of expectations, and it is revealed to us in the first episode. The problem is that this diarchy lacks any sort of nuance whatsoever. The Knights are cartoonishly evil, and the Sins are daring, badass heroes which are not once portrayed as flawed. At that point, why have any sort of subversion? You could easily replace the names of these groups and nothing would change. There is no depth to the relationship between the groups except that one (the Knights) is evil and viewed as such by the people, and the other (the Sins) is good and viewed as such by the people.
As for the plot itself, it’s extremely generic. The Knights overthrew the kingdom, and the Sins want to bring back the monarchic status quo. They assemble a team of old friends. They fight the Knights in a boring inconsequential magical battle and they win. The good guys live and the bad guy dies. The end.
Part 3: The Characters, or Lack Thereof
There isn’t a single character in this show that I liked. Let’s begin with Meliodas, the protagonist. He’s the captain of the Sins, as well as the Sin of wrath. He isn’t actually very wrathful throughout the show, in fact, a lot of the characters describe him as kind-hearted. This ties into what I said in the previous part of the review, “You could easily replace the names of these groups and nothing would change”, none of the Sins encompass traits that one would associate with their mark. Back to Meliodas, being the captain, he’s extremely overpowered. He defeats all of his opponents extremely easily and possesses a large healing factor that makes all of his encounters with the Knights very much non-threatening. Being a part of the demonic race, he is multiple millennia old and his love interest is a teenage girl that he consistently sexually harasses. He’s never shown to actually care about Elizabeth as a person, he keeps groping her and his pet, Hawk, is genuinely worried that he might rape her (not an unfounded worry), but Elizabeth is all over him simply because he fed her once. How sweet.
Speaking of Elizabeth, she’s just kinda there except for one scene in ep. 24 in which she pulls inherited overpowered healing magic out of her ass. For the rest of the show, she’s completely useless. She exists for Meliodas to grope and have someone to “care” for, even though any one of the Sins could’ve just as easily served that role.
She’s in that regard very similar to Diane, the Sin of envy. The first time she’s useful is when she’s really angry that Meliodas, their golden boy was hurt, and other than that she’s just in the show to be a walking fanservice balloon. Her cleavage is showing perpetually and she wears no pants, which I’m sure was vital for her character development. All the women and girls in 7DS are there to serve that same purpose, to look attractive without actually having any characters of their own.
As for the other Sins, they’re extremely unremarkable. Ban, the Sin of greed is sexually attracted to an ageless being with the body of a 12 year old (and you can’t argue that “she’s older than she looks”. She looks like a kid and Ban finds that hot, end of story), he’s also immortal which takes away any tension that the fights involving him could’ve had. King, the Sin of sloth is… present. He sure is one of the characters. So are Gowther and Merlin (lust and gluttony respectively). Though King was in the show for much, much longer than the other two, and his lack of narrative anything is absolutely inexcusable.
The villains are all single-note and practically all the same. There is absolutely no difference between Gilthunder, Hendrickson and all other Knights whose names I’m quickly forgetting. Some and later all of the Knights switch allegiances near the end of the story, which carries zero emotional or dramatic impact considering that they have taken no one’s life and are now invincible good guys. If you’re gonna pull that shit, you might’ve as well made them heroes since the beginning, literally nothing would change.
That’s it for the heroes and the villains, but there’s also one more party in this, and it’s… Arthur Pendragon, king of Camelot? Wow, ingenious naming there (more on that later). Arthur shows up during the final arc to “speak to the king”, he then fights the villains a bit and fucks off. What an amazing character, I’m sure his inclusion was absolutely necessary.
And that’s that for the characters. They’re boring at best and awful at worst, which is coincidentally how I feel about their designs.
If you call this good character design, I swear by Allah I will shoot myself right here.
Half of the Sins are literally just people wearing normal clothes. Then there are the women, whose only purpose is to look hot, and Ban, who looks like a male stripper.The Knights only fare a little better.
Their armours are… fine, I suppose. There’s nothing offensive about them, but much like the Sins, they’re all too boring. I also included Griamore in the above picture because I wanted to bring up how his proportions are royally fucked.
Part 4: The Writing and Worldbuilding (They’re Very Bad)
4.1 - Worldbuilding
The show predominantly takes place in the Kingdom of Liones, in the land of Britannia, which is an extremely boring location that barely tries to expand on its world.
The author took a lot of inspiration from medieval Europe, which I’m not against. However, we never get to see more of the Kingdom outside of Generic Medieval Setting #24376587. The names are also very uninspired, I mean, Britannia? Really? There’s also a place called Edinburgh, and a neighboring kingdom called Camelot, ruled by fucking Arthur Pendragon because of course it is. I guess the author couldn't be arsed to come up with more fantasy names so he literally just took names of places (and people) that already exist.
Another location that we visit is the afterlife, which the makers of the series couldn’t make interesting if their lives depended on it.
It’s literally just a bunch of crystals. This is where you go when you die. This empty, crystally place. How riveting. The way they get to it is equally stupid. The characters go to a bed of flowers, think really hard about dead people, and a tornado shows up that takes them there. Mind you, people that didn’t think about the dead can also jump into the tornado and come along, how fun!
4.2 - Things Just Kinda Happen
That method of getting to the afterlife is a good example of this criticism. They didn’t actually know that’s how you go there, they just think about the dead and luckily for them it works and luckily for them it progresses the “story” (which I put in quotation marks because it would hurt my soul to acknowledge that 7DS has a story). The reason why they want to go there is because it’s “the only lead they have” on finding King, another member of the Sins.
Why is it their only lead? It just is! They have no reason to believe he’d be there, but he is, which is extremely lucky for our heroes.
This second example is my least favorite one, I hate it to my very core:
Basically, Meliodas was accused of destroying an entire kingdom on his own and murdering countless innocent people (as destroying entire kingdoms usually goes). He tells old man Cain “nuh-uh” and he immediately believes him. This scene is supposed to tell us that Meliodas isn’t a murderer, but rather a good man who tried to help people. This would’ve worked if Meliodas worked hard to clear his name and prove that he is a good person, instead of just saying “I never destroyed that kingdom, trust me bro.” Why does Cain believe him? He just does!
The final example I’ll give is near the end of the story:
The woman in these frames is Veronica Liones (episodes 12 and 23), who stepped on a landmine and died. We saw her die (not that she looked particularly injured), we saw her utter her final words and draw her final breath. Why is she alive? She just is! Death isn’t permanent at all, don’t question it! And the fact that death isn’t permanent ties well into the next segment:
4.3 - Action to Bore You Out of Your Mind
The stakes of this show are nil.
In the very first episode, we see this man fall off a cliff:
A few scenes later, here he is:
The flimsy excuse is that Meliodas saved him, even though he fell much later and realistically had no time to save him. This may seem like nitpicking - because it is - but please think about what this shows us. It shows that characters can die on screen, and with zero explanation come back. This makes it so the viewer is never worried about anyone in a fight because they know that if anyone is hurt, it literally doesn’t fucking matter. And the viewer would be right! None of the protagonists ever die. I’m not saying you need people dying to make your story interesting, but what you do need to do is make it seem like a possibility that they could die, because otherwise the viewer has zero investment in the fights.
Here I’ll bring up a scene near the end in which Diane and King are fighting one of the holy knights.
As you can see, she has a massive hole in her chest, and is perfectly fine. Sure, the anime tries really hard to get you to be worried for her, but this never works because we’ve established that characters we’re supposed to care about simply cannot die. Why would anyone be worried for her in this scene? King later heals her completely and it’s treated as some awesome emotional moment but I haven’t felt anything in the slightest. I haven’t felt any good emotions at all throughout any of the 24 episodes.
4.4 - There Is Zero Emotion In This Pile of Rubbage
I haven’t felt anything watching this show except for anger and anguish - if I didn’t already make that painfully obvious. The “most” “emotional” scenes are relating to Elizabeth and her sisters, so those are the examples I’ll use.
In episode 12, the aforementioned Veronica Liones “dies”. We never actually got to know her as a person, and Elizabeth, as I mentioned, isn’t actually a character. What we were witnessing were two fictional strangers, one of which was dying. For fuck’s sake, Griamore was sadder about Veronica’s “death” than Elizabeth was, not to mention that the animation didn’t help at all. Veronica on her “deathbed” looked bored out of her mind (I was too), and Elizabeth looked mildly content.
No part of this scene moves a person. It was tedious, and all I could pray for was for the episode to end as soon as it could.
In episode 18, Elizabeth meets up with her sister Margaret for the first time in God knows how long.
Wow, I sure am glad that this woman, upon seeing her lost sister for the first time in ages, exudes as much emotion as a dead horse. How amazing, thank you so much animators I love this show yaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
4.5 - The Antagonists Are Extremely Stupidly Written
I’m not even gonna touch on this one for a long time because I’ve lost all the energy required to do so. Basically, the main villain, Hendrickson, wants to bring about a prophecy. The prophecy states that there will be a big holy war between good people and evil people, and Hendrickson wants to summon the extinct race of demons to fight them. Basically, he wants to have a very destructive battle to fulfill a prophecy which doesn’t even predict anything except for the fact that one group of people will fight another. There’s also some lame reveal about covering up a murder but you really can do that without starting a religious war.
Oh also, he gets the idea for it because some kids run past him, giving him that idea completely unprompted. Isn’t that convenient? (No, it’s lazy).
4.6 - Three Romances That Are Impossible to Root For
I love a good romance anime, and because of this I despise everything that the couples in 7DS stand for:
- Meliodas and Elizabeth - I’ve already stated that Meliodas keeps groping Elizabeth, not to mention that he’s thousands of years old and Elizabeth is 16, making their romance extremely weird. One could argue that Elizabeth is just a reincarnation of Meliodas’ wife but that doesn’t excuse the sexual assault.
- Ban and Elaine - Elaine looks like a 12 year old child and Ban himself says so. There is also zero chemistry between them, as Ban tries to rob her of her most valuable possession (eternal life juice) and Elaine simply falls in love with him. She does try to kill him a few times, but inexplicably gets over it and falls in love.
- King and Diane - the only one that isn’t weird from an age perspective (even though Diane acts like a 6 year old kid when she first meets King) but it’s still utterly boring. He finds her hot, and she… I don’t really know. He saved her life once. I guess that’s enough for a woman to fall in love with you. What a tired and sexist trope.
Part 5: My Suffering! My Suffering Is Finally Over!
I knew fully well that The Seven Deadly Sins would be absolutely irredeemable, and I still watched it. Did I learn something? Other than the fact that I was too harsh on Demon Slayer, not really.
I feel empty. You know, usually when I finish a bad piece of fiction I try to find a way to spin it to be funny-bad. The Seven Deadly Sins isn’t funny-bad. It’s bad-bad. It’s not so bad it’s good, it’s so bad it’s genuinely the worst thing I’ve seen in my life and I never want to think about it again.
In summation, all the characters are awful, there is no one to root for, the world is uninteresting, the animation is insulting, the writing feels like something I’d come up with for my LEGO Ninjago fanfictions when I was 7 and the action is mind-numbingly boring.
Thank you for reading, and good night.