Name: Weak villain, flat heroes, muddled themes. Clevatess squanders its premise with poor writing and shallow execution.
Item: Clevatess
Rating: 60
Author: nearltrevor

Waifra

Weak villain, flat heroes, muddled themes. Clevatess squanders its premise with poor writing and shallow execution. · Waifora

The entire story is plagued by comical evils, obscure motivations and goals on all sides, poor main characters and a primary antagonist that is supposed to be the main focus for half the season but is very weakly written. The Main cast of characters are all unique and interesting on the surface but when time to go through their according arcs, all fall flat.

I thought the world setting was interesting, and I was really interested after the first 20 minutes of the first episode, but it just fell from there. The main character Alica encounters setbacks like in any story, but doesn't ever seem to be affected by her failures. One of the primary themes is talking about what makes (or doesn't make) a hero. Yet, every time this topic was touched on, it always felt stereotypical. Honestly, I couldn't really even follow this theme to begin with. Alica, tries to stay a hero and follow her ideals despite her initial failure. Cool premise, but she isn't forced to do anything that goes against these ideals or particularly challenges them despite it all.

Rising of the Shield Hero, despite its issues, was good about showing who stuck by his ideals despite the world trying to shut him down as a hero. Ironically on his way still taking actions of an anti-hero. Clevatess follows none of this picture, and Alicia is a character who encounters change that doesn't change her. She still despite it all is a "Hero."

Watch the show if you want, or dont. I don't care. I personally think at the core of it that it just sucked.

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Spoiler, click to view

We learn Alicia's motivation to become a hero is from her father, a failed hero who lost his leg on a journey to embark as a hero of legend. As he fails, he passed on his regalia to his closest friend, Drel the main villain of the later half of the season. Drel then in the future kills Alicia's dad. WHY? His stated philosophy is that he wants to rid the world of heroes so no one has to go through the same suffering and despair that Margo endured… but then he turns around and personally kills Margo. This contradiction makes Drel a poor antagonist that the story wants us to believe is fighting for a greater purpose (even as a Dark Lord of Beasts is fueling and motivating him) but the different plot points and character motivations make him nothing but a comical villain who has an army that commits warcrimes and a paper tiger of a character.

You can see in the early story that Alicia loses an eye. Does she ever mention this issue past the first episode? No? Well good on you for guessing that right. She never once has to face the broken state of herself, and has a get out of jail card at every opportunity she faces when it comes to failure.

The Main Cast, Clevatess, Alicia , etc. All go through their own arcs, but these arcs are all extremely weak. Clevatess for example hates humanity for attacking his land and people, so he wants to learn more about them. Simple enough. He learns by the end of the story that humanity is actually more complex than he ever though, and doesn't give up on them, but he only learns this after Alicia yells at him to look at Luna's eyes. Which was supposed to be impactful I guess? Nothing truly challenges Clevatess' view on humanity in the story. All he faces is legit just warfare and banditry. He isn't shown true kindness, honor, tradition, legacy, or any other big human element that a non-human who wants to wipe out humanity would like to see and change his view. If I was Clevatess, I would assume humanity is nothing but a species that infights and betrays.