Vinland Saga presents itself as a European story in a medieval setting, based around wars between Vikings, Danes, and people from Britain. That's what it wants us to think. But in reality, under the skin, it's a Japanese story, with Japanese characters, Japanese pathos, Japanese ethos, and Japanese warriors with a European skin. That the characters often also look Japanese is the cherry on the cake. The creators take Western religion, philosophy, culture, and history, and replace them with their Japanese equivalents. Every dialog, scene, conflict, and outcome could be transplanted to a Japanese feudal setting and it would work perfectly. The creators failed to understand the essence of the topics they tried to portray and what was supposed to be profound and convincing turned into a bizarre and unintentional comedy.

The main character has no morals. His antagonist is often the good guy, but still much worse than the main character. Then the story has a twist and they join forces with someone who is even more evil, to defeat someone who is portrayed as evil without giving any reasons why that person is evil, outside of being the king. When the main antagonist kills an entire village to feed his men, our main character doesn't even care about it. Yet the story tells us that he loves his father, but his father gave his entire wealth to free a single slave who was a stranger. Things don't add up. One gets the feeling that evil things are being done for the sake of evil things to happen. And no one cares. No one stands up and fights against those evil things, they just keep happening, and our main character is only occupied with revenge, despite everything that is going on around him. A travesty.

The main character shows in over 20 something episodes almost zero development. He was full of rage and seeking revenge a few episodes in and he is still full of rage and seeking revenge 15 episodes later. Are we supposed to sympathize with someone who is being shown mercy countless times by his enemies but continues to hate them? Something's missing here, and it will never be found.

The character of the prince is another such mystery. He was introduced as a key figure that would force a change in the story, maybe even a major character development of our main character, but nothing of that sort happened. The tone of his introduction was one that promised a character that is different to the bloodthirsty, evil, and immoral characters that make up most of the cast, including the one-dimensional main character. The hope was that the prince would trigger a positive development for the main character and the story overall, but when the prince has his moment of growth he turns out to be the most evil, immoral, and unethical of them all. And we are supposed to root for him.

These are not all the issues, there are many issues with plot and characters, but these are the most striking that cannot be ignored.