Assassins Pride

Assassins Pride

Assassins Pride anime series cover art
Assassins Pride

Overview

Assassins Pride (アサシンズプライド) might have been the only anime I watched in all of 2019 with a grammatically incorrect name. Okay, I’m sure there was at least one other, but Assassins Pride is the one we’re discussing today.

There should be an apostrophe either before or after the final “s” in assassins. The title refers to the pride of either one assassin (Kufa Vampir) or all assassins in general, so there should be a possessive apostrophe. Strike one, Assassins Pride.

But aside from the grammatically incorrect English title, the series actually seems pretty decent at first glance — especially if you watch the OP which I’ll mention more in the conclusion of this review. Nothing about the series would initially suggest that it’s actually a massive train wreck.

Basically we have an all girls school for the children of nobles where they’re instructed on how to use mana and weapons. The nobles of this world is sort of like  samurai or knights. They’re nobles, so they have a higher quality of life, but they’re also expected to be members of the military.

Melida Angel from the anime series Assassins Pride opening
Melida Angel

It’s also explained that nobles are the only humans who possess mana. However, mana doesn’t necessarily mean they can use magic as we would generally think of it in most cases. Generally, mana is merely used to enhance one’s physical capabilities.

And, with mana comes a special class which is generally passed down via family lines. For example, Elise is a Paladin, which I believe is the highest tier class. Another class is the Samurai held by Kufa which is deemed to be a lower tier. I’m not entirely sure what the real difference between classes other than fighting style is though.

Characters

Melida Angel is our protagonist, a young girl who’s probably around 13 years of age at most. She comes from one of the most prestigious noble families, but there’s an issue: she hasn’t awakened her mana. And for this reason, it’s suspected that she may not be a legitimate child of the family.

She’s also referred to as the “incompetent talented girl” (not the phrasing I would have chosen) by most adults because they don’t believe she’s worthy of her position in society. The rest of the series mainly focuses of Melida attempting to prove her worth and that she does belong to her noble family.

Melida’s cousin and best friend is Elise Angel, of the aforementioned Paladin class. Although Melida is in the position of becoming head of the family when she grows up, most people believe this should fall to Elise instead. She has the proper mana type, and is highly skilled with a sword — befitting of her noble family.

However, although the adults around her wish for her to be the head of the family, Elise doesn’t want that. She’s more comfortable playing a support role to Melida and doesn’t really see herself as the leader type.

Kufa Vampir from the anime series Assassins Pride
Kufa Vampir

Kufa Vampir is the titular assassin in Assassins Pride, although his class is actually Samurai. He was hired as Melida’s private tutor by her father, however, he also has a secondary mission. If it turns out that Melida has no affinity for mana, he’s supposed to assassinate her.

Also, and this is sort of a spoiler, but there’s something you should know about Kufa. He’s a vampire; or at least part vampire. Apparently a lot of people were shocked by this, but his last name is literally Vampir. What did you expect?

World Building

So, one of the best and worst things about this anime is the world building. And when I’m talking about world building this time, I’m talking about the physical world itself. Sometimes when I discuss world building it’s in reference to how the world “works.”

Right near the beginning of the series, in like episode 1 or 2, it was stated that the world is contained inside a chandelier. This is also shown like once in the series, but is depicted in the OP. The lights of the chandelier are where people live, and everything else is complete darkness.

In fact, hints of it are in just about every scene of the series that take place outside; you can see that the sky is just black.

That’s a fairly unique and interesting premise to mention — and so of course I was curious to learn more about this. Unfortunately, after that offhand comment, this is never brought up again and seemingly plays no role in the series at all from what I understand based on the anime.

So while this chandelier world was the most interesting part of the whole series, we know basically nothing about it. Why is the world located inside a chandelier? Is this connected to mana in some way? Is there anything outside the light, or is it just empty space?

Now, I’ve heard that this anime skips a bunch of volumes from the light novels, and that could be why the world isn’t explained at all. It’s very possible that this world was explained in great depth, but for some reason all of that explanation and possible exploration were skipped.

Conclusion

Overall I’d have to say that Assassins Pride is a 4/10. It definitely had some things going for it, like a potentially interesting world, cute girls, and one of the best OPs of the year (behind Fire Force OP2 and O Maidens in Your Savage Season), but it was still a bad anime.

And speaking of that OP, I’m not going to link to it because they always get taken down from YouTube even when posted on official channels. But I highly recommend you give it a watch. The song is great and the visuals are even better. It really makes the anime look like it’s going to be good.

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