The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods

The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods

The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods anime series cover art
The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods

Season Overview

The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods (Nanatsu no Taizai: Kamigami no Gekirin / 七つの大罪 神々の逆鱗) is the third season of the Seven Deadly Sins anime. And I need to say this right at the start of the review: This is a terrible anime that I don’t recommend anyone watch.

To bring you up to speed, apparently, Meliodas died at the end of the second season. I don’t recall that happening, but I guess it did. And then there’s also a time skip between seasons two and three as well. So with those two sentences of information, you already know more than I did going into this season.

This season is slightly different than the two that came before it. In the first season, the Sins were fighting against random demons. In the second season, they were fighting against the 10 Commandments. And in this third season, they’re fighting against everyone, including the Commandments, the Archangels, and even themselves.

Why are the Sins fighting against so many people? Good question. It’s because a bunch of enemies keep showing up out of nowhere so that the power scaling doesn’t hit a ceiling. More demons associated with the Commandments are revived, the Archangels of the goddess race are revived, and Meliodas even swaps sides to join the demons.

There’s also a part of the season focusing on Arthur acquiring Excalibur in Camelot, but as far as I remember that doesn’t really lead anywhere in this season. I think the idea is that eventually Arthur will be able to wield the true power of Excalibur, but he can’t right now because the enemy power levels need to scale up before that happens.

How to Kill an Anime: Part 1 – Bad Writing

As you may have figured out from that brief overview of the season, the writing is absolutely horrible. I actually enjoyed the first season of this series to an extent. I ended up giving it a 6/10, after all. But with the second season, I began noticing a lot of problems; that one was a 4/10.

And I’m pretty sure at the end of my season two review I mentioned that I would not be picking up season three. Well, that was until I saw how laughably bad season three looked and decided I had to watch it. And let me tell you, it really is that bad.

I think the arbitrary power level system was introduced in the second season if I’m not mistaken. The third season expands upon this. It doesn’t expand upon it in a good way, by making the system no longer arbitrary, but instead just introduces more characters who can read power levels.

Hawk no longer needs to be present for us to know how (relatively) strong someone is.

Chandler from the anime series The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods
Chandler

The story also jumps around a lot without any explanation of what’s going on. It jumps throughout time and space like it’s nothing. For example, somewhere in the second half of the season, it was brought up that Ban hasn’t been with the rest of the Sins in over a year. I thought he was with them the whole time, but I guess that was a different timeline.

And, of course, I can’t leave out the fact that all these “ancient evils” keep showing up as new antagonists. The demon clan? Fine, they were the first. The commandments? Okay, they’re with the demons. The Archangels? Alright, I guess. The other random demons who are apparently stronger than the Commandments? What? No.

How to Kill an Anime: Part 2 – Bad Animating

I know this part is called “Animating,” but it’s really about both the art (mostly) and animation. The art for this series has never been particularly good — it’s been passable at the best of times. I’m not saying that’s why this anime is bad, but it’s just one of those things that compounds with the other issues.

However, there is one aspect of the art itself that does make this season of the anime worse than those that came before it: The censoring. In fact, it was the censoring in this season that actually made me want to watch it because it’s so absurd.

I don’t know whose decision it was to censor this series. It could have been any one of the new broadcasters brought on as producers. It could have even been Studio Deen (A-1 Pictures did the first two seasons). Whoever it was made the wrong choice, though.

Merlin hovering over a dead demon from the anime series The Seven Deadly Sins: The Wrath of the Gods
Merlin hovering over a dead demon

As you can see from the image above, blood was censored. Most of the time it was censored just as depicted here, in white. This made some of the injuries characters had look fairly questionable — on account of the white liquid appearing to be a different bodily fluid.

Hearts were also censored. For example, Ban rips a heart out of a demon’s chest, and it’s just a black silhouette of the heart. I think they tried to explain this away as it being black because it’s a demon’s heart, but it was clearly censored.

And to make things even more confusing, partway through the season they stopped censoring some of the blood. Some scenes were completely censored. Others weren’t censored at all. And then there were the odd ones that were partially censored.

Finally, the animation itself. It’s bad. That’s it.

Conclusion

The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods is the worst season of the anime so far, and I have to give it a 1/10. There really isn’t anything redeemable about this season, and that’s unfortunate for a series that I enjoyed when it first aired.

While I don’t expect a fourth season to be any better than this one was, I’ll probably still watch it whenever it airs. I’m in too deep to quit at this point, and at least it gives me something to write about.

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My review of the fourth season, Dragon’s Judgement, is available.

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