The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon’s Judgement

The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon’s Judgement

The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon's Judgement anime series cover art
The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon’s Judgement

Season Overview

The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon’s Judgement (Nanatsu no Taizai: Fundo no Shinpan / 七つの大罪 憤怒の審判) is the fourth and final season of the anime. It didn’t really feel like the series was over, but I looked it up and there’s a sequel series, so that makes sense.

And for anyone who watched this series on Netflix, yes, Dragon’s Judgement is the fourth season, not the fifth. Netflix refers to the Signs of Holy War OVA as the second season, which it isn’t.

The first season is just The Seven Deadly Sins, then comes the Signs of Holy War OVA, then the second season is Revival of the Commandments, the third season is Wrath of the Gods, and finally, the fourth season is Dragon’s Judgement.

This season focuses primarily on defeating Demon King and freeing Meliodas and Elizabeth from the curse that the Demon King his Angel counterpart placed upon them. You know, that whole reincarnation and tragic death cycle thing.

Basically, the whole point of this season is to tie up all of the loose ends and bring about conclusions to all of the character storylines. Well, that is, all of the characters except for Arthur. His storyline does get some focus at the end of the season, but I wouldn’t say his story ends.

Arthur is a character who I’d been a bit confused about ever since he was introduced, which I think was at the end of the first season. He always seemed like he was going to be an important character, but it never actually came to pass.

Luckily, if you want more of Arthur’s storyline, that’s what the sequel series Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is about.

Spoilers, For Anyone Who Cares

One of the characters who apparently needed a storyline featured in Dragon’s Judgement is Hawk. Hawk himself didn’t play a major role or anything, but Meliodas and Ban meet Hawk’s older brother Wild while in Purgatory. This seems to just have been included to explain away all of Hawk’s random abilities — he’s originally from Purgatory.

More importantly, we also finally get to meet the fabled Archangel Mael. I actually didn’t realize that Mael had never been revealed in the series. The other Archangels kept saying he died at some point, and I was thinking I just forgot when that happened.

Luckily, this wasn’t a case of my memory being bad. Mael actually wasn’t ever revealed until now. And the big reveal is that Estarossa, son of the Demon King, brother of Meliodas, and member of the Ten Commandments, is actually the Archangel Mael.

Meliodas, Ban, and Wild in Purgatory from the anime series The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon's Judgement
Meliodas, Ban, and Wild in Purgatory

Honestly, I think this was a pretty dumb development. As it’s explained in the anime, Gowther (real Gowther, not puppet Gowther) altered everyone’s memory so that they thought there was a third Demon prince named Estarossa and that the Archangel Mael had been killed.

Why did Gowther do this? Because by turning Mael into Estarossa, he evened the playing field between the Archangels and Demons, thereby ending the war between them. I don’t really get it, but that’s what we’re told.

Now, moving on to Arthur, we learn that Merlin has actually been using him as a vessel to revive the primordial being Chaos. This came out of left field, but basically, Merlin has been setting everything up for Chaos’ revival from the beginning.

Even Hawk’s mom and Arthur’s pet Cath were part of Merlin’s plan. Though, if you know more about Arthurian legend than I do, you may have seen this coming. Cath Palug is the name of the beast that kills Arthur according to legend.

7DS Redemption Arc?

While there’s definitely a redemption arc for the remaining Commandments within this season, that’s not what I want to discuss in this section of the review. Rather, I’d like to offer some (very slight) praise to The Seven Deadly Sins for this season being better than the previous one.

For starters, the art and animation are better than they were in Wrath of the Gods. Even if you haven’t seen Wrath of the Gods, you’ve seen that one frame of Meliodas sitting up on the bed. Dragon’s Judgement isn’t great. But at least it’s better than that.

I’m also pretty sure it was Wrath of the Gods that had censored blood — at least when it began airing. You may recall seeing blood colored white (or black if it was Demon blood). There’s none of that in this season, which is a nice touch.

Mael and Ludociel from the anime series The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon's Judgement
Mael and Ludociel

I was also more invested in this season because it focused more on the better characters, like Ban and Merlin. King and Diane were pretty prominent in the previous season, and I can’t say I’m a huge fan of either of them.

The story got a bit more interesting in this season as well. Sure, it still used the same trope of new, more powerful enemies randomly appearing out of nowhere. But at the same time, I felt like the enemies in this season, including the Demon King, Mael, and Chaos, mattered more.

It was no longer that there’s a fight between two sides, such as the Angels and Demons. Now there were singular enemies whose defeats would actually matter. Defeating a Commandment has no tangible reward. Defeating the Demon King does.

Conclusion

In the end, I’d still only give The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon’s Judgement a 2/10. Yes, it was an improvement over the previous season. But, considering how low of a bar that is, an anime can still be terrible and be above it.

At this point, I’m just hoping that the sequel series doesn’t get an anime adaptation. I really don’t want to watch it, but I get the feeling I would for some reason.

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