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.
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
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
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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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
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
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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The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of the Commandments Cover Art
Overview
I finally got around to watching the second season of The Seven Deadly Sins now that it’s been a year since it aired, and I have to say I’m disappointed. In fact, I have so many complaints about this season that they’ll be in their own section of this review later on.
In this section I’ll instead be going over the general plot of the season and the few things I think it did well.
So, the first thing I should mention is that this season comes after the Signs of Holy War OVA (which Netflix erroneously calls the second season). It won’t really matter if you haven’t seen the OVA before watching this season, but it is referenced at least once.
But, anyway, the general plot of this season is that ten powerful demons known as the Ten Commandments have been revived by the antagonists from the first season. It’s also revealed that those first season antagonists were actually being used by the Ten Commandments, and weren’t really bad after all.
The Ten Commandments had been sealed away for 3,000 years after they were betrayed by one of their own, Meliodas. Yes, that’s a spoiler, but it was pretty obvious from the start, especially considering two of the Ten Commandments are his brothers.
Now that this ancient evil has been awoken, it’s time for Meliodas to reclaim the power which was stolen from him by Merlin, as well as time to find the final member of the Sins. Both of these things are surprisingly easy to achieve.
To regain his power, all Meliodas has to do is not go crazy and destroy everything when he re-lives the memory of his girlfriend dying. And, the Lion Sin of Pride, Escanor, is found on accident by Ban, who is off doing his own thing for the majority of the season.
Then, once all the Sins have reunited, there’s a battle for the fate of Britannia and Camelot, but it doesn’t really matter at all in the end. In fact, by the end of this season barely any progress has been made story-wise and it feels like it was all just a setup for the third season.
But, we do get some good from the season. For starters, we’re finally introduced to “best boy” Escanor. But, more importantly, we get more backstory on the Sins, which was my favorite part of the first season, and really carries this second season.
I think my favorite part of season one was the origin story of how Ban gained his immortality, and in this season we get even more backstory of Ban from when he was even younger. Though, there’s also more backstory on Diane, and I don’t care about her at all.
New Characters
There are two major new characters on the side of the good guys, and these are Escanor and Jericho. However, since Jericho isn’t exactly new, I’ll go over her first.
Jericho was an apprentice Holy Knight who was turned into a demon during the climax of season one. She was then saved by Ban, for whom she develops a crush. When Ban sets out on his own at the beginning of this season, Jericho follows him like the stalker she is.
However, despite loving Ban, she knows that Ban will never love her in return because he has Elaine (although she’s dead). Since Ban’s ultimate goal is to revive Elaine, that means he won’t ever see Jericho as a romantic partner.
But, all hope isn’t lost for Jericho, because even if Ban won’t return her love, he does warm up to her. At first he simply refers to her as “you,” but over time he starts calling her “Joriko,” and then eventually by her actual name, “Jericho.” He also says that she’s the only human he can tolerate.
Jericho also really develops into her own character over the course of the season. While she starts off as little more than Ban’s stalker, she proves to be a loyal friend and even rescues a temporarily reincarnated Elaine, despite the two being romantic rivals.
Unfortunately for Jericho, as much as I grew to like her character, she’s outclassed by the other new character of the season, Escanor. Escanor is the final member of the Seven Deadly Sins as well as the most powerful. Yes, he’s even stronger than Meliodas.
Lion Sin of Pride, Escanor
Escanor wields the power of the Sun, literally. He’s able to materialize a miniature sun and throw it at his enemies, which is obviously a pretty devastating attack, but that’s not all. He’s also the most physically strong of the Sins and has the highest defense.
His signature ax is so heavy that even demons can’t lift it, but he can effortlessly with one hand. He can also easily chop a mountain in half with it if he so chose. As for his defense, when one of his ax swings was countered back at him at double the power, it merely left a small cut.
But, while Escanor is the strongest of the Sins, he’s also the weakest. His true power is only revealed during the day and when he’s in sunlight. During the night, his body shrivels up and he becomes a weak and timid man who’s easily killed.
However, it would be a mistake to believe Escanor can be defeated simply by taking away the source of his power, the Sun, once he’s fully charged. Remember how I mentioned that he can create miniature suns? Well, those power him up too.
Honestly, I’d recommend watching this season just for Escanor alone. Yes, he’s extremely overpowered and I think he defeats just about all of the Commandments solo, but he’s so entertaining that I’ll allow it. Alternatively, just go watch this clip of Escanor on YouTube.
Ten Commandments
Next up we have the new antagonists of the series, the Ten Commandments. These are the elite soldiers who serve directly under the Demon King, and who are the basis for the formation of the Seven Deadly Sins. Meliodas knew they would be revived one day, and so wanted to form a team to defeat them.
Each of the Commandments has a special ability bestowed upon them by the Demon King, which corresponds to their specific commandment in some way. For example, Galand’s commandment is Truth and so anyone who lies in his presence is turned to stone.
The names and commandments assigned to each of the Ten Commandments are as follows:
Galand – Truth
Melascula – Faith
Monspeet – Reticence
Derieri – Purity
Drole – Patience
Gloxinia – Repose
Grayroad – Pacifism
Fraudrin – Selflessness
Estarossa – Love
Zeldris – Piety
As far as we know at this point, eight of the Ten Commandments are Demons, though since they all look so different this may not be the case. The two who we know aren’t Demons are Drole and Gloxinia. Drole is a Giant of some sort who’s worshiped by the current race of Giants, and Gloxinia is the first Fairy King.
It’s also been revealed that Estarossa and Zeldris are the brothers of Meliodas, though this fact doesn’t really seem to matter at all as far as the plot is concerned.
Problems
There are three major problems introduced in the second season of The Seven Deadly Sins, along with a decent number of minor, plot related problems as well. These major problems are the introduction of power levels, the inclusion of exposition dumps, and the appearance of special skills.
Power Scaling
Let’s begin with power levels since it’s one of the most overt issues this second season has. Typically the way you show that one character is stronger than another is by either one on one combat, or by showing the stronger character doing something the weaker can’t.
For example, if you wanted to show that Escanor is stronger than Meliodas, you might show Meliodas lift a house while showing Escanor lift a castle. However, for some ungodly reason, power levels were introduced. This means that each character has a number associated with them to show how strong they are.
For example, Meliodas normally has a power level between 2,000 – 3,000 before regaining his power, and then somewhere around 40,000 when he’s fully powered up. Escanor, by comparison is above 60,000. The issue with this is that it takes away the excitement of a series by giving the viewer needless statistics.
If we know Escanor is at 60,000, but his opponent is only at 30,000, then we already know the outcome of the fight. I don’t recall a single fight this season which ended with the person with a lower power level winning, and their power levels were all typically established before each fight.
But, this also ties into the second problem, exposition dumps.
Exposition Dumps
An exposition dump, or information dump, is when every aspect of something is explicitly explained by a character rather than being shown. This is what people are talking about when they say that a series should show, not tell.
I think it’s fair to say that 40% of this season was exposition dump. Characters were constantly explaining their own powers or the powers of others despite the fact that we, the viewers, could just see how these powers work by watching them in action.
And, it’s not like every power was only explained once. Every time one of the Commandments would appear in battle, they would have to explain to their opponent how their commandment ability worked even though we’ve heard the explanation before and even seen it in action.
Basically, this is a waste of time that only serves to do two things: make the viewers lose interest by stopping the action to explain it, and treating the viewers like they’re stupid and can’t understand simple concepts.
Special Skills
While there have already been special skills present in this series to an extent, such as Meliodas’ Full Counter and Ban’s immortality, this was taken to the next level this season. Yes, every one of the Sins is supposed to have something special about them, but they aren’t all exactly what I would call special skills.
Meliodas’ Full Counter I would say is more of a special attack than passive skill. Ban’s immortality is a passive skill, but not an inherent one. Diane’s ability to control the Earth seems like a special skill, but this is actually something all Giants can do.
The first hint we got of actual special skills came with Gowther’s ability to overwrite people’s memories. While I never thought this skill made much sense, I accepted it for what it was. Escanor is the next one we see with a special skill, which is how he gets powered up by the Sun.
Again, I was fine with Escanor having this skill, because that’s actually the one thing that sets him apart from anyone else, and it isn’t all-powerful. During the night, Escanor is basically useless, so to make up for that he’s extremely powerful during the day.
But, then more characters started to have special skills introduced, such as Merlin. Merlin’s whole thing is that she’s extremely good at magic, but not very good at anything else. That alone is enough to set her apart from the rest of the Sins, as well as most other characters.
However, it was later revealed that she has an inherent, passive skill that means any spell she casts will stay in effect indefinitely without her requiring to expend any further magic. And, due to her role as a highly skilled, mage, this is extremely broken. So broken that both the Commandments and other Sins alike say it’s broken.
Think of it in RPG elements. Let’s say you have 10 magic points and use a skill that makes you invincible. However, this skill uses 2 magic points per second, which means you can only stay invincible for 5 seconds. Merlin, on the other hand, can use up the initial 2 magic points, but then remain invincible indefinitely.
Minor Issues
Along with the three major issues with this season, there were also a lot of minor issues, only some of which I’ll cover here. The first is connected to the problem of special skills, and this is that everyone has to be special in some way.
It’s revealed that Meliodas is the son of the Demon King and that every time he dies he simply gets reincarnated because that has something to do with the commandment he was given. It’s also implied that Elizabeth is the reincarnation of Meliodas’ girlfriend, Liz, and that she was probably of the Goddess race in her original incarnation.
This means that Meliodas and Elizabeth are constantly drawn together every time they reincarnate across time, and their story is probably going to be about some forbidden love between a Demon prince and Goddess princess. That’s fine because they’re the main duo, but what about everyone else?
It’s revealed that Gowther is actually a former member of the Commandments as well, but nobody seems to realize this. You would think that Meliodas would have remembered that, but he seems to have no knowledge of Gowther. Merlin also claims to be the one who created Gowther, and yet she has no knowledge of this either.
This could be explained by Gowther changing their memories with his special skill, but for now we just don’t know. But, even if Gowther being special can be explained in a “reasonable” way, it’s also revealed that Merlin is actually some sort of ancient, demonic queen from thousands of years ago.
Why are the characters all suddenly getting random, ancient backstories? Why wasn’t Merlin being an OP mage enough? She has to be an ancient demon queen now too? These revelations about the main characters feel like plot twists that were simply added for cheap shock value and nothing more.
Also, speaking of Gowther, he literally ruins everything multiple times throughout the season and yet the Sins all accept him as one of them. It doesn’t seem like he was ever actually close to any of them, none of them know anything about him, and yet when he does things like erase Diane’s memory it’s viewed as not his fault because he’s their “friend.”
So, what about side characters? Well, they have issues too in a way. Let’s start with King Arthur and Camelot. The first season made it seem like they were going to be important, but that turned out not to be the case. Arthur is just some weak kid and Camelot gets taken over within a day.
Why build up the whole Arthur and Camelot thing at the end of the first season and then throw it aside in the second? It looks like the third season is going to take place in Camelot now, but I can’t be sure based on how this second season went.
And, since this is getting long, the final issue I’ll point out is when one of the Goddesses was summoned using the body of a holy knight as a vessel. This Goddess was supposed to be his trump card, but once she’s summoned she immediately flees from the demon she was summoned to fight and then gets killed.
What was the point of that entire scene? It added literally nothing unless it was supposed to show us that the “legendary” Goddess race is actually weaker than humans.
Conclusion
Basically, The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of the Commandments is a 4/10 overall. Some of the fights were fun to watch, especially when they included Escanor, but the season was a disappointment. Specifically because of this season I’m actually not planning to watch the movie or any future seasons of this series.
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While this review is mostly about the first season of The Seven Deadly Sins, consider it the review for the first movie as well since I don’t remember anything especially important happening in that. Season 2 is still airing and I plan to binge it once complete so there shouldn’t be any spoilers for that season in here.
The basic plot of the series goes something like this: One day a group of knights known as The Seven Deadly Sins supposedly tried to overthrow the kingdom but were pushed back by the rest of the Holy Knights of the land. Since that day, they have been considered the most wanted criminals in the region.
Then a princess decides to find The Seven Deadly Sins and ask them to help her free the kingdom from the tyrannical rule of the Holy Knights who seized power shortly after the supposed coup by the Sins. This is the story of that princess collecting all the members of the Sins.
Characters
Elizabeth is the female lead of the series and the princess who is searching for the Sins. She believes that the Sins were actually acting to protect the kingdom when they fought against the rest of the Holy Knights which is why she believes they will help her overthrow them.
Hawk is the lead pig of the series. He’s literally a pig. Despite not having any real powers, Hawk is a formidable opponent in battle due to his fearlessness (or ability to charge in despite his fear). He works with Meliodas at the Boar Hat tavern as the scrap remover.
Meliodas is the leader of the Sins. He is known as the Sin of Wrath and carries a broken sword which he occasionally uses in battle. We learn at some point in the series that he appears to be at least some part Demon which is most likely the source of his immense power. His special ability can counter the attack of any opponent.
Diane is the Sin of Envy as well as a Giant. She uses a large hammer in battle and also has the ability to manipulate the Earth by using it. Kind of like Earth-style Jutsu from the Naruto series, specifically Iwabe from Boruto.
Ban is the Sin of Greed and was once a regular human, or at least something close to one. Now, however, he is immortal which probably makes him the second most powerful after Meliodas simply due to technicalities. Coincidentally, the injury ban has ever received a scar from was due to a fight with Meliodas.
King is the Sin of Sloth as well as the King of the Fairies. He is able to fly and uses a shape-shifting weapon which is often in the form of a spear. He has a particular dislike for Ban and is attracted to Diane despite her enormous size.
Gowther is the Sin of Lust. He is a living doll and so shows little emotion. He likes to read books and has developed a flair for the dramatic due to them, despite his emotionless demeanor.
The sixth and final Sin we meet in the first season is Merlin, the Sin of Gluttony. As her name suggests, she is the most powerful mage in the region. We don’t really get too much other information about her in this season due to her late entrance.
Hawk wearing armor
Conclusion
While I did very much enjoy this series, it was also a fairly generic medieval fantasy anime at the same time. Because of this, I decided to give it a 6/10. I also gave the OVA a 5, but we’ll just group that in with the first season since not enough happened in it to warrant a separate review.
Apparently, the second season is even better than the first so I’m looking forward to the end of that so I can binge it.
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