Oh, Lindenfilms. Please, please, never adapt a manga ever again. Saiyuuki's new anime is... a mixed bag. To say the least. Not what I wanted to say considering the great quality of the manga source. Yet still, it was somehow a peak of an otherwise completely uninteresting season for anyone not interested in *insert current trending drivel here*. Let's start with the elephant in the room. The art. A step up from Tokyo Revengers, Lindenfilms here manage to retain the detailed character designs. As with the aforementioned show though, the animation quality is rather low. It's very static, almost like a PowerPoint at times. The actionis reminiscent of clicking through the dialogue of a visual novel. Let's leave it at a five out of ten. High because of the quality of the designs they somehow preserved.

Now the quality of the adaptation from the source. The pacing was very odd. They even adapted a 13 or so page gag side-chapter as an entire episode. 24 minutes of my time wasted on a minute long manga read, which was clearly there to save budget considering the stunted visual quality. I thought "island episodes" were a thing of the past, but here we are with one in a cour-long show. Other decisions to stretch out some subplots and in effect skip over others took out the majority of the "mystery" aspect present in the manga, where the two parties were locked in a war of attrition to figure out the intentions and abilities of the other.

That being said, thanks to the source it came from, the story was very good. Best part of the Saiyuuki manga, in my opinion, and a decent anime as well. A bit of yokai-infused 4D chess crossed with Stardust Crusaders-style travelling westward. You can read the synopsis yourself, weeb.

The sound was some generic anime sound effects crossed with some standard background music you can find anywhere else. Although, the OP and ED were pretty great. Love some GRANRODEO.

Characters are a big part of Saiyuuki and they were preserved very well here, with the perfect cast of voice actors to accompany. As the pull of Saiyuuki, it's no wonder they're good.

Luckily despite the anime being heavily restricted in what it could have done, I definitely enjoyed it as a big Saiyuuki fan. I'll end by saying this definitely isn't beginner-friendly and it's absolutely required that you read the manga set before this arc, but it definitely is worth watching, once you catch up with the manga, that is.

7/10.