Review of To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts

Out of all the complaints I could make about To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts, the most galling and unforgivable one is that there’s not technically anything wrong with it. It has a strong, memorable premise that lends itself to a lot of different possibilities. From that premise, it uses its fantastical elements to explore mature, interesting themes that all play into its larger point. The characters all have recognizable emotional arcs that take them from point A to point B through a series of logical beats. The story makes decent sense, without ever asking you to stretch your suspension of disbelief beyond the point ofno return. The animation is unremarkable, but generally solid and gets the job done. In all honestly, Sacred Beasts is probably the most outright “functional” anime series I watched in the summer of 2019. There’s nothing really you can point at and say, “This is bad filmmaking” or “This is indefensible storytelling.” And yet, every piece of it is also just uninspired enough, just pedestrian enough, that the overall impact is one of sinking into a thick, mealy porridge of mediocrity that just grows harder and harder to stomach as time goes on. I can’t remember the last time a basically “okay” show left me this angry and frustrated, this unmotivated to click the next episode button whenever Monday rolled around. That’s gotta be some sort of achievement, though even mentioning “achievement” in the same vicinity as this show feels like an insult to achievement.

The story, for what it’s worth, centers around the fictional nation of Patria, which is just recovering from a North vs South Civil War and trying to heal the broken bonds of its people (any references to the American Civil War are strictly aesthetic). For the most part, everyone seems to be doing a decent enough job picking up their lives and returning to some semblance of normalcy. But then there’s Hank Henriette, leader of the special “Incarnate” squad that helped win the war for the North. You see, in order to win the war, Hank and his teammates agreed to be the subject of scientific experiments that turned them into being called Incarnates, capable of transforming between their human forms and some manner of monster. Hank was a werewolf, one of his teammates was a siren, another was a gargoyle, yet another could become a giant rhinoceros dinosaur thing called a Behemoth, another could just turn into a straight-up dragon, you get the idea. They were incredibly powerful, and that power helped them turn the tide of war when it was needed most. But while the Incarnates certainly did their job well as half-man-half-monster Super Soldiers, their new forms stared weighing on their mental state, threatening to drive them mad as they lost themselves to their animalistic natures. So as the war drew to a close, they all made a vow to each other; should any one of them start losing their humanity, their companions would strike them down while they still had some semblance of dignity left.

Well, as you can imagine, things went belly up, one of the Incarnates turned traitor (though in all honesty, the fact that his name was literally Cain Madhouse should have rung all the alarm bells), and Hank was knocked out of commission for a good few months. When he recovered, the war was finally over, but all of his former companions were in the throes of beast madness, wandering the reformed country they once fought to save and tearing it apart in their wake. So in keeping with his oath, Hank sets out to bring his friends down, while pursuing the trail of the traitorous Cain in hopes of stopping him fro causing any more damage. Along the way, he enlists the aid of Schall Bancroft, the daughter of one of the Incarnates, who wishes to understand why her father and his companions need to be killed without hope of saving them. The stage is set for a series of episodic adventures focusing on Hank, Schall, and the occasional military assistance tracking down the incarnates, facing them in brutal beastman-on-beastman battles, and bringing closer to these war heroes who have become lost in a world without war, all while growing ever closer to Cain and his schemes.

See, if you knew nothing about this show but that premise, you’d probably be really excited to check it out. Because that sounds fucking awesome, right? A tragic, macho tale of veterans struggling with PTSD and trying to find their place in the world now that their combat prowess is nothing but a liability, punctuated by big, nasty action scenes with blood and fur flying everywhere? You’d be stupid to not at least give it three episodes. And like I said, there’s not really anything wrong with it on a foundational level. Each episode focuses on Hank and his crew chasing down a different Incarnate, and they all regularly have just enough of their humanity remaining to explore a different aspect of how war effects those who fight in it. One incarnate is so traumatized that he builds himself an increasingly impenetrable fortress to keep him safe from any potential harm. Another’s gone full gun nut xenophobe. Another used to be a doctor trying to save lives, but embraced slaughter when he realized that he was praised whether he saved people or killed people. And their inevitable deaths are all suitably poignant as they pass away with one last scrap of humanity intact, trying to make sense of where they went wrong and why the world they fought to protect no longer seems to have a place for them. There’s no real reason why Sacred Beasts shouldn’t have been good.

And yet, the more I watched, the more I came to hate it.

The problem is, while everything is basically functional and all that, nothing has any soul. Everything technically “works”, but nothing actually connects, because every piece is the least interesting version of itself possible while still not technically being “bad”. The animation isn’t really janky or awkward, but it’s blocky and stiff and ugly to look at, and most of the battles don’t have the cathartic oomph they need as a result. The one-off Incarnates all have understandable traumas, but with maybe a couples of exceptions they’re all laid on too thick and treacly to respect. The characters all make enough basic sense, but they’re all written so trite and paper-thin that they warm right back around to being annoying. Hank is a brooding bore, Cain is a one-dimensional cackling psychopath, there’s an arrogant military general who gets exactly the kind of story you’d expect him to get, and Schall is maybe the worst example of the generic “tough girl damsel” I’ve ever seen. Her only role is to whine and complain about how unforgiving Hank is to the Incarnates, preaching in a wobbly voice constantly on the verge of tears about how there must be some humanity left in them worth saving, and it’s all laid on so painfully, agonizingly thick that almost every time she was on screen I could feel my teeth grinding in aggravation. At least she gets more interesting and palatable once she undergoes her requisite “My innocence is lost and now I’m a stoic-ish badass too” arc in the back half of the series, but the damage is already done.

“Trite” really feels like the right word to sum up this show, now that I think about it. Sacred Beasts treats its story at a bare surface level, but it lays on the operatic melodrama so thick that the dissonance just ends up grating on you. The characters all emote explosively, the dialogue is designed for big, dramatic confrontations, the music is bombastic and tragic, but all the while the actual story they’re propping up hasn’t done nearly enough to justify even 10% of the sturm and drang. Everything is basic, everything is obvious, everything is lazy, and as a result, everything is dull, dull, dull. It does pick up a bit in the second half, with some battles and story turns that feel marginally more meaningful, but it’s not enough to wash off the frustration and exhaustion Sacred Beasts leaves you with. It also doesn’t help that this show’s got some of the most inopportune fanservice I’ve seen in a while (at least outside of Fire Force, but that’s a rant for another day). There’s an officer in the military whose entire purpose seems to be walking around with her massive tonhonkerabongos all but popping out of her half-unbuttoned jacket like someone out of Prison School, and the show always makes a gag out her at the worst possible time, killing whatever serious tone it was trying to build up. Here’s a thought: if you’re trying to write a grim, serious story about metaphorical PTSD and the tragedy of war, maybe save the “lol tig ol bitties” gags for another day.

To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts isn’t the worst show ever, but it makes me angry in a way that most basically okay shows don’t. From such a great premise, from such solid storytelling, this show manages nothing but pasteboard mediocrity that unsuccessfully tries to pretend it’s anything better. It’s a limp piece of wet cardboard steadfastly refusing to be lit while proclaiming itself a raging fire regardless, and that dissonance only gets harder and harder to stomach the more I think about it. Themes with this much potential deserved more in-depth exploration, battles this conceptually cool deserved bigger impacts, and a title this kickass deserved a much better story to do it justice.