Review of The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of the Commandments

INTRODUCTION: The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of the Commandments (a.k.a. Season 2) continues the story of Meliodas and his crew, set in an alternate, fantastic version of Britain. Full of magic users and different races, the show follows the typical medieval-inspired setting after a major clash at the end of the previous season. PLOT: After dealing with a major threat, another one emerges in the island of Britannia. As the subtitle suggests, The Ten Commandments, absurdly powerful demons with special curses, emerge after three thousand years of confinement and are set to conquer the entirety of the island. The plot follows the struggles of mankind against these terrifying,beastly and unholy beings, and all hope rests on The Seven Deadly Sins and their equally abusive powers. The plot itself is promising, creates expectations upon the viewer and makes us want to know more about the demons, how our protagonists will handle them and what is the scope of their destructive powers. The major plot is not something new, though it does feel interesting - some parts are really good and well-done, and deserve praise.

With that said, it can be added that this season had major problems.

First of all, the new villains are introduced rather early, which is a good thing - unfortunately, it takes a long time for them to actually *do* anything. Rather, the first half of the season is focused on uninteresting subplots which unnecessarely take way too much screen time. I was actually considering dropping the show a third into it, though I decided to continue watching due to the major plot being attracting and for respect of the first season. That leads us to pacing problems - it starts way too slow, nothing major happens for a long time and then the climax suddenly happens, two thirds into it, only to cool down at the final episodes.

Another flaw is the ammount of characters that I simply couldn't care about. That is a recurrent problem from season 1 - I have never found Gilthunder, Griamore and their kind amusing; King, Diane and Gowther continued being annoying despite some minor development here and there; most of the Commandments felt pretty bland, without much screen time. Despite that, Meliodas had some fine, although small development, as well as Elizabeth and Ban. Hawk remained exactly what he was - which is a good thing, as I enjoy his nonsense humor from time to time.

An annoying "feature" I simply despised was the addition of "numeric power", similar to what the Sayans have in the Dragon Ball universe. "Look, Meliodas has a power of 32xx, Merlin has a power of 34xx, Ban has 31xx" (or whatever their powers actually are) is just a terrible way to measure and compare different character's strength and powers. It also shows the insane power creep that happens in just 24 episodes, which makes most of the characters irrelevant in a fight. There are some terrible Deus Ex Machina moments throughout the season as well.

Regarding the art and the sound department, they are simply "ok" for me - nothing special about them, though nothing blatantly flawed as well. Fan service keeps being thrown at us at each second episode, similar to the first season. Some of the soundtrack does invoke the feeling of medieval fantasy, which is a plus for a show like this.

CONCLUSION:

Overall, The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of the Commandments is a bad sequel to the original season. It feels like the whole 24 episodes could be summarized to 15, perhaps even to 12 episodes. When I finished the last episode I was left with a feeling that almost nothing had happened throughout the entire season. There's a huge number of subplots that need to be finished - some important, some not as much. If a third season is approved, I'll be watching it, though I won't be expecting much of it.