Review of The Seven Deadly Sins: Revival of the Commandments

Contains spoilers, you've been warned. Let me preface this by saying that I do not dislike this series. I LOVED the first season, the filler was kinda eh, and this falls somewhere close to the filler. From a pure enjoyment perspective, I really enjoyed this season. I kept watching and binged half of the season in a day. However, from an analytical perspective, this season is kinda disappointing. The art and sound remain pretty much the same. There are practically no complaints here. The animation looks awesome and the background music is reminiscent of Fairy Tail, but still retains its unique personality. The story and the characterdevelopment kinda fall flat though. The plot is pretty interesting, having the Ten Commandments rise from their imprisonment, and their attempt to take over Britannia, and the attempts of the Seven Deadly Sins to stop them. It's pretty generic, but it gets the job done. The story kinda progresses slowly, but it wasn't too big of a deal. Although I did roll my eyes at the training arc that made no sense and the tournament arc, which again, also did not have any impact in the long run of the story.

My biggest issue with this season were the characters. Let me go through a couple and explain my reasoning. Firstly, Gowther was an absolute ass out of nowhere. Not only did he erase Guila and Zeal's memories of each other, but he erases Diane's memories for no apparent reason. Like, literally, there's no rationale behind it other than proving that he has the ability to do so. The Seven Deadly Sins ABRIDGED Version of Gowther was damn hilarious. However, with the one from THIS season, I just wanted to reach through the screen and bitch-slap him into next week. He was such a condescending douche for literally no reason, causing a whole bunch of problems just for the hell of it.

Diane was supremely useless for the majority of the season's run. I mean this is mostly thanks to Gowther wiping her memories, but she transforms from this badass boss to a sniveling damsel in distress. Elizabeth wasn't that useful either. I mean you could argue she did save Meliodas, but he wasn't in any real sort of danger, so her role was pretty trivial.

I don't know what the writers were thinking of with regards to Hawk's character. In the first season, he was pretty hilarious and charming, but he was more annoying and gimmicky in this one. I didn't mention this earlier, but I HATED the whole "power level" spiel. It felt like lazy writing just to establish how truly powerful different characters were. Like we get it, we know how powerful they are, no need to insult our intelligence by dumbing down the mechanics of the show. Anyways, back to Hawk. His whole "swallowing a magical creature" really didn't make any sense, and seemed to come off as more arrogant and less cute. I honestly believe that we entered a different World Line in which Hawk didn't actually save Meliodas and Elizabeth, and instead had a complete character rework to become what he was in this season.

None of the Holy Knights made an impact on me like they did in the original series. Whereas they were brooding and powerful knights in the first season, they were more or less bumbling dolts who sometimes fought well and shouted out the names of their moves in this one.

Merlin, like Meliodas, absolutely refused to die. I mean don't get me wrong, I love both of these characters, but like Ban, it's impossible for them to die. She's a really interesting character and apparently very intelligent, so why she felt the need to give Hawk his power-level thingy was so strange. Also the idea that she wasn't able to stand a chance against Galand but was totally able to take down Grayroad, who was apparently a lot more powerful, without any problem made no sense either.

King and Ban were okay. I thought Ban's connection with Elaine was sweet, but his treatment of Jericho was ridiculous. This chick puts her life on the line for a man that she knows full well can't die, and the dude just brushes her aside. Like wtf man? I still like Ban, but I could not for the life of me understand how he ignored Jericho when she risked life and limb to save both him AND Elaine. King was still cool, but his blubbering about Diane got old after a while.

My biggest confusion came from Hendrickson's character. Like I get that he was manipulated by Fraudrin and everything, but his complete character 180 from the original series made ZERO sense. Like he released the Ten Commandments, then not even two minutes after that, realizes he has royally screwed up and decides to fight against them? Like what? Him hanging out in the Boar's Hat like nothing had happened felt so out of place, and the whole Druid aspect felt thrown in at the last second just to give him this OP power, which was really only there to establish that Elizabeth had the same power too.

The Ten Commandments were such an interesting group of characters, but as far as motives go, they were really just "We're evil because we're the villains of this show." Like all they wanted to do was take over Britannia. That was it. Derieri and Monspeet had so much room for character development, but instead got shoved to the sidelines. We almost never get to know anything about them, other than the fact that they're demons and they love each other. It's never established why Drole and Gloxinia joined the Ten Commandments in the first place. Like we know that they fought against the Demon King, but it is never touched upon why they switched sides. I never liked Zeldris from the get-go, he more or less just felt like the typical "edgy for the sake of edginess" villain. Grayroad was extremely creepy and interesting, but how easily she fell to Merlin made me lose any respect for her as a character. I never liked Fraudrin, especially considering how little we saw of his character in the first season. Similar to Hendrickson, the whole 180 seemed to come out of nowhere. I thought Melascula had some pretty damn good character development, and I thought that her drunk interactions with Escanor and Galand were hilarious, but I kinda got sick after she miraculously survives the sins not once, but TWICE. Estarossa was pretty interesting, and his whole interaction with Meliodas was compelling and his fight with Escanor was damn awesome. The only Commandment I can say I genuinely enjoyed was Galand, but then again he fell pretty pathetically to Escanor.

Escanor is the only reason that my character score isn't any lower. The series instantly shot up in enjoyment the episode his character was introduced. He's just so stupidly overpowered, that you can't help but grin at his sheer amount of pride. This is a manly man enough to give Alex Armstrong and Kamina a run for their money. The way he pummeled each of the Commandments without batting an eye was such a cool thing to behold. His love of Merlin was also pretty sweet too.

Almost all of the other characters I couldn't care less about it. Characters like Dolores and Zhivago felt like they were introduced for the sole purpose of another person's character development. Matrona really didn't make much of an impact. I thought she was stupid to block the arrow for Diane, and the idea that a tiny human could saw through that much muscle and bone in time to save a giant just felt unrealistic. I know this show is unrealistic to begin with, but you really have to stretch your imagination to understand how she was still able to survive all of that.

As a last minor note, that goddess towards the end was a total bitch. Sorry lady, but you are a goddess, a race that is apparently superior to all other races. Why the hell are you running away from a fight? Derieri should NOT be able to go Super Saiyan and bisect you with one swipe. Doesn't work like that honey.

Might I add that death is meaningless in this show. Spoilers, but no character that has any meaningful presence dies. Galand slaughters more than half of the sins towards the beginning of the series, but surprise, an illusion was created and they weren't really in any danger and Elizabeth healed their scratches. Meliodas dies, but again, surprise he's back from the dead for whatever reason. And sorry, but giving Melascula the power the ability to bring things back from the dead was such a lazy method of tying up loose ends. Like, I'm convinced the only purpose for that power was to bring Zaratras back (who also contributed practically nothing in the grand scheme of things). While I enjoy Merlin, as I previously mentioned, she is saved from death twice in the run of this show. Escanor is stabbed by Gloxinia, only to be brought back by Gloxinia's magic life-giving spear. It took away any emotion that I had for a reaction to a character death, since I knew that they were going to magically come back somehow.

Also, all the little backstories took away from the main plot too. While they gave context to the character or situation, they just felt distracting.

As I previously mentioned, I still enjoyed the series, I just can't bring myself to hate it. But if I analyze it, then I find myself finding flaws with just about every single character. It's by no means a bad show, but it was definitely not as good as it's predecessor.