Review of To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts

[This contains no spoilers] I started this anime, expecting the usual hot mess you get from combining an industrial age war setting with a fantasy concept. Usually, anime like this get convoluted, lose focus and resort to blindly padding the plot with action sequences and tropes. They also end up allowing their sub-genres (like comedy and romance) to dominate the plot, and in turn, stagnate progression. The first episode forecasted that prediction, and I was certain that I didn't need to give it my usually 3 episode trail to determine if I liked it, so I forgot about it for a while. However, this week Ithought that I might stick to my original principal of giving shows a fair 3 episode trail and just use my train ride home from work to give it a fair try (since I had almost let Youjo Senki slip out of my redar for the same reason - only to realise that I had missed out on a great show). Surprisingly the second episode of this was quiet enjoyable and I realised I had misjudged it a little. Nevertheless, it didn't turn out to be a masterpiece or an anime that changed the formula that is commonly applied to the genre it belongs to, but it didn't it turn out to be a complete waste of my time either.

Upon finishing this anime, I was curious to see the general consensus of it, and was surprised to see it had a bellow 7/10 average on MAL weeks after it fished airing, which is a score you'd usually see on something that was so generic to it's core that it didn't even managed not to capture it's own target audience well enough to score a few free 10/10s. Perhaps it's because I score base on comparison to other series I've seen (with consideration of my personal enjoyment included). It baffles me that this anime was in that score range when anime of it's same calibre would still on the top end of the 7/10 rating with worse art and music.

To summaries my thoughts on the plot, the premise was not original in the slightest and reminded me of Berserk, minus the build up that made the betrayal in Berserk all the more dramatic. Nonetheless, the show did not divert the focus like I previously predicted and kept a good pace for it's progression, while changing up the formula each episode to not make it feel less like an episodic series where the reset switch was constantly pressed to extend the plot further. By this I mean, despite having the opportunity to include some comedy and romance (to potentially mask the fact that the story may not have substance), it went straight to the point and gave you the explanations you needed then jumped into to action sequences - which didn't last for more than a third of the episode and had dialogue that added to the plot instead of reiterations of it. Surprisingly, it didn't keep you with the same set of main characters and didn't always follow the format of "discovery, investigation, interactions and fight sequence" which it had for a few episodes - instead you had some episodes dedicated to looking into the backgrounds of characters who had been established as the villains of this anime (who were anomalies in a few cases and no villains) and you had some episode revisiting previous aspects of the plot to further reflect on them.

On the other hand, the plot didn't avoid the many tropes you'd find within these kind of story. It had randomly included a female solider character with oversized boobs to constantly act as the ice breaker and to be the token strong woman character (which I see inserted into plots like this sometimes) - despite some of the other main characters being able to easily assume that role more tastefully. Her presence was mostly unnecessary, and her lines could have been given to a less flamboyant character that didn't need time invested in them to have some boob physics for an unrealistically massive pair of breasts - which are boldly displayed (while mostly uncovered) during serious dialogue.... It honestly ruined the vibe of the anime.

In addition, sometimes it felt like the plot didn't dig deep enough into the backgrounds of certain characters and missed opportunities to more comprehensively look into the mindset of villains. At times, there wasn't enough time spent in showing characters transition between different emotional states, so you would get stubborn and angry characters become submissive and calm in the next scene, which would break immersion. Also a lot of the lore of the setting wasn't explained at all or in depth, you were left to assume the setting was some 19th century industrial American cowboy setting, since that's all you could gather from the visuals. Though I do appreciate that unlike my experience with many anime of this genre, I wasn't subjected to a complicated explanation of the politics and factions and then expected to remember it, it spread out some of the explanations of politics and kept it simple - albeit too simple sometimes.

In terms of the voice acting and music, it was decent and was good enough to set the mood. The voices fit each characters and the music usually fit the scene. I can't say it did anything amazing, but it didn't have any flaws either in my opinion, so "good enough" is the best way to describe it. However the art was indeed above average, with MAPPA not resorting to using CGI for some of the action every scenes with a lot of movements, body transformations and lib distortion. The designs for uniforms, hair styles and the look of guns were well thought out and considered the setting well. The backgrounds were the usual mediocre stuff, so I can't give it much praise, but overall there was a decent amount of effort displayed through the character design, animation and presentation style - and it was definitely was not an anime filled with lazy and loose animation and character designs like some of it's counterparts.

So in conclusions, I think this anime isn't something to write home about, but it seems to also not be deserving of it's poor reception, when at best it was lacking certain element, rather than being completely void of them (like character development). I feel like the above average art and animation, as well as it's consistent focus on a premise (that is decent enough to enjoy) and the fact that the execution was not too shallow, boring or filled with repetition - makes this a 7/10 at the very least to me. I say that as someone who was probably not the target audience for this anime - since I'm not being a huge fan of action fantasies and value dialogue heavy plot with character development over fight sequences. I managed to enjoy this series despite my preferences, and I think that's great.