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Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai Suru (2023)
A solid adaptation
Reign of the Seven Spellblades is an adaptation of a novel series by Bokuto Uno, creator of Alderamin on the Sky. I read the manga first, then the novels, and have been waiting for this series for over two years.
This world is heavily inspired by the Harry Potter series, but with a lot of its own twists to make it distinct. This is not an action-comedy like the contemporary Mashle: Magic and Muscles; rather, this is more of a teen drama in a dark fantasy world, focusing on a core friend group of six students at a highly prestigious and very dangerous magic school, and particularly the romance between Oliver Horn, a jack-of-all-trades who is much more than he lets on, and Nanao Hibiya, a former samurai plucked from a battlefield in the Far East.
If you're looking for instant gratification with an OP MC, this is not the series for you. This is long-form, highly serialized storytelling that takes its sweet time establishing the world and the characters. And it's an enchanting world. It sucks to live in, but those who want to make it suck less have real support and are slowly making progress. But the old order isn't going to go down without a fight.
Gaikotsu Kishi-sama, Tadaima isekai e odekake-chû (2022)
Tonally inconsistent and abuses sexual violence
This series fundamentally cannot decide what it's trying to be, which is highlighted by its abuse of sexual violence. Most of the time it's a goofy and upbeat action-adventure with Arc screwing around in an alternate world as a skeleton armored like a main battle tank, and picking up some strong and goofy companions.
But then we turn around and basically every villain is victimizing women to show how evil he is and then show how much of a badass Arc is when he swoops in and rescues them. I don't really have a problem with the use of sexual violence in fiction: tropes are tools. I have a big problem with fetishizing it, and this series is awful about that.
And then we turn around and it's off to the next goofy adventure: no stopping to even acknowledge the horror of what we just saw, it's random acts of fanservice committed against an extra, except when it's committed against Ariane instead. And the cycle repeats to the point of annoyance.
Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai Suru: Soldier (2023)
Novel reader review
I was a little disappointed with this episode, personally. The pacing for the first part of the series has been a little wacky. Some of that's because the novels have kind of a weird story structure: I suspect they're trying to adapt the first three volumes this season, and the problem with that (without giving any spoilers) is that volume 1 is basically a self-contained story, but then there's a time skip of several months and then volume 2 ends on a cliffhanger that segues straight into volume 3. So, the books don't lend themselves well to a 12-episode anime season, but they're making some cuts and changes that I find questionable.
I was kind of surprised that they put Professor Garland's explanation about spellblades here. I mentioned in a previous comment that in the books, that conversation was in the first sword arts class, corresponding to episode 2, and after they didn't include it I was expecting them to move the explanation to the first time we actually get to see a spellblade later this season. Although at least the people who were wondering why there's "seven spellblades" but only six main characters have their explanation now.
The Outpost (2018)
Cheesy '90s-style fantasy fun
The creative team behind this series cut their teeth as showrunners in the speculative fiction boom of the mid-1990s: Dean Devlin executive-produced the 1994 Stargate film, while Jonathan Glassner EP'd Stargate SG-1.
The influence certainly shows. The Outpost isn't the next Game of Thrones and it's not trying to be: it's a Xena-like heroic fantasy series that's kinda cheesy, kinda goofy, with quirky heroes and vile villains. In a setting where an authoritarian movement called the Prime Order has conquered the known world, Talon, the last survivor of a magically gifted people purged by the Prime Order, fights to avenge her family. Her search for the mercenaries that carried out the genocide leads her to Galwood Outpost, a fortified mining settlement on the fringe of settled lands where, unbeknownst to her, a revolution is brewing.