In honor of Season 5 of the show airing and being extremely disappointing I’ve opted to replace my usual review with an effort to guide my readers through the harrowing journey of watching this show. I’ve always said this show was good at some points and struggling to keep its head above water at others so it’s about time I gave a detailed breakdown of that opinion. I would also like us all to stop and bask in the glory of the twenty-word title to this post. Truly fitting for this show.
I probably should preface this by saying that the parts I enjoy of this show are its action, adventure, and fantasy parts while the romance parts I found… less than enjoyable. You might even be able to say that the closer the show got to living up to its title, the less I was interested in what it was doing. Given that, I hope you can now figure out what I’ll be helping you bypass. Obviously, if you’re into the whole package, just fucking watch it. It’s not like I actually skipped what I’m about to tell you to skip so don’t complain to me.
Part 1: Navigating the Beginning
To be honest, Season 1 is mostly decent so it’s kind of hard to name a few episodes you can skip. With it being the start of the story, a lot of time is spent introducing characters that are pretty decent or ones who unfortunately show up way too often for you to miss their introduction. So, instead of clearing out large chunks for you, allow me to allow you to test out a theory of mine. Every time you see Hestia show up in a scene, just ship ahead 10 seconds. And if you still see her there… maybe just skip ahead another 10 seconds. I’m convinced she doesn’t add much to the show for how much screen time she gets and think it would go a long way towards improving the experience for certain people. Especially if those people find her character design extremely “cringe.” I do really like Season 1 though. It has two of my favorite moments in the whole show and does a decent enough job of making you wonder why it has the title it does once you get past the first episode.
Part 2: Oh God its Season 2. How am I Supposed to Defend Season 2?
OK, OK. It’s not all bad. We start off with a fun little arc that’s totally, unquestionably fun. OK, I guess episode 3 isn’t totally necessary. It kinda ties up the backstory of the little, short girl from the first season, but I didn’t care too much about her so I’m calling it skip-able. Given how the season ends for us reasonable folk at episode 4 (or 5 if you want to watch the random chill, nothing episode that bridges the gap between arcs), you might as well just watch all of them anyways. What happened to the rest of the season you might ask? Well, I’ve exiled it from this guide for its crimes of having an extremely questionable plot, some of the worst characters I’ve ever laid eyes on, and some unbearably cringe moments. I think the only real upside to this part of the season was how little Hestia was involved. I’ve run some calculations though, dear reader, and I’m almost certain you can get by without even bothering to watch it. Sure, the fight at the end of the arc was pretty cool but skipping it is a small price to pay to save yourself the trouble that is watching most of this season. You’ll just have to do your best to infer the backgrounds of the two new recurring characters that came from it.
Part 3: Yes! Here it is. The Good Part
Finally, what we have all been waiting for. What we suffered through two whole seasons to get to. Well, I did say the first season was pretty good so scratch that. And I guess we skipped almost all of the second season… What we enjoyed about one season to get to. For real though, this is the part of the show that’d I’d actually want to recommend. It’s adventurous, it’s exciting, it takes place almost entirely in the dungeon which is by far the coolest setting in this show. The best part is that starting with the third season we land on a hit for two whole seasons and Season 4 is even two parts, making it a very solid chunk of good anime. I just wish I could be writing about a three season streak here. I don’t even have that much advise on what to skip for the third season. You can probably still get by with the Hestia rule, but she is honestly such a minor character by this point that it might not even be worth it. As far as season 4 goes, Hestia is around even less. It is even more action packed and adventure filled too so definitely no reason to skip. I’m not gonna sell it too hard cause it does still have a bit of weirdness that comes with that title, but I think it’s good and, for me, that’s saying a lot these days.
Part 4: What was that Season 5? Did you honestly think I wasn’t going to say anything about how shit of a season you were?
Just because I’m replacing the Season 5 review with this doesn’t mean I’m going to spare you from my opinions about it. If I had to give a single word of criticism on it, it would be “slow.” The plot just dragged so hard on some of the most boring parts. I kept waiting every week for it to take off, giving it plenty of chances to turn the corner, but by the time it even came close to doing so, I was moving into my late season fall off. I hope I’m adequately describing my feelings of disappointment as episode 8 rolled around and the other shoe still hadn’t dropped. It was just some weird training arc. Like what the fuck, Bell had just gotten stronger and proved himself last season. Do we really need to do this? To top it all off, they managed to cut what few stakes the plot had in time for the finale. Not that the plot made too much sense by this point anyways. Whatever. I’m done thinking about this show. If the second part to this season, which I assume is a thing, ever comes out, I’ll give it a chance but I’m not optimistic. All I can hope for is that it turns around eventually.
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