It’s A Mystery… Spot
Assassins Pride has some ideas in its story. They might have even been interesting had they managed to write an actually coherent story. Instead we kind of move from event to event with Melida and Kufa, and while the two of them started with a relationship that was building along nicely its now hit a plateau. With the plot going nowhere fast, the characters doing little to hold our interest, and the most recent development being a murder-mystery that rolls out in the most by the numbers way possible without any attempt to do it in an interesting way, or even a half competent way, all I can say is that Assassins Pride is most definitely one of those anime that just hasn’t hit its mark. It isn’t even that it just isn’t my style, because actually it really is the kind of story I’d like to enjoy and yet the show seems to be going out of its way to make sure that I’m just kind of watching and waiting for it to reach reasonable.
Between ostentatious character introductions, Kufa for some reason agreeing to pretend to be someone’s lover, which they then bring up maybe twice after and then promptly forget about, and mystery spots which are transparent plot devices and all you really have in these two episodes is the wonder of why they exist. It isn’t as though there seems to be any clear link to the story about Melida being assassinated for having no power. While there might be some link to Kufa’s backstory, okay, there definitely is a link there, we’ve now eaten through two episodes and I severely doubt the payoff is going to be worth it.
It strikes me as odd that even though someone was attacked the school still goes on its trip. The lightning storm is dismissed as a common occurrence in one episode and in the next is stated as a reason they cannot leave and yet no one actually seems concerned. Melida is ridiculed once again for being incompetent but then no one raises it again. Elise tells Melida that she has something to say and Melida puts her off before Elise is attacked. It’s all just banal in the way it rolls out and there’s so many face-palm inducing moments you almost feel like maybe there should have been a warning label.
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However, I would be remiss in not mention that at least the scene change gives us something different to look at. These episodes bring us flowers and a magnetic cave where people can float. The small amount of visual stimulus is definitely the highlight in what is otherwise a pretty lacklustre affair all around.
Still, it isn’t enough and watching these two episodes back to back ended up feeling like more of a chore than anything else. The thing is, the show isn’t incompetent enough to make me just drop it and walk away, but it is definitely falling into that pretty dull category of shows that end up making me wonder why I spent the time on it.
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Karandi James
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Images from: Assassins Pride. Dir. K Airua. EMT Squared. 2019.