I already gave my first impressions of Adventure of Sinbad and I’ve also reviewed the first series of Magi-the Labyrinth of Magic. With that said, I am going to reveal the end of the series (as much as the end of a prequel can be revealed) during this review so if you haven’t seen it yet or are concerned about spoilers you should probably pass.
My biggest issue going into Adventure of Sinbad was that it was a prequel about a character I didn’t like all that much from the original Magi series.
Sinbad was smug, overbearing, and over-powered compared to the characters we were supposed to be caring about and then kind of took on a mentor/adviser role when he probably could have just wrapped things up without any help. Having now watched the 13 episodes of this on Netflix, that’s still an issue. I still don’t like Sinbad as a character. It’s just hard to get behind a character who is powerful because he is.
However, I now have a much bigger issue with this series and that is where it ends. Okay, it’s a prequel so we do have to align the events from this series with what we already know so cutting things off before he gets too powerful and close to the time period where he encounters Aladdin actually makes perfect sense (both from a story point of view and from a potential release of more prequels and make more money point of view).
But what was with that last episode?
If you read my first impressions of this series you will know I was kind of curious about how Sinbad became as powerful as he was. That was my only real interest going into this and then any hope I had of a decent story-line around that was dashed because within the first few minutes it was revealed that Sinbad was just born special. I got over that, eventually, as Sinbad as someone who was special but still growing into and finding his powers is still more interesting than overpowered adult Sinbad from Labyrinth. And then we get to episode 13.
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The big climax and reveal…
Stop reading if you don’t want to know.
Sinbad realises he’s special.
I am seriously not kidding at this point. In took 13 episodes for that smug, self-assured human being to come to a realisation of something that was outright told to the audience in episode 1, and it ultimately means nothing because he isn’t going to change his actions based on this revelation. All it is going to do is make him just that teeny bit more arrogant and that’s what this character really needs (sarcasm).
It was so incredibly frustrating. This prequel has added nothing to the story that we didn’t already know or couldn’t have figured out from watching the original Magi series and while those who like Sinbad a bit more may find some of his adventures compelling, I honestly found his walk in brazenly, hit a setback, suddenly have an epiphany that usually involves intimidation through being overpowered, and then make friends routine really quite predictable and dull (particularly the third time he did it). I’d have really liked to have felt some kind of tension, or just been amused by this, but sadly it missed the mark.
Now, if I get off my high horse long enough to review the show without my prejudice for Sinbad and prequels, what are my thoughts?
This is much the same as watching Magi. The same weird chibi moments of supposed comedy breaking the flow of what is otherwise a fairly serious if predictable adventure story. We get moments of interesting action and occasionally interesting characters show up and then we move on to another part of the world and a new adventure that kind of starts feeling much the same as the last adventure with different backgrounds and colours. It’s fun enough and the battles with the metal vessels are definitely entertaining (and watching Sinbad blow a hole in a mountain was kind of cool though left me wondering why there was no landslide destroying the city next to the mountain). But that’s all it is.
Basically, if you’ve watched the original Magi you’ll watch this and you’ll probably walk away with much the same view you had of the original. There’s nothing here to distinguish it but nothing that will annoy fans of the original either.
And yes, they did manage to get Sinbad naked again and dress him in a leaf. Because, why not.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
Haven’t seen this show, and I’m leaning heavily in the direction of not seeing it any time soon. Thanks for the review. It was super special.
See what I did there? Yeah, I’ll show myself out.
Thanks for that.
As a humongous fan of the original Magi series I’m pretty disappointed with this prequel, especially after learning that he was just “born special”. I wanted him to be normal and grow to become special at least, but it seems this offers very little other than having Sinbad be special and do cool things that we already know about/expect him to do.
I enjoyed this review and I agree with pretty much all of it (despite having not finished the series yet, I can pretty much tell this is where it was all going).
Yep, developing characters are far more interesting than special ones, though even then I think we could have got a little more from this series.
Definitely, there’s so many great storytelling opportunities for prequels, yet I feel most series tend to waste them and go for the predictable route, which is a real shame.
I can’t remember the last time a prequel really grabbed me in a big way.
Haha, the landslide. I’ll offer some variance and say that, while I liked the original show (the second season mainly) I actually thought this spin-off didn’t capture any of the magic of ‘Magi’. It didn’t obey a lot of the rules the original show put in place, was worse about undermining itself with shoddier comedy, and didn’t possess the character strengths present in its source material. I actually like Sinbad (in Magi) because he feels like somebody who has already completed their own epic journey. He represents wealth, power, and charisma nearly to a flawless degree and I think he accurately portrays a kind of hero who has ‘done it all’. With that said, can’t say I enjoyed much of the investigation into his past. Also the difference in character designs and animation wasn’t my cup of tea either.
Fair enough. Given my ho-hum reaction to the original and the comedy included this felt much the same to me but that’s just my usual prejudice against comedy.
I remember really enjoying this a few months back and I was all “Hey, he’s kinda cool!” but the main reason I even watched it was for his meeting with Jafar and Masrur (the latter wasn’t shown though).
Unfortunately after being up to date with the manga for Magi a few weeks back….I absolutely loathe Sinbad now and it has to do with that “He realises he’s special” thing. Nonetheless I still really like Masrur~
Thank you for this. Gave me a good chuckle this morning.
I kind of expected the conclusion you reached. Your “spoiler” isn’t really one when you consider how dull the big reveal is. It certainly isn’t your fault that the writer couldn’t come up with a better way to construct it. This just confirms Sinbad is the most boring character out of this series who somehow deserves a prequel that doesn’t give much of substance over the original series.
At 13 episodes, I might just watch it sometime. Just like I may give Kingdom of Magic a shot. I don’t know. The action is pretty good sometimes so there is value in that.
The action is pretty good and as an adventure it works well enough.