I am fine with an anime series wanting to leave room for a sequel. I’ve even come to accept anime that exist just to promote source material and so never actually intend to adapt a full story. But anime like Seirei Gensouki that just stop practically mid-sentence and not only don’t resolve existing issues but actually throw more in to the final few minutes are really just kind of annoying.
It’s like someone gave you a book but ripped out the second half so you get through what you have and it just stops.
Absolutely spoilers below.
We’ve arrived at the end of Seirei Gensouki
In fairness to Seirei Gensouki, they do at least close a loop with Rio returning to rescue Celia and succeeding (like that was in any doubt given Rio hasn’t actually faced anything that even vaguely presented a challenge since the first episode). It would have been nice if this rescue had in any way felt rewarding or like somehow Rio had gained something by doing it, or even if the characters had been able to spend a moment actually enjoying the success.
Instead, the final episode of Seirei Gensouki has all these coloured lights shooting into the sky, plays the closing credits, then we see a sequence where some Japanese kids are getting attacked in this fantasy world, loaded onto carts, Rio comes and does some violence and reaches out to cute girl who is probably childhood friend because he really needed yet another additional to his harem.
In case it sounds like I’m being snarky, I kind of am.
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You can forgive a lot in some anime provided it remains kind of fun to watch. While generic overpowered protagonists who are nice to all the girls feature far too often in isekai stories provided there’s enough else it can still hold your interest.
What I won’t forgive is utterly inept story-telling now it is clear that the anime of Seirei Gensouki has no clue how to create or capitalise on dramatic tension, has no desire to actually flesh out characters, and even the world building has been ploughed through so quickly that those in the audience who are experiencing this story for the first time (such as myself who has not read the source) kind of feel like we’ve gotten the cliff-notes version of what should actually be a fairly rich fantasy world filled with some interesting magical lore.
At every point prior, there was a chance that once Seirei Gensouki found its feet it could overcome these issues. But with the final episode of the season airing more or less doubling down on every issue the series has had (poor, wooden villains, overpowered MC with limited personality or clear motive, supporting cast who mostly stand around and do little, plot that seems to be character goes from here to here, and mystery of the whole being reborn thing utterly unaddressed), episode 12 more or less serves as an object lesson of everything wrong with the anime.
When I go to review the whole series, I will actually revisit the positives, because there was some fun to be had on this journey, but right now I just watched a final episode that left a foul taste in my mouth so I’m really not in the mood to play nice.
Charles remained pathetic at every step of this final episode and truly displayed his full range of incompetence. As did most the soldiers who were the worst kind of mindless mob that Rio more or less just jumped over. That was when they weren’t shooting the houses of their own citizenry.
We did get one vaguely decent fight when Alfred took on Rio in the street but rather than offering any resolution here Seirei Gensouki left it more or less a draw with Rio leaving the scene and Alfred searching but not finding him.
Even red-eyed villain who has been kind of drifting through this whole story kind of launched one attack but mostly just watched everything unfold.
With so many characters standing around passively or uselessly, there’s little to say other than Rio came to the wedding, kidnapped the bride, ran away and escaped the entire army (that’s got to hurt the kingdom’s credibility). And rather than dealing with any of this, we instantly move onto a totally different plot point and then the episode ends.
Sigh.
Oh well, I guess I could always read the books and find out how this story is actually supposed to go.
Images from: Seirei Gensouki. Dir. O Yamasaki. TMS Entertainment. 2021
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Karandi James
Karandi: Oh well, I guess I could always read the books and find out how this story is actually supposed to go.
Anime Studio : MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
LN Publisher : Hehe got ’em!
I mean, even I’m giving the source material some funny looks!
Great job on the reviews!
Mission accomplished only works if I do and right now I’m a little miffed that they didn’t try a little harder here.
“Rio comes and does some violence and reaches out to cute girl who is probably childhood friend because he really needed yet another additional to his harem”
yo chillll with the probably, it IS his (Haruto’s) childhood friend Mii-chan (er, Miharu) that the series took time in some episodes to remind us of xD Also “Rio comes and does some violence” made me laugh for some reason haha
Ok, time to double down on this spoiler post with a spoiler straight from the LN!…Though yeah, this kind of relates to what I wrote a few weeks ago, and I have to start with an apology since I lied a bit. Rio does wake up with Aishia in his bed. But in a different location…and with Miharu discovering this and not Sara (and the other girls in the spiritfolk village). So yeah, you can guess why I lied a bit since I had no idea if or how the anime was going to bring in the spoiler characters or the other plot point which was vaguely shown at the end of Episode 12.
I did however feel it was likely going to stop at an unsatisfying point since as it ultimately turned out, they rearranged volumes (volume 5 is when Rio rescues Celia, and volume 4 is when Miharu, Aki, and Masato are introduced in addition to Aishia), and not surprisingly, it did. When you’re consistently mowing through material like this anime did and having other characters essentially stand in to say lines they don’t say in said books towards the end, I couldn’t really see this ending other than as a “well it’s over, go buy the books!”
So now the question is will people who watched this do that? Only time will tell.
True, but even if the goal is to get people to buy books, telling a decent story in the medium you are using should still be a consideration.
It kind of sucks, but it’s hard for me to not be sympathetic towards the adaptation because I don’t really see how I could have done a better job. Asking for a firm resolution from an LN adaptation feels like asking LN authors to pace their novels in a certain way in preparation for an anime adaptation, which doesn’t feel right. Justin’s post makes it sound like this adaptation covers 5 volumes, and I really don’t see how you do that without cutting things out.
In understanding just how anime’s made I’m more sympathetic than ever before, and if the mandate was “you only have x amount of money to make this anime” then you get the staff’s gotta attempt to hit what they feel is the key points but do so in x (in this case, 12) amount of episodes. It certainly ain’t easy.
I would however say for Seirei Gensouki, the cuts for the majority of the series didn’t help. You really feel it going through material a little too callously, so you can’t settle in with most of the characters or get their or the story’s appeal (aside from the designs looking good). The last two minutes of episode 12 then essentially just said, “go read the books.” They really didn’t have to end it that way. Unfortunate, but you can at least think they could’ve made better cuts or adjustments despite having 5 volumes to work with.
I’m not really going to argue the last two minutes because I can see it going either way. My understanding (I haven’t actually read this far) is that it’s kind of a backtrack to content that was skipped in order to get through volume 5. If I’m being charitable, I could see that as a way of saying that this section wasn’t just ignored, depending on how popular Miharu is as a character. I say this mostly because I feel like you could levy the “just read the books” argument at any adaptation that doesn’t resolve everything by the end, perhaps to different degrees.
Could there have been better cuts? Maybe, but I think they’d only be slight improvements. I can’t think of a way to do it that would resolve the issue of not having enough time with characters, given the pace that’s required. It just feels to me like you need to settle on certain concessions here, and I can’t really fault that.
I think this comes down to actually making it an adaptation rather than just a retelling. They knew how many episodes they were going to have and figuring out how to give their story a beginning, middle and some kind of resolution (even if the greater story continues) is part of making it a quality adaptation. Yes that does mean changes in order to improve pacing and viewing experience but ultimately you end up with a far more satisfying product than what they’ve delivered here.
Isn’t that just because adaptations have shifted in that direction based on how previous ones have done? We used to see stuff like that much more often, with things like Blue Exorcist or FMA being the first things coming to mind. I’m assuming there’s a reason that adaptations have shifted towards being more reflective of source material. This could just be an opposite extreme, as it were.
Maybe – and maybe some people will like that. For me, in this case as an anime only viewer, it just ends up feeling like a disappointing viewing experience. So this isn’t what I’m looking for at least when I pick up an anime to watch regardless of its source.