Tuesday’s Top 5: Anime That Disappointed Me From 2017

Tuesday's Top 5

Last week I gave my top 5 list of suprisingly good shows from 2017. This week I turn it around and share my top 5 disappointments from 2017. Like the last list, this isn’t the list of shows I thought were the worst (those will come out in their own list with the reader’s choices later). This list is for shows that I foolishly held any kind of expectation for and then had my hopes dashed, shattered and basically destroyed as the series progressed. It is a highly subjective list as if you didn’t have expectations for the show it probably won’t be a disappointment so I’d love to know which shows you found a bit disappointing last year. Be sure to leave a comment below.

Please Note: There will be spoilers below.

Honourable mentions go to Clockwork Planet, KADO, and Silver Guardian.

Okay, KADO was actually a major disappointment but I didn’t have any expectations when the show started because I hadn’t even heard of it. It was more the second half of the show could not manage to live up to the expectations built during the first half.

Number 5: Juni Taisen: Zodiac War

This is entirely my own fault. I rarely watch promotional videos prior to viewing an anime but this is one I had seen talked up a lot and the promos looked fantastic. In the show’s defense, the show mostly looks pretty amazing, particularly in action sequences (which are few and far between after the dramatic opening episode that show cases just how pretty the animation could be). But with dull characters that I never connected with and a mostly predictable plot I didn’t care about, this show quickly became a chose to watch and ended up being something I actually put off watching for a day some week’s even knowing that the events of the episode would be ‘spoiled’ after I read the blogs of others. I just didn’t care whether I knew what was about to happen or not because I’d given up expecting anything from the show.

Number 4: Knight’s & Magic

For a show with such a cool concept of combining mecha and magic and placing it in a standard isekai setting this quickly became just a mess of time jumps, dull narration, and very little to invest in. Ernesti could have become an interesting character excpet that the show went out of its way to never challenge him and to never have him second guess himself. Ever. The support cast are mostly forgettable. The final story arc deals with a threat that more or less comes out of nowhere and you don’t actually feel any of the main characters are threatened. Basically it is a mess of a show where it could have so easily been good.

Number 3: Black Clover

I’m aware, it isn’t done yet. But the disappointment this one gave me was palpable. I don’t buy into hype and so despite the Crunchyroll push of this anime everywhere prior to release, I kind of resigned myself to a pretty standard shounen story that would have the usual annoyances of the genre but would probably be a good enough bit of light hearted entertainment. Alas, Black Clover forgot the most imporant part thing is to actually engage your audience and entertain them. See, the point isn’t just to stretch wafer thin content until it crumbles and exposes the absolute rubbish characters and their lack of motives or development. Each episode just compounded the irritation associated with this show and it couldn’t even live up to my expectations that this might be alright for a bit of fun. I feel very bad for people who went in to this show actually expecting the next big shounen title.

Number 2: Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2

After season 1, I wasn’t expecting much of season 2. I was more or less just hoping to find out how Sorey actually got a handle on his powers and defeated the Calamity King. And in fairness, season 2 did get around to delivering that story. We just spent a lot of time kind of meandering around before the henchman of the villain just kind of showed up and said ‘he’s over there, go get him’ and then we watched the characters more or less just go and do that. There are some good moments and some fairly impressive visuals at times, but all and all the narrative is a mess and there are too many characters who seem to exist only because they must have been in the game. It all just detracts from the story and sucks any fun out of the experience.

Number 1: Sword Oratoria

My number one biggest disappointment goes to a show I didn’t actually finish so have never reviewed (and given I am not inclined to return to the show, I will never review). Sword Oratoria. I am such a huge fan of DanMachi and I was actually really excited to see a spin-off (would have preferred a sequel but I’ll take what I can get – or at least I thought so). Then I found out the focus was going to be Ais, one of the least interesting characters from the original. Then the show aired. So boring, so much talking, so many characters I don’t care about… When the only reason to keep watching are the tiny glimpses of Bell you kind of have to realise you may as well just go and rewatch DanMachi. This was incredibly disappointing.

So there is my list, and as I said at the beginning it is incredibly subjective due to the fact that you can only be disappointed when you go in expecting something. Please share your biggest disappointments from 2017 in the comments below and get the conversation going.


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Tales of Zestiria The X Season 2 Series Review

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Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 Overview:

I previously reviewed season 1 of Tales of Zestiria the X, the story of Sorey the Shepherd on his journey to purify the malevolence of the world. Season 2 continues Sorey’s journey as he eventually gets around to dealing with the Lord of Calamity.

Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 Review (spoilers for the final battle included – fair warning):

While I will freely admit that based on a game adaptations have a terrible reputation, there are quite a few that I enjoy. The original Resident Evil movie is highly entertaining (if silly) fun and there have been a number of anime I’ve enjoyed before later finding out they were based on games I’d never heard of. Tales of Zestiria I knew was a game because unless I disconnected from the internet entirely it would have been impossible to miss that, and yet season 1, despite some issues, was fairly enjoyable.

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Season 2 spent a lot of time correcting that and came into line with the expectations of based on game adaptations. The sense of fun disappeared from the series entirely and a lot of the second season lacked direction or purpose. We spent a lot of time with Rose early in the season but in the end she and Alisha kind of seemed like excess baggage by the time we got to the final fight sequence.

Some characters seemed to appear only because they must have actually been significant in the game but all they did here was distract and clutter an already cluttered narrative. They had no impact because in the anime they served no purpose.

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Though perhaps the biggest issue season 2 had was the final episode just didn’t come out. No announcement in an obvious location about what had happened. It was a week after I stopped looking for the episode when I read on someone else’s blog the episode was delayed until the end of the month, but it wasn’t like anyone was going out of there way to make it known why there was a delay or that the delay had even happened.

Part of the blame for that has to go on to the distributors though who just didn’t put up the next episode and didn’t bother to put any kind of notice on their blogs or email out to their subscribers. Amazingly enough, people don’t get half as annoyed by delays when informed about them.

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Still, when you are already mid-way through a final boss battle and then the next episode just doesn’t show up, it really does break the flow. And when the show was already so problematic you had considered not watching further about mid-season, if not for my fairly insane levels of curiosity I may never have gone back to watch the final episode.

All things considered, it didn’t matter whether I watched it or not. By the time we get close to the final episode we already know what to expect from Tales of Zestiria. They have no commitment to theme. No commitment to actual narrative. Sorey is good because he is. There’s no other reason. He believes he can save the world because he does.

There’s no other reason. Others have faith in him because they do. Some of them kind of have reason for this, but most just blindly listen to his unsupported assertions and after a half-hearted counter-argument, accept them as truth from that point forward.

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There’s lots of shared smiles, hand holding, and pep talks, but little to support the connections that are supposedly existing between the main group. Even Sorey’s final solution for dealing with the Lord of Calamity is just him asserting that he can do it and it will work and the others once again accept it on faith that it will happen. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan.

It’s overly optimistic foolishness at best, and even if you put your own logic on hold and also just accept that whatever Sorey says is right for whatever reason, the narrative is still deeply unsatisfying. Most of the season they just kind of go from one minor issue or character drama to the next until the henchmen for the bad guy shows up and tells them where he is.


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She even escorts them there, before she gets turned into a dragon and ceases to have any relevance to the plot. Then again, the bad guy couldn’t have just sent Sorey a carrier pigeon and a map for all the impact said henchmen had so maybe her turning into a dragon was the most useful thing they could do with her.

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They finally get through all the dragons and face the Lord of Calamity and suddenly we can combine powers and meanwhile, Calamity guy is just going to stand there and wait for them to discuss it, do it, and then get used to it.

As a villain he kind of sucks. I know someone will argue that the human inside him actually wanted to be purified or killed all along and so was allowing Sorey the chance to do so, but then why is he actually scary? And why did the human inside allow him to stir up so much chaos and slaughter at the end of season 1 if the human actually cared about what was going on? It is inconsistent and makes no sense.

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Still, we could have at least had a dramatic ending if the show had actually been willing to commit to self-sacrifice for the greater good and yet even then it fails to follow through.

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All and all, Tales of Zestiria season 2 is full of pretty light shows and transformations, has a few minor character moments that are half-way interesting even if the overall plot gets thrown aside for these to fit in, it does bring things to a resolution, but is mostly a disappointment to watch and to be honest there’s plenty of better things you could be watching.


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Karandi James


Tales of Zestiria The X Season 2 Episode 13

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Review:

While this final episode is not bad when compared to the rest of the show, it was definitely hurt by the extended break between episode 12 and 13. The momentum (what little this show had) was definitely gone and it took me awhile to remember exactly where we’d left the characters and then I got to marvel all over again that they were really doing a power combine thing to win the final battle. Actually, what really hurts this episode is the game like nature of that battle.  The villain just stands there as they have a pep-talk, call the names, combine, Sorey falls to his knees, multiple times, before he’s finally able to stand, and the villain is still just standing there. Worse, the villain then gets his own power up and Sorey just stands there while it happens.

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After the battle things get better, but even then the show can’t commit to actually having Sorey’s sacrifice mean something and post credits be prepared for everything to be smiley happy, even if that makes no sense given the nature of what they were facing. I’ll review the full series of this soon, but not particularly impressed with season 2 of this.

Tales of Zestiria the X is available on AnimeLab.


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Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 Episode 12

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Review:

You know that feeling you get when you think something is a final and then it isn’t? I kind of got that this week. There just doesn’t seem any reason to stretch this another episode but stretch it we will.

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But hey, we finally got back story on Michael, the former shepherd, and how the Lord of Calamity became what he is. Seriously, what was Michael thinking? As a former Shepherd he had to know that cursing someone was a stupid idea.

And at this point any care I had about this world is gone. Apparently you can destroy the world just by shouting a few words while burning inside a building. I get its supposed to be dramatic and about how we all have darkness inside of us and maybe we’re even supposed to feel bad for Michael, but honestly, this was such a stupid thing to do. And that this one tiny little thing manages to turn the entire world on its head is literally the hardest thing to swallow. Do his words just carry more weight because he was a former shepherd? Lots of people die pointless deaths and shout curses, most of them don’t nearly destroy the world.

Anyway, let’s all combine our powers because Sorey’s been thinking about it for awhile but at no point has this possibility actually been foreshadowed, and somehow this will all work out. Go team.

Tales of Zestiria the X is available on AnimeLab.


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Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 Episode 11

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Review (spoilers, no attempt to not reveal information):

Possibly the whole Dezel sacrificing himself to blow away the dragons so that Sorey isn’t forced to either attempt mass purification (which cannot end well) or to accept that maybe shooting them is the only option could have been dramatic and moving. Certainly his farewell to Rose was nicely handled; and she looks adorable in that hat (sorry, distracted from the actual point there).

However, I just couldn’t get into this episode. Why did they have to farewell all the hanger-ons who rode that far with them? Was there some actual reason? If there was, why did they even come that far?

Why did we need to introduce a new character at this point? Did they do anything or add anything to the story?

When Dezel does blow away the dragons (interesting really given how strong they are and yet Sorey and the others, just fine) does Symonne actually revert from being a dragon or was that just some artsy visual that makes no sense?

Anyway, all of this kind of distracted me from what should have been a fairly heartbreaking moment. Mostly I just wondered why Dezel hadn’t hit Sorey across the side of the head with the gun and tell him to get off his moral high horse already. Okay, I am a little jaded at this point and this show hasn’t done much for me in the last few weeks so I’m being needlessly nitpicky.

Tales of Zestiria the X is available on AnimeLab.


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Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 Episode 10

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Review:

Remembering way back when I started season 1 of this, one of me key issues was that the characters didn’t feel like they were part of the world. The world was pretty and the characters were pretty, but the two didn’t match. As time went on, this kind of got less noticeable (either because we stopped getting sweeping landscapes and have had more intimate settings or because they got better, not sure which). And then we get this episode.

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Compare this dragon to the image of Edna above. Do these two characters belong in the same anime? Admittedly, the video quality I was watching in is rubbish due to very buggy internet connection (I’m really hoping the image isn’t actually that grainy) but everything about that image is wrong if it is intended to be something from the same show.  Sorey fighting this thing was a joke mostly because after this one very dramatic and cinematic shot (and it was lovely except that I wondered if somehow I was suddenly watching Godzilla) we only see a bare fraction of the dragon as Sorey fights it which kind of takes all the amazement out of a dragon fight.

Let’s skip forward to everything else in this episode. Yep, field trip to the snow followed by big battle. Finally an armatization, short lived, and now big trouble. That about sums it up. To be more blunt, its a hopeless mish-mash of ideas and characters each trying to have their moment in either the comedy setting or the battle as we just conveniently rush over anything that might be construed as a plot at this point. I might have finally had enough of this show’s nonsense to be honest. But I’ll leave you with one final image.

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Farewell character I had forgotten after season 1 and cannot remember the name of now. Your incredibly pointless death will be forgotten almost instantly.

Tales of Zestiria is available on AnimeLab.


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Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 Episode 9

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Review:

After kind of just aimlessly wandering and tying up loose ends for 8 episodes, we now just randomly have henchmen girl (I don’t know her name, maybe we’re told at some point but that one flew right by me) just exposition and info-dump us into the set up for a final battle. The Lord of Calamity is that way. Hurry up (despite aimless wandering for 8 episodes), the end of the world is nigh.

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Okay, it was a little more serious than that but really it amounts to Dezel attacking her (though why she was even hanging around is a mystery), Sorey and co showing up, and then she just kind of hits us with ‘he’s up north’. Great, we’re heading north. Nice and specific.

The speed at which we then raise an army, prepare for a campaign and get on the road is kind of dizzying and all and all it just feels kind of unsatisfying. Not to mention, we seem to be bringing every bit player in the show back in for the final battle so say hello to random characters running or riding up.

All and all, I’m fairly disappointed with this season 2 (even though I wasn’t expecting much from it in the first place given season 1 was entertaining enough but flawed). I know the show isn’t over yet but this episode seems like it is locking the final path in place and to be honest I’m just not that interested.

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On a random side note, check out their mirrored body language. These two are too cute.

Tales of Zestiria is available on AnimeLab.


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Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 Episode 8

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Review:

Tales of Zestiria finally got down to business and brought all the main characters together in one place, faced an actual enemy, moved forward the political intrigue and finally actually let Alisha progress and not have the constant threat of a weak king and an overbearing would-be king in her way. In fact, so much happened it feels like the previous 7 episodes really were just empty space and wasted. While some things happened in those episodes that were needed for the events of this episode to make sense, a lot of it really was just wandering around. And what made Sorey suddenly sure he could purify a dragon? His logic as always is just a bit faulty. Still… This is probably the very first time I actually thought this show was beautiful. While parts of it have always been pretty there’s always been a bit of a disconnect between characters, scenery and action. This episode things just kind of came together in a way that made me actually take notice.

So pretty. Anyway, this doesn’t change the fact that this season has been pretty flat but one episode has managed to give the show some much needed energy and direction so maybe we’ll get a good season ending.

Tales of Zestiria the X is available on AnimeLab.


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Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 Episode 7

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Review:

This episode kind of feels like it’s the episode for characters we haven’t really seen since season 1 to appear for no other reason than to remind us they exist. Okay, they might serve some purpose in the overall story but if so, the connections they are drawing this episode seem tenuous. Besides, it took me a fair while to remember some of these characters from season 1.

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Cool gun. Who were you?

That said, Alisha’s father really needs someone to give him a whack across the back of the head. You’re allowing your daughter to potentially be killed for what purpose? It is quite obvious the other guy is up to no good, he doesn’t even try to hide his ambition.

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Who does her hair and make-up while she’s in jail?

While I haven’t minded this series, the weak story and lack of focus is increasingly becoming a problem. When it feels like things should be getting clearer and more focussed it actually feels like the opposite is happening and that is frustrating.

Tales of Zestiria the X is available AnimeLab.


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Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 Episode 6

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Review:

Apparently one episode of moping is all Rose needs before making critical and life-changing decisions (though in terms of not being bored by the narrative her moving on was probably a good thing). This episode feels like it is getting ready to move this story along. We finally reached the source of the rain issue and after a bit of talk where we get a very brief Velvet moment Sorey and friends are off to a church to purify some malevolence. Rose tags along and decides she wants to be a squire. Probably just as well because it turns out even when they are dead, dragons cause all sorts of problems and this was way bigger than Sorey was handling on his own.

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Anyway, the episode ends with Alisha finally managing to get in touch with Sorey (I’m guessing because he’s stronger or because of Rose – not sure on that one) but Alisha tells him that Ladylake is in trouble so now we’re returning all the way to Ladylake. The based on a game part of this really shows sometimes. That said, there was fun to be had with this week’s episode and mostly it was good just to feel that we were finally moving forward.

Tales of Zestiria is available on AnimeLab.


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