This is the most brilliantly animated, stylistically interesting new anime I’ve seen in years.
I mean, watch this opening animation sequence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVCe35P7oaw
Seriously, this is up there with Mob Psycho 100 season 2 in terms of the best anime opening song and animation pairings of all time.
It’s more or less a battle anime, with really fun battle sequences. The main characters are all Idaten, a type of battle deity who spring into existence to save humanity from the demon menace. But the previous generation of Idaten all sacrificed themselves to seal demonkind completely away 800 years ago, leaving only Rin, the youngest among them, behind to guard the seal in case it were ever to fail.
Rin, the centuries-old-wizened master who still looks like a little girl, has taken it upon herself to train the new generation of Idaten for this eventuality, but her training routine is so brutal that only two Idaten have tried to stick it out. The one who doesn’t get introduced until the fourth episode stuck it out until he graduated simply because he was too scared of what Rin would do to him if he disobeyed her. Meanwhile Hayate, who is literally Goku, has stuck it out for the 80 years of his life so far simply because he is Goku. He is just Goku. He is literally just Goku.
The other two are Ysley, the smart one, who is vaguely concerned about a possible reemergence of demonkind, but has decided to arm himself with knowledge instead of power, and Paula, the blue-haired, busty, bird-brained, bimbo, who kinda just hangs around communing with nature and watching when humans do interesting things.
But in the past 800 years there’s been absolutely no sign of demon activity, until today. Under the guidance of a mysterious scientist, the fascist dictatorship of The Zoble Empire has just found a demon cryogenically preserved in the Arctic ice-cap, and is attempting to revive it. And when the Idaten intervene, they discover that the Zoble Empire has secretly been taken over by demon-human fusions, who have been hiding from them in plain sight, and slowly enacting a plan to fully revive the demon race.
This leads to a lot of really interesting and well-paced episodes as we watch both sides strategize, gather intelligence, exposit about world history, and prepare for the upcoming Idaten invasion of Zoble. Which happens, and is amazing.
But, uh, did you happen to notice my descriptions of the two female main characters? Yeah, so the thing about The Idaten Deities is that It is also, 100% chock full of anime was a mistake caliber writing decisions. It’s like someone looked at Dragon Ball, and wanted to make it more mature, but also thought that what “mature” means is violence, torture, and rape.
Which is why the next part of this review is going to be cut into a separate post, with unmarked spoilers and a big old
CONTENT WARNING: Rape, torture, sexualization of minors.
And then, after launching into a completely new story arc, it just stops. Not concluding anything. Not ending after the falling action at the conclusion of a good story arc, but galloping through an intermission, starting a new arc, and then stopping just as the action is rising again. There’s been no announcement of a Season 2. And even if there were, it would have to be filler, because Season 1 jogged its way through the entire published manga, and past that through the entire remainder of the original webmanga. The webmanga hasn’t updated since 2016, and the physically published version is still about a year out from making it to that stopping point.
Which leads to my final this series is everything that has ever been wrong with anime complaint. Like those old OVA series where it was never clear if or when they would get a chance to make more, it just kinda does its thing for a while and then stops without any conclusion.
But at least it wasn’t racist, (if only because there wasn’t any attempt made at drawing any character with skin-tone or features outside of anime-default).
For my personal thoughts, I found this anime extremely enjoyable, and even though it starts with problematic content by the end of the first episode, I was already really sucked into the story. I think this is the first time since I started analyzing media for problematic content that I’ve been able to enjoy a work while being consciously aware of how problematic it is. I don’t attribute this to any change in myself, though, so much as just how goddamn engrossing the strategizing and counter-strategizing is. Very much the same appeal as Code Geass, but without any of the ridiculous overcomplications or contrivances or bad chess metaphors.
It was personally extremely frustrating that I could not, in good conscience, recommend that anybody else watch it, because while it was airing, it was very much the kind of anime that I want to talk with other people about. And then after the writing equivalent of an Olympic gymnastics routine so captivating it distracts you from the fact that the performer is the quantum superposition of Harvey Weinstein and Max Landis, it ends with an extremely clumsy face-plant.
