PLOT: Mendosa, the head advisor of the King of Valiante, launches a campaign to hunt down all the witches throughout the land. Anna, a sorceress married to the knight Herman Lewis, gives birth to a son before her execution. Herman takes their child, Leon, and flees, raising him to be the heir of the legendary Golden Armor. By the time Leon grows up, Valiante is completely in the control of Mendosa, who drives out Prince Alfonso and his mother. Alphonso decides to seek out the man who inherited the Golden Armor to reclaim the throne and save his people. -ANN

The second MAPPA produced anime series!  After watching this I can already tell this is going to be quite the dark adventure, as it’s written by the same creator of Mahou Shoujotai!

I want to pick out the one part of this show I did not like and it was how it transitioned the timeline between years.  This episode skipped around quite a bit between Leon when he was a baby, and the start of the execution of witches to the time that he turns seventeen.  It was confusing but aside from that this was an awesome episode.

We’ve got three strong characters in this show already:  Leon, the son of a sorceress woman and a knight; Prince Alfonso, the son of the King and Queen of Valiante;  and Leon’s father, Herman Lewis.  There wasn’t a ton of dialogue with Leon but that backstory before the opening sequence provided more than enough understanding of his character.  The creators took this episode a step further and involved a sensual sex scene between a demon in the form of a woman and Herman Lewis.  This entire part had been pulled off extremely well! Herman already had the indication that he was with a demon while he told the story of the witch hunts to her, but it was when she laughs off the truth about it and the validity that he knows of a different perspective from the witches viewpoint. Great counteract that led up to her reveal as a demon!

The CG wasn’t that good but it did get the point across at what was going on with the knights.  With the story well-developed so far and great character designs I am definitely intrigued by this!  Just hope the timeline is coherently designed in future episodes as this one skipped around.

OP: “Hono no Kokuin – Divine Flame” by JAM Project

I loved the animation to this!  Reminded me of some of Yuasa’s earlier works and it hit a strong note that this will be an epic fantasy adventure!  The song was done really well at creating this older style akin to anime of the 80’s and early 90’s like Queen Millennia, Vision of Escaflowne and El Hazard!

ED: “CHIASTOLITE” by Sayaka Sasaki

This was a very strange choice to use heavy JPOP alongside still CG shots of the Knights in this show.  Very boring.

Likely to Blog: 85%

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