If I had one thing to say about this show, it’s its pacing and how each episode decides to rush in and out of each event just to move on to the next. By cramming 10 volumes of light novel into 24 20-minute episodes, none of the elements are too particularly shone out well enough, or rather they were too focused that the other elements were rather ignored.
From the pilot episode, the show establishes that on the day of the everlasting peace, it was all broken due to the appearance of an evil demon that beheaded the Emperor. His crest, the almighty Grancrest was split into several smaller crests, thus sending the entire world into Chaos. On that day, both the Union and the Alliance separated and became enemies from that day forth.
Our main protagonist, Theo Cornaro establishes himself as a well-seasoned fighter who can handle taking on several soldiers by himself, albeit with small injuries. He states that he acquired his crest by creating one from the Chaos all around his hometown, which was swarming with demons. There are many problems with Theo throughout the series, and one of them includes him being extremely powerful from the start. He fights off several soldiers on his own without any help and takes down a giant two-headed dog on his first try. After forming his contract with Siluca, he automatically takes down a Lord with no effort and takes his Crest. Throughout the series, there seems to be almost no significant character development in him, aside from the fact that he continuously gains more political power as the series progresses, with no sign of slowing.
On the plus side, Theo is unlike most male Shonen protagonists in the sense that he’s not as emotionally dense in romantic opportunity. In fact, he’s a lot more straightforward and direct than most. After getting confessed by Siluca, he reciprocates those feelings by getting straight to the point, the kiss, although the scene stops there so we’re not sure if they had sex or not. Speaking of sex, towards the end of Episode 9 Milza decides he wants to have sex with Marrine for the sake of warfare, which sparked quite the controversy there at the episode’s time of airing. Now I feel bad for watching this episode in class…
On a brighter more kid-friendly no-sex side (actually there might as well be with the people I’m about to talk about right now), I believe there is one person I must commend for being such a fantastic character on the show, and that is Villar Constance, who had built up quite a reputation from the beginning. He was said to be a very perverted lord who contracts with only young female mages and makes them wear skimpy outfits, but in actuality, is actually a ruse to protect the mages from those who fear their powers, and later voids their contract on their 25th birthday to allow them to move on with their own lives. Considered one of the best characters (in my opinion), I felt that Villar’s potential had the ability to unify the world, but due to his own pride he didn’t want to tarnish his family name, yet he continued to act as great support for Theo and his allies. I think one of the redefining qualities he has is his relationship with Margaret, his 24-year old mage and love interest. His relationship with her, which is confirmed romantic comes to show how much of a great person Villar is despite the lewd rumors about him. Villar voids her contract at her 25th birthday party, but she returns during Altirk’s fall and dies with him in a death that I do not feel was in vain, at least for Theo and his friends.
This anime has one of the worst, but most remarkably impressive pacing for any anime I’ve seen. For 10 light novels worth of content, 12 episodes would have been horrendous, but it is still a remarkable feat to fit it all into 24 episodes. At this point we might as well call it as a god’s blessing to even get a proper epilogue, however short it was.
VERDICT 8/10
Most of the characters were likable enough, but some had me really pissed off. The action, the animation, and the romance kept me going through the series, as fast paced as it was. Theo seems a bit too perfect for a protagonist, but the way the story was presented, I’ll let it go and allow one “perfect” protagonist once in a while.
This is NOT AN ANIME 
This is an interesting perspective. As interesting as I found some elements of this anime, the pacing and characterisation just kept making it very hard to really enjoy because it all just seemed to skip all over the place. I would love to see this story done with sufficient time to really flesh out the world and plot and to actually make it flow. Or alternatively, cut the story down to something that could fit in the run time. There’s plenty of good ideas here, but the execution made it hard to really enjoy.
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