Written by Sejian on June 4, 2023
This review is for season 1.
- The writing is middling at best and subpar at worse.
- The voice-acting is fine.
- The animation is nice.
- Qwydion is best buddy. She's so bubbly and adorable!
My conclusion: Meh.. but I'll return for season 2 to see Qwydion again.
I've seen better writing and storytelling in the form of The Dragon Prince (S01-S03, S04 was shite), and Arcane (which really set the bar for me for mature-audience animation), and similar or worse in the form of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
Here the writers seem to conveniently forget they've written things in one bit, seesaw with character's intelligence in another bit, and lack consistency with character's actions in an extended bit. I also really didn't like the writing for the twist, I feel like it could've been done much better.
Below is the argumentative portion of the review where I take issue with the other "review" and explain plot points as plainly as I can in a totes short space of time because honestly, we have better things to do. I paused playing Ark and watching Castlevania (for the first time) to watch this in it's entirety because of that review.
BEWARE! Here there be SPOILERS!
- "Child-lock this show if you have children under 16 years of age in the house." This series is listed as TV-MA here and on IMDB and 16+ on Netflix. These official ratings mean that this series is meant for mature audiences, AKA adults. Which irresponsible parent allows their child to consume media made for adults? That's a rhetorical question and yes, this was a spoiler for someone!
- As a non-American, my take on population statistics as used like this is that they expect you to have zero empathy or compassion towards anyone who is on the receiving end. It makes sense that the review seems to completely miss the blatant xenophobia and slavery on full display in this series because to acknowledge it would require at least a shred of humanity. 2% of America's population is almost 7 million souls but I suppose it's fine to pretend people don't exist. 7 million is totes a big spoiler number because 2% looks really small.
- While having homosexual characters, this first season of this series presents homosexuality as a non-issue in this universe. No one cares that the main character is lesbian or that her buddy is gay. There is no political discussion about the plight or persecution of homosexuals, which is what reviews like the one in question usually complain about, yet when this doesn't exist, the complaint becomes the mere existence of homosexuals, which is where the buck really stops. Spoiler, two protagonists are homosexual, one protagonist turned antagonist is homosexual, and one protagonist is possibly bisexual.
- The lesbian elf protagonist hates her human "brother" because she and her actual twin brother were slaves to his family, abused since childhood, and raised to be his personal assassins/bodyguards. Her life at the hands of his family directly led to the death of her twin brother, an act which she herself had to do when he was sacrificed to demonic possession to save her slave-master's son's life, AKA her slave-master "brother", after he botched some sort of magical initiation which hadn't been failed by one of his ilk "in 300 years" (not so good at some magic maybe?). It's not a stretch to understand why she wouldn't want anything to do with him even though he wants to resurrect her real brother even if we ignored the alluded-to horrible consequences of using Blood Magic to do it. Return to slavery? Resurrect her brother to slavery?
- The presumed heterosexual human antagonist is shown to be reckless, unwilling to listen to reason and willing to put others at risk as a result of his own hubris, all within the first five minutes of the audience meeting him, and his behavior becomes more abhorrent the more time we spend with him. He is willing to use prohibited magic he can't possibly understand or control to resurrect his "adoptive" slave brother. He is willing to murder his "sister's" girlfriend as punishment if she refuses to return "home". I suppose evil is fine to some as long as it ain't gay.
Bad writing is bad writing. LGBTQIA+ and diverse characters don't equate bad writing, nor does it make up for bad writing. No amount of "checkbox" and "quota" buzzwords changes this because media without buzzword characters exist and there there be trash too.
I assume if a clearly asinine and homophobic rant is allowed to remain on this website, masquerading as a review (along with others that the reviewer has submitted), then mine should too. Cheers!
