That frame at top right is sending me for some reason.
Impressions:
The good news it that this is apparently skipping the entire first prelude volume of the source manga, which means that we miss a whole lot of rape, gore, and *ahem* horse rape. Whether that’s a farewell, or see you later, I couldn’t say. The bad news is that it’s still a Satelight adaptation, and they’re not putting any more effort into things than they ever do, which is to say not much. If you’re hoping for any action better than a slash line and pose, or explosion of rocks and dust, you’re going to be very disappointed. It’s especially bad when they run into the giant monster and all the women start sobbing in despair while it just stands there, occasionally announcing how it wants to eat them. You can literally count on one hand the number of attacks anybody actually did in that entire five minute encounter.
So it’s a half-assed dark fantasy. Far more preferable to all the reincarnation/RPG world cheat power stuff that has infested the rest of the season and industry, so that alone is probably worth at least a second glance and makes me want to not be too harsh on it. I don’t know that I have much to say about things it does too well as much as all the pitfalls that it avoids, such as cutting out horse rape scenes. I feel like it’s pretty much just baseline dark fantasy, lacking both any bells or whistles that would make it stand out from any other, but also anything particularly gross or awful that would land it in the “dead dove, do not eat” category. I know I’m prevaricating here, but just being fantasy that’s not godawful in some way is enough for a second look to see if it’s going to do anything actually interesting.
