Anime rarely gets more cuckoobananas than The Seven Deadly Sins: Four Knights of the Apocalypse: Season 2 (now on Netflix). Well, besides the original Seven Deadly Sins run, maybe. Or one of the hyperviolent R-rated-equivalent ones. Or porn anime. Look, I’m already regretting that bold statement – but let’s move on. FKotA continues the SDS saga, about a group of warriors who were once bad guys, but redeem themselves with epic heroic deeds. This sequel follows Percival, a youngster who realizes his destiny is to be a great warrior and member of the Four Knights of the Apocalypse, a younger subsect of the Seven Deadly Sins. The first season saw our protag team up with the other Knights to fight monsters and evildoers and the like, while the second season finds them squaring off against the warriors of Camelot. If this sounds a little backwards to anyone familiar with traditional mythology – which dictates that Camelot is good and the horsepeople of the apocalypse are evil – well, it seems as if there’s some moral ambiguity in this reality, with the Cameloteers leaning bad and the Apocalypsers leaning good. Not that it matters, really, because we’re just here to take hallucinogens and watch trippy-ass anime battles right? Yeah, probably.
Opening Shot: An establishing shot of the island known as the Finger of God, framed by a theater curtain signifying a flashback-slash-recap.
The Gist: We open with a memory refresher, concisely summarizing the first FKotA season, when young Percival (Sho Komura) saw his beloved grandfather killed by Ironside (Toshiyuki Morikawa), who just so happens to be Percival’s father. Fratricide! Fun! Percival soon learns he’s one of the Knights of the Apocalypse, and finds himself teaming up with the other three warriors to fight bad guys by yelling things like BILLION DARKNESS or SHINING ROAD, thus enacting spells or whatever that summon great power to destroy things and whatnot. They saved the kingdom of Liones from an attack, after which Camelot’s King Arthur Pendragon (Sachi Kokuryu) shows up, and that’s where we pick up with season two.
Now let it be known there isn’t much plot in the season-two premiere. Arthur talks a lot and makes threats and flaunts his arrogance. While he fights off Seven Deadly Sins leader Meliodas (Yuki Kaji) and his Knight son Tristan (Ayumu Murase), Arthur essentially proposes the idea of genocide: he’ll fight for humankind by eliminating any other race on the planet. He tries to sway the allegiance of the citizens of Liones by promising a utopia, where they can be with their lost loved ones once again – including Percival’s dearly departed grandfather.
The Knights are skeptical of this claim, but if it were me, I’d be more worried about two things: One, they’re way outmatched here – Arthur can swat them aside without much effort. And two, did I mention the genocide plan? But just in the nick, the Knight Lancelot (Koki Uchiyama) reveals his newfound powers, which give Arthur a run for his money. Before anyone can kick anyone’s ass – but not before an entire mountain is razed during the battles, which, it occurred to me, might have a bit more geological impact to the environment than is depicted here – Camelot’s Knights of Chaos, Ironside included, show up to put a stop to Arthur’s assault. Not because they don’t want to slaughter the Knights, but because there’s still 11 more episodes in this season.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Black Clover is similarly nutty in the shout-your-power-to-enact-it vein of violent battle-anime. It’s also as conceptually convoluted as The Knights of the Zodiacs series.
Our Take: Anime people can be like horror people, who’ll give most anything that falls into their bucket o’ interest a shot, and they go into it knowing what the genre can be like. To the layperson, TSDS: FKotA is utter nonsense, a lot of garish animation and shouting and bloodless violence and enough lore to make a newcomer feel suffocated under the mountain of exposition, world building and goofy proper nouns. But to the dedicated, it’s par for the course, a continuation of the Seven Deadly Sins franchise that’s been successful enough to warrant a nigh-endless run of anime and manga. They know what to expect, and this new series delivers precisely that.
Full disclosure: I dabble in anime (and horror), which is a way of saying my broad interests makes me picky about what I choose to consume. Much of FKotA feels like a reiteration of many other characters and plots from many other series, where you have a naive protagonist like Percival who makes his way through a magical and maniacal world by battling for the sake of forthright goodness, while dealing with a personal issue or two (that my-father-killed-my-grandfather bit? Are there psychotherapists in this reality?). What separates this series from the chaff is its agglomeration of multiple religious myths and tales from folklore, and the way it toys with, tweaks and inverts traditional stories and characters. But that’s window dressing, a different collection of names applied to familiar situations.
This won’t bother fans who’ve devoured all the SDS content, and will pick up on the minutiae that separates one story arc from the next. Percival faced a major conflict in the first season, and sure seems to be facing another one, perhaps slightly bigger, in the second; he’ll also likely grow into his role, as the Knights are all young, developing their powers into something more formidable and potentially world-changing. The series looks great, with blindingly colorful animation and enough visual hyperbole to demolish vast swaths of the universe. It’s weird and funny and pretty good at establishing a sense of stakes. If you’re in for a penny and therefore a pound, you’re golden – enjoy the next six-ish hours of this season, then move on to the next new anime thing.
Sex and Skin: None in this episode, but the content info tells us there’s nudity in the series.
Parting Shot: Lancelot tries to fetch the rest of the Knights to eat dinner, but they’re so pooped from the previous events, they’re all crashed out and snoring in a heap on the bed.
Sleeper Star: I dunno, when a series is this loud and exaggerated, sleeper stars tend to get eliminated from the gene pool, so to speak. So shout out to whoever animates Percival’s hair, which looks like it was inspired by a Hulked-out half-pipe skate ramp.
Most Pilot-y Line: Arthur throws the gauntlet down real hard when he says shit like this: “If mankind has any hope of ever obtaining true peace, all other races of this world must be wiped out of existence for good.”
Our Call: There are enough anime diehards out there to justify the continuation of series like Seven Deadly Sins in perpetuity. Drawing new people in isn’t the point; it’ll satisfy devotees and remain pretty much critic-proof. Fans will STREAM IT, so why argue otherwise?
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
