Seven Deadly Sins (Nanatsu no Taizai) is a new released anime on Netflix in Australia, and after reading a little of the manga quite a while ago I was interested in checking it out. You can watch it in Japanese or English with/without subtitles, and there are a few other languages available too. I chose Japanese, because I am rarely impressed with English voice actors. The story is a pretty standard adventure theme incorporating a middle ages setting with Kings, Knights and Mages and some very impressive battles in a country called Britannia. About 10 years before the current story takes place, a group of knights called the Seven Deadly Sins are loyal to the Liones Empire and serve under the King. After being framed for the murder of a Great Holy Knight and accused of attempting to overthrow the empire, they flee the kingdom after being attacked by the Holy Knights and are split up to different parts of the land and disappear.
We kick off with Meliodas, a young boy carrying a serpent handled sword who runs the Boat Hat tavern along with his piggy sidekick Hawk. One day someone in a suit of armor clambers in and scares away all of his customers, then collapses on the floor revealing a young woman named Elizabeth. When waking up, she explains she is seeking out the Seven Deadly Sins to help save the country from the Holy Knights, who have imprisoned the King and princesses and have taken control of the Kingdom. Lucky for her, Meliodas is the Sin of Wrath and captain of the Sins and he agrees to accompany her to reunite with his comrades.
Meliodas is a bit of a weird casual pervert (as you can see in the above image), and it doesn’t help that Elizabeth is so naive when it comes to those things so he is often scolded by Hawk. They travel from place to place on a giant, green pig called Hawk Mama (below image), who wears the Boar Hat tavern on her head and digs underground when she finds a suitable area to stop. They haven’t fully explained Hawk Mama yet in the anime, but it was probably the thing I wanted to know about the most when the season finished.
Meliodas, Hawk and Elizabeth head off and it’s not very long at all before they locate the second Sin in the Forest of White Dreams, a giant girl named Diane (Sin of Envy), who is in fact a Giant by race and in love with Meliodas. Ban (Sin of Greed) is the next member they need to find, and with the power of immortality he has some gruesome injuries which would normally result in death, but he just pops back up and keeps going, e’s quite nonchalant about it. They encounter all types of different Holy Knights with different skills along the way, and as they find more Sins they reveal more of their past together as well as the connections they have to some of the Holy Knights like Gilthunder (pictured below). The Holy Knights are also evolving, and the New Generation has a dark secret, one that will push the Sins to their breaking point and reveal the purpose of the Holy Knights coup d’état against the King.
King (Sin of Sloth) is the next member they find, who is a Fairy and can float around, and he fights with a Lance and a special weapon that looks like a green pillow. They continue on with the four sins for quite a while, and eventually they run into Gother (Sin of Lust) by pure chance, a young man with pink hair and glasses. They don’t explain much about Gother, as it becomes pretty clear he is not quite normal in his behavior and physical abilities. The last Sin they find is Merlin (Sin of Gluttony), and you can guess from the name she is a mage, who appears briefly towards the end of the series.
I really enjoyed this series, they did have a couple of episodes that felt like they could be fillers, but it moved along quickly enough. The animation was pretty good throughout, some parts looked a bit off but they were minimal and you don’t mind when they have such well animated battle scenes. Gilthunder was always impressive with his lightening, and the opening and closing scenes fitted the series quite well. I will certainly be keeping an eye out for the second series.
