When the angel Lucifer is cast out from heaven for her prideful misdeeds, hell is in for a hell of a time. After a brief stop on Earth where Lucifer imparts her angel’s blood to a girl named Maria in a church, she arrives in hell and immediately becomes the target of the envious Leviathan’s affection. After doing battle with the combined forces of Number One Sin Belial (vanity) and Satan (wrath), Lucifer’s angelic powers are sealed and her wings cut off, transforming her from angel to demon lord, but with her powers diminished by Belial’s Garb of Punishment she is returned to Earth along with Leviathan where she takes Maria as her follower and begins to plot her revenge against the sins.
Based on the Nanatsu no Taizai series of scale figures produced by Hobby Japan, Seven Mortal Sins is one part plot to nine parts lewdness. Clothes explode into tatters in combat with the slightest graze, everyone’s pants are on display pretty much at all times, and the character’s nipples get twice as much screen time as the character’s themselves.
At first I feared this ecchi romp was going to take itself far too seriously, and the first couple of episodes aren’t the most fun, but once Lucifer starts going toe-to-toe with the other sins the series picks up as things get increasingly ridiculous – Lucifer must defeat the lusty Asmodeus by making lust herself lust after Lucifer, and challenge the gluttonous Beezlebub to an eating contest. It also plays around in the ‘I’ve-been-sucked-into-an-online-game’ and Idol genres for some of the battles along the way as Lucifer regains her power, topples the other sins and eventually takes the fight to Belial in hell. The pacing could be better, and any serious moments or dramatic fights are immediately undercut by the relentless onslaught of fanservice and nudity, but with a plot this paper-thin the series does a decent job of holding things together while what story there is plays out.
The characters are for the most part fairly one-dimensional, with all the Demon Lords living up to their namesake sin and Leviathan being a generally irritating ball of jealousy as per her slot of Envy. Lucifer and Maria are the only two to really show much in the way of character development over the course of the series as their relationship develops, much to Leviathan’s displeasure. The art style and animation are generally fairly good, everything looks nice and crisp and the fight scenes are nicely done, though some of the character designs veer way off into the ridiculous, even for a lewd-demons-doing-lewd-things anime.
Seven Mortal Sins takes a pretty run-of-the-mill fallen angel story and doesn’t really do anything special with it – this is mostly (okay, entirely) fanservice, but unlike the painful Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid, it keeps itself in check along the way, never trying to make it’s silly premise more grand than it is as it bounces and jiggles and moans suggestively along on it’s way to the final showdown between Lucifer and Belial to decide who sits at the top of the Seven Sins as the most powerful demon lord.
A review copy was provided by Madman Entertainment to the author for the purpose of this review.