The Winter 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Giant Beasts of Ars

The great beasts created the land, but humans stole it. Angered, the beasts began eating humans, who, in turn, called upon the gods to fight the beasts. In the age of the sword, heroes, and mythology, giant beasts are hunted by humans for profit. Jiro, who makes his living hunting beasts, encounters Kuumi, who someone is chasing, and at that moment, decides to save her. As rumors spread about humanity and a mysterious experiment, they seek to discover the world's secrets.

Giant Beasts of Ars is an original co-production anime between DMM and HIDIVE and streams on HIDIVE on Fridays.

Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

Ever get the feeling that just a single episode isn't enough to decide whether a series is worth diving into? Because that's exactly how I feel about Giant Beasts of Ars. This entire first episode is basically all setup with no payoff.

We get a good outline of the setting, the giant monsters that ravage the land, the humans' method of defending against them via Paladins and their Cleric partners, and the brewing conflict between countries that care more about defeating each other than the giant beasts. And that's kind of it for this episode. Oh sure, we are introduced to our all-too-innocent weapon-bread Cleric and jaded former Paladin, but, well, that's all we know about them. And the episode ends right at their first meeting.

So what we are left with is a lore dump coupled with a barebones character introduction. I don't know anything about these two, nor do I care about them or either side of the looming war. If I were to make a guess, this series will be about the two of them becoming reluctant partners—and being forced to run from both sides while taking out giant monsters whenever the chance arises. I can't tell whether that will make for an enjoyable journey or not, and since this episode hasn't given me a good reason to tune in next week, I may just wait for word of mouth to tell me whether it's worth my time.

I don't know why, but I've been on a major fantasy kick lately—and no, I am not talking about that lame isekai light novel pap that they try to pass off as fantasy these days; I'm talking about the good stuff, you know, with things like “interesting fantasy worlds”, “intriguing characters”, and “plots”. That's probably why I was so stoked to check out Giant Beasts of Ars, what with its titular beasties for our heroes to do battle with, not to mention a title that could be ripped straight from one of the Ys games I've been fixated on recently. I cannot tell you enough how thankful I am that this is one of the winter premieres that actually delivered.

I'll tell you what, too: I've been agonizing for a while now over whether or not I want to give this thing three-and-a-half stars versus the full four, because I recognize that Giant Beasts of Ars isn't perfect. The animation, especially in the first half, can get a little rough (though it definitely picks up for some of the big moments near the end). Also, the story crams a lot of exposition into just this first episode. We meet basically all of the characters that get introduced in the OP, but only a few of them get much to do, with everyone else relegated to simply making sure we know they exist before the episode continues barreling along through all of the boxes it needs to check before our mysterious heroine Kumi can join up with the world-weary Jiro. Simply put, while I'm definitely interested to learn about Kumi's magic ring, the sketchy little cat-lady who sold it to her, and all of the baggage that has left Jiro so dejected and miserable, most of this premiere is devoted to setting up plot points that may or may not prove worthwhile in the long run.

Then I did a little more digging and found out that the head writer for this show is Norimitsu Kaihō, aka the guy who helped Kazutaka Kodaka write 2020s most underrated anime, Akudama Drive. Anyone who helped make Akudama Drive gets a bonus, benefit-of-the-doubt half-star so far as Preview Guide ratings are concerned. Also, I just genuinely enjoyed the heck out of Giant Beasts of Ars, warts and all. There's a whole lot of potential here, at the very least, and I'll be more than happy to give the series a few more episodes to find its footing.

This show really should work. It's got all the pieces to be, if not exceptional, then at least an entertaining fantasy adventure to grasp among a sea of paint-by-numbers isekai. It has solid monster designs, a classic fantasy setting, and some strong animation cuts through this premiere. While the world-building is a bit nebulous right now, there are a lot of potentially interesting concepts to play with. The premise of fighting giant monsters sent by the Gods to destroy humanity is metal as hell. The only real negative for me, on paper, is that I don't much care for the character designs; these all look like Granblue Fantasy background characters to me. But that's something I can quickly get over if everything works.

But it doesn't. Somewhere in this premiere, there's been a miscalculation, and the whole episode comes out feeling like less than the sum of its parts. Part of the problem is focusing on two different characters, neither of whom is terribly interesting. Dividing time between Twenty Two having the whole world explained to her and Jiro's stoic monster hunting means neither getting enough time to develop properly nor spending enough time together to create a rapport. That's also exacerbated by the editing, which flips between scenes with little grace, ping-ponging between tones and locations with little rhyme or reason. Also, I hate the character who's constantly saying “meow.” Like, usually I enjoy terrible cat puns in my subtitles, but this little weirdo is entirely too much. Unfortunately, they're our chief exposition dealer, so they talk a looooooot, and I docked a whole half a point from the score for it.

Visually, things are similarly awkward. I'm not a fan of the designs, but they're animation-friendly, and there are a handful of ambitious cuts across the episode. But much like the story, those isolated pieces never converge into anything meaningful or memorable. The direction outside those moments is fine but marred by that awkward editing. The episode never develops a cohesive visual identity. Much like the narrative, it feels like somewhere, certain gears and cogs aren't meshing, and it makes the whole experience a slog; not an interminable slog, but something you have to force yourself to pay attention to.

It's not like this is a terrible show, nor is it as painfully generic as, say, The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World. However, being mostly competent doesn't make for exciting viewing. Something in the recipe is off, and it keeps the show from achieving the high-flying adventure it's obviously aiming for.

One of the fastest ways to establish someone as an irredeemable villain is to have them pursue a child with the intent to kill. That that child is also consistently referred to as “it” is another classic sign that someone isn't worth our sympathy. It's also an indication that The Giant Beasts of Ars may not be the world's most nuanced show; of the characters we meet in this first episode, they run the gamut between cartoonishly evil, deeply depressed but ultimately good-hearted, and utterly winsome. But even though they are nothing new in terms of character types, nor is the setting particularly astounding, this feels like a pretty solid opening gambit with a plot that falls somewhere between post-apocalyptic fantasy and action based.

Although familiar, the fantasy elements are couched in something a little bit less comfortable. While there appear to be two main classes of people who can fight successfully against the giant beasts of the title - clerics and paladins - how they are most effective is a little different from the norm. Although we don't get a lot of explanation, we can extrapolate from the two scenes of such pairings that the clerics represent some elemental magic or power that they lend to the paladins, who then use it to fight. It's a symbiotic relationship that may have become more scarce in the 30 years between the opening scene and the start of the main story. That this is due to a shortage of clerics seems like a reasonable assumption; after all, the little girl being pursued by the soldiers is known as prototype 22, and when she finally teams up with Jiro, the depressed paladin, it seems he hasn't had the opportunity to work with a cleric previously. Also, the fact that Kumi (as she decides to call herself) is prototype 22 suggests that the creation of clerics is something that has been of great interest to the army, something they wouldn't be preoccupied with if they were in ready supply.

What the giant beasts are and what other civilizations may be out there are largely left unexplored in this episode. That the beasts are a terrible threat to humanity and that people have backslid in their ability to kill them in the past thirty years is apparent, and hopefully, as the rest of the story unfolds, we will learn why that is. It's clear that something significant happened in the past, but whether that affected civilization as a whole or how giant beasts are disposed of remains to be seen. The beast designs are unsettling enough to make them feel like actual monsters (especially that one that shows up at the end of the episode without a head). If the character designs aren't exciting, they are certainly easily distinguished from each other, even down to the bit players. The animation also looks good, and the use of primarily earth tones makes the occasional flash of brightness stand out effectively, such as when Kumi awakens to her power. This could be dark, but it's got potential as an adventure fantasy, and at the very least, it has me curious as to where it's going.