What is Camelot? Most lore will tell you that King Arthur's fabled court is a Medieval utopia, a land where equality rules and everything is just as it should be. Far be it from The Seven Deadly Sins: Four Knights of the Apocalypse to throw that out entirely; original creator Nakaba Suzuki has proven time and again that he knows his Arthurian legends. But as with every person and place from the lore, Camelot takes a slightly different turn in this version, albeit one that still works with the idea of it as a somehow perfect place: in this series, Camelot is purported to be a realm where you can live with your departed loved ones again.

Or at least, that's what Arthur wants everyone to think when he pops into Liones in episode one. It's not a bad play for him to make, either; after all, one of the things driving Percival is the death of his grandfather, while An says later that what awakened her magic was her mother's death. The desire to see someone you thought was gone is a powerful motivator, as we saw in the original series with Meliodas and Elizabeth, so having that thread pulled through makes a lot of sense narratively as well. It also sets the stage for a fairly major difference between the two series, because if Arthur is lying, or at least embroidering the truth, then he's building up characters' hopes in a way that's not just manipulative, but outright cruel, while also letting us know that Elizabeth and Meliodas were the exception, not the rule.

As you might have guessed, this is setting someone up to die in these twelve episodes. We know Arthur has been warped by loss, so killing off one of the members of the Four Knights' party potentially positions them to act as foils to him. It also lays the groundwork for us to understand the actions of some of Arthur's knights, such as Percival's father Ironsides. Fairly early on, we learn that Ironsides has been shaped by the death of his wife and the illness of his other son, Diodora, likely a play on the name Dindrane, Percival's sister in Arthurian legend. Dindrane sacrificed herself on the Grail Quest with Percival in a bid to save someone else, so if Diodora is meant to be the same character, that has some interesting implications. But more importantly for these episodes, it's clear that Ironsides eschewed Percival in favor of Diodora, choosing sons and sides based on his pain.

That's something that many of the characters are at risk of doing, and interestingly enough, something that Guinevere seems to set Lancelot up to do. Her insistence on introducing herself to him and outlining their future based on her visions can be read a couple of different ways. Certainly, it can just be sheer desperation on the part of an unhappy girl looking for someone or something to make her feel better, but her belief in the infallibility of her prophecies could also be mistaken. Although the series isn't completely faithful to its mythological roots, it does follow their broad strokes, and we know that things really don't work out for Guinevere and Lancelot in any of the originals.

It would be a shame because Lancelot is one of the better characters. He's a good mixture of mature and such a teenage boy, which encapsulates the major issue facing our group of adventurers: that they're all still children. The Seven Deadly Sins were adults or at least closer to adulthood during their missions, but the Four Knights and their parties are kids, and they act like it. They worry about who has a crush on whom, they don't fully understand the stakes of what they're doing, and while they try their best, they get overwhelmed in a very believable way. Nothing drives their youth home like the scene where they all get new outfits and many of them hearken back to what their predecessors wore; it's like they're dressing up as the Sins and playing at being them rather than embarking on their own quest as the Knights.

This is an overall darker season than the first one. An early character death is just the start, and the reveal of Diodora's existence stands to throw Percival off in a big way once he internalizes it – as does a truth about himself that he never saw coming. The problems of the first season persist, though, particularly Gawain being an especially annoying version of the predatory lesbian trope, even if there's a mild attempt at justifying her by letting us know that she doesn't like herself – or her sexual orientation. The art and animation are decent enough. I appreciate that it doesn't overdo the jiggle when An's jogging (for example), even as it delights in letting us know that Isolde isn't wearing pants. Vocal performances are good in both English and Japanese. It comes down to how obnoxious you find the most annoying characters in each language, which ended up balancing out for me. Sound design overall is better, with some silent fight scenes around episodes four and five being particularly well done.

If you've come this far in the franchise, there's no reason to stop now and increasing reasons to keep going. Mostly that comes down to Percival and Guinevere, whose stories have the most space to surprise us, but figuring out the truth about Arthur and Camelot also feels like a reason to keep watching. This may not be the best shounen fantasy series out there, but it's still good enough to get its hooks into you and keep them there.