Assassins Pride

Let me say it right here: No matter what anyone else thinks, I think Assassins Pride is worth watching. The primary story is fairly basic growth story of the main protagonist Melida Angel, but how the story is told and everything that happens around the main story is what makes the story good. The art style is beautiful, even though it is pretty basic artstyle for anime at the moment. The color balance of the art works and even if the style is not unique, it still works and looks good, no problems with that. Same with the sounds, they work even if they are notsomething unique, because things don't always have to be unique. The characters are very interesting with both their looks and their stories. Especially Kufa Vampir, who, even though in the main story he is shown mostly as a teacher/butler, has really interesting backstory and reasons to be exactly who he is. Melida is a great example of a female protagonist. Even if the anime is just 12 episodes long, you can really see Melida's growth and in general how strong willed she is, not giving up and doing her best. Melida is absolutely not your average empty shell of a female character. I enjoyed this anime and I hope there will be a second season or at least an OVA or two, so overall, great job with this one.

I must have read the title of this anime wrong. Because let’s face it, this show isn’t so much about the pride of an assassin but more of how secrets are waiting to be discovered and protected. Watching Assassins Pride feels more like an action fantasy than a stealthy story. And from start to finish, it's an anime filled with nothing but mediocrity. Let’s just say, this type of anime is very conventional in a realm of creativity. There’s the premise about how humans struggle to survive in a world of uncertainty. Society consists of commoners and nobles. Then, there are gifted individuals with the powerof “Mana”, capable of fighting against the monsters outside of the timeless nights. Assassins Pride doesn’t choose to be original enough and the first episodes made less than favorable impression. I mean, let’s face it, Angel Melida is an underdog who has yet to awaken her mana and is often bullied at school. It isn’t until she meets Kufa Vampir where her abilities begins to show and trying to prove herself worthy of heirless noble. As a fantasy anime adaptation, a familiar formula applies to Assassins Pride to those of similar genre. We have the academy used to train students to fight, characters with unique abilities to fight against monsters, and of course, relationships that develops among its youth society. While Assassins Pride isn’t a romance story, there’s undeniable chemistry between Melida and Vampir. The two are often seen together but in the beginning, Melida had to prove herself. It’s easy to see her as an underdog rather than a prodigy. Vampir’s impression of her didn’t manifest until she shows her determination. Melida’s determination to prove worthy of her name is a major recurring element in the show. She wants to prove to herself and everyone who she wants to be. This type of character personality attracts Vampir, so much that he withdraws his assassination attempt and becomes her mentor. Vampir himself is a mysterious individual who often hides his true attentions behind a façade. As an assassin, he’s clever at hiding his emotions and training has given him a great deal of experience. In many of the early fights, it’s shown that his battles usually go in his favor. However, Melida’s appearance in his life sometimes causes Vampir to show a different side of him. And throughout the story, it’s shown that he genuinely grows to care about her. As a matter of fact, Vampir behaves differently towards Melida than with other characters. Their relationships is a core part of the show that connects the two together despite having very different personalities. What about other personalities in the series? Surely, we have Elise and Rosetti to bring out a different side of the story, right? Well, not quite. Elise and Rosetti are two other main characters although they enter the anime as prodigies. Elise is Melida’s cousin with a sisterly like relationship. But in the beginning of the show, their relationship is cold and it isn’t until certain events that their relationship improves again. On the other hand, Rosetti is a class example of ‘hard work pays off’. Despite being a commoner, she gained a reputable status through her talent and hard work. Unlike Elise, Rosetti is much more cheery and easier to develop friends with others. As some may guess, she develops a school-like crush towards Vampir. It’s the type of generic romance trope you can easily identify with poor effort in writing and story development. There’s even an episode where she gets Vampir involved with a marriage subplot to throw off her engagement. It’s safe to say, this type of writing can easily be discarded as junk. On the other hand, I don’t want to say Assassins Pride is unwatchable garbage as there are certain elements to keep the viewers entertained. For instance, there are other schools in the Flandore and certain episodes shows the talents of other characters beyond the core cast. Melida’s fighting spirit is also a source of inspiration that shows anyone can be who they want if they try. It can help keep us entertained enough to see how far she can evolve as a person. Likewise, Vampir and Melida’s relationship is forged by trust and sometimes, we may ask ourselves how much they can really trust each other. Will Vampir someday really kill Melida or how long he can protect Melida from the truth? Certainly, Assassins Pride isn’t a thriller but this anime has the perk of carrying a level of suspense. The balance of comedy also eases the mood on occasions while not being too distracting; that is, if you enjoy watching girls having slumber partied and gossiping about each other’s love lives. But at the end of the day, this show is how you chooses to watch it. EMT Squared is by no means a high caliber studio from their creative projects in recent years. From forgettable shorts to medicore slice of life adaptations, you really shouldn’t come into the show expecting any more from them. Assassins Pride’s artistic elements mostly comes with how it decorates its aristocrat society. Most of the characters are fairly well dressed including Melida. The school they attend carries a high value reputation and looks like a place where nobles would attend. The character designs are also decorates with uniforms that show their status. However, I do find the overall look to be peculiar with the cat-like eyes from the female uniforms. Doesn’t anyone else feel that’s too damn distracting? Vampir might as well look like a Kirito 2.0 in terms of physical appearance. Character reactions ranges from cartoony expressions to more serious and emotional segments depending on the direction of the story. Finally, some of the battles segments are distinguishable by the way characters fight. Remember, humans have Mana powers and it physically manifests in the form of colored aura. Sure, it’s nothing to write home about but is unique enough to show credibility to the plot. I’m not going to sit here and tell you to watch Assassins Pride or not. That’s up to you. There’s too many anime like this every year where we watch the show and easily forgets about it the next few months roll around. Assassins Pride is an example of a conventional show using its fantasy content to sell a mediocre story. And honestly, it’s starts off mediocre and remains all the way to the end. All the way.

Assassin's Pride was painful. I'm not even sure it is worse than 2015's The Asterisk War which was one of the worst things I have ever seen then again. I don't compare trash bags to each other. The whole point of the trash bag is to depose the trash bag from your house to the trash bin not to compare how smelly they are otherwise the house would be smelling of garbage. This is easily the worst anime of the fall 19 season, beating out the worst isekai animes of that season. Am not even sure that this show was done by human beings. Before I talk aboutthe show's plot, let's immediately dive into this show's technical aspects. This show looks like shit. This is a show that came out in 2019 yet it feels like I am watching a 2005 anime production. The only decent thing about the visuals is the character's designs which are okay when they are not using the powers that make them glow as it just looks very bad. Everything else from the animation, background scenery and the fight scenes are a mess then again. This show was made by the same studio that made The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar the worst Isekai anime ever made. I honestly forgot this show had a soundtrack. This is one of those shows that a sizeable, amount of tracks yet it plays a handful of tracks over and over again. The opening and ending theme were competent but nothing special. They are both enjoyable songs on their own right but they don't really stand out compared to other OP/ED from the season. The original Japanese audio is serviceable and gets the job done as you expect. Being a dub fan I had to check out the dub for Assassin's Pride. I watched the first 6 episodes of the dub, turned off my PS4 and I regretted the day when I had to listen to it. This is got to be the worst dub from Sentai in a long time. The voice acting is over-dramatic and stiff. The audio quality was hot garbage and ADR direction was atrocious. I honestly felt bad for Brittney Karbowski as she had to voice a garbage character like Melida. Since I am done talking about the show's technical aspects, let's finally talk about the show plot The plot/characters. This plot is more uninspired than Jump Force story mode. If you have seen The Asterisk War, Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor and The Irregular at Magic High School then you watch Assassins Pride. It's lazy, uninspired and soulless. What makes this empty shell of a plot even worse is how the writer managed to screw it up to a point where the show becomes unbearable. One of the main issues with Assassin's Pride is its inconsistent tone. When I took a look at the poster for Assassin's Pride I thought the show would be this engaging dark sci-fi action show, however more often not the show is a 12A generic action flick. Sure it does have some dark elements in it, but they don't show up that often in the anime and even then the dark elements were poorly executed thanks to the shitty. The writing is dreadful from top to bottom. It feels like I am watching a really bad fanfiction from fanfic.net thanks to the number of cliches that it has that heavy plague of the show. The selling point of Assassin's Pride if you can call it that is the romance between Kufa and Angel but the problem is that they have little to no chemistry with each other. The characters are as interesting as watching grass grow. They are not engaging in the slightest. Am still shocked that I remember the characters cast names after watching the final episode of this ambitionless garbage fire because they were just so forgetful and poorly written. Assassin's Pride is centred around two characters Melida and Kufa but the problem is that they are both such horrendous characters. Outside of their non-existent romantic chemistry, they are both boring, bland and irritating to watch. The bottom dog of the two is Melida because her personality throughout the series is inconsistent. She's meant to be this weak girl that will eventually get stronger, however, in certain scenes, notably in episode 2, she's a total badass that is able to defeat her foes. She had a cool moment despite the fight being poorly animated and it's such a shame she reverts back to a weakening in the following episode where she relies on Kirito I mean Kufa. This happens frequently in the anime and it really annoying. There are no redeeming qualities to this character whatsoever. She's a total failure of a female lead if I ever think of one. Kufa is generic light novel protagonist 7830. Everything about him from design, dialogue and potato personality screams, laziness. The only thing that separates him from the countless generic light novel protagonist is he's a vampire and he's edgy and even then it doesn't really matter because the writing is dogshit. The rest of the characters just exist for plot reasons and nothing more. Assassins Pride is an end product of arrested ambition. It is a shell of anime that has no passion and soul. How can I enjoy a show like this when the writers have no ambition whatsoever? The only good thing about Assassin's Pride is the opening of everything from the writing, visuals, characters, plot, soundtrack and pacing is a disaster. This is without a question the worst anime of the season as well as being one of the laziest anime I have ever seen in my life. There's absolutely no reason to watch this show this unless you hate yourself.

It was quite unfortunate that there wasn't much love for this anime and as one guy said it " You will only stay with it for the train wreck" well, he's half right, cu'z this really has a lotta train wreck in it that I can't blame those who give this a low score for it's overall, so how do I rate this????: Story-Good 7: It simply follow the relationship between the a girl whose often being an object of ridicule and mistreatment not only from her own family but also to her classmates as well and a lycanthropes/ half man half vampire, who wasat first assign to check as to the girl's legitimacy of being a member of noble house of Angels but in the end he becomes the girl's mentor as he give her part of her mana that makes have the ability to fight back and claim her right to be a member of the house of angel and no longer be classified as a piece of shit. Ok, it may have some from of lackluster, but that's not the point , it was basically the straggle of the girl's right to be acknowledge that was the game her and her mentor that also has to deal with his own skeleton in his closet. Art-Decent 4: Cu'z this was just a few anime that doesn't rely on the fan-service and that quintessential big boobs thing to sell. Sound-Mediocre 5: Cu'z I got no fuzz as to which seiyuu did who. Character- Good 7: Ok given that this was about Melida Angel's journey to be recognized as the deserving heir of the House of Angel, with her trusty mentor Kufa the lycanthrope who at first was assign to kill her but later turn to be her mentor it was good to a certain degree but sometime it can be annoying when Kufa himself was a bit wishy washy about his plan to kill Melinda, though Melinda can fight she basically lacks mana and it has to take her mentor Kufa to give her some, at first one would pity her for being bullied by Martillo, Nerva but thanks to Kufa;s tutelage, she was able to kick her ass, but still I find it rather annoying that Melinda wold be this compassionate towards those who wronged her like Nerva and Elise's evil nany. Now, Kufa , well I kinda hate the fact that his character was force one and he has to be this lolicon towards Melinda, the good thing about him was that he's typecast as an antihero, but he still plays as the quintessential protagonist that still has to come to Melinda's aide. Now what i hate around here was that Elise seemly having some lesbian thing for Melinda, that's not good IMAO, Now seeing Melinda getting mocked and ridicule can basically get one to pity her, but seeing her getting stronger and wiser was the thing that makes this anime's character category good. Enjoyment- fair 6: My enjoyment level for this anime was simply a mixed of frustration that kufa was able to kill that clown, and sympathy for Melinda who often gets bullied by Nerva, and there was that Rosetti being Kufa sister in which it was just unfair that he has to reboot her memories about them being siblings Overall- fair 6: Season 2 anybody?????? maybe not, given that both Kufa and Melinda were now in a serious relationship.