Clevatess

Clevatess, in a nutshell, is an extremely ambitious show. Clevatess is like one of those stories that has some good ideas and initially starts out great, but it's drastically hindered by the format of the medium and the lack of structure in the show. It would have been better if the anime had learned to cut out some story elements in favor of more development in the main narrative, because it felt like the anime was trying to build too many things at once without proper planning. The good is that the anime had a strong start and good production, thanks to the anime's first episodebeing a 45-minute foundation that built interesting narration and good characters to boot, with some nice dialogue. The production and direction helped cement the show as another sleeper hit of this Summer, which I honestly didn't expect to be, but it was a nice surprise nonetheless. Clevatess was the main highlight of the show because he has a lot of interesting things going for him, caring for a human baby, reviving a human hero, watching the human world through the lens of a protectless maiden, etc. After all, I wanted to see how Clevatess can gradually learn to acknowledge humanity through the action of taking care of a baby. Albeit stereotypes are present to drive the story, such as making Clevatess portrayed as a conceited nihilistic being or creating douchebags as stepping stones, as the norm for some shows nowadays. Still, part of me was amused by the action and drama the anime introduced in its first episode. With little time to progress, the first half of the story is solid, as it introduces a couple of interesting characters like Neruru and Dorel while providing quite nerve-racking action for Alicia during her climaxes (I don't mean it in a kinky way). As for Dorel, I'd say the story does a decent job at fleshing out this character, showing him as a fearsome general along with some notable fight scenes, which help him stand out as the series' antagonist for the time being. Now with all that being said... The bad starts mainly because of its pacing, and by that I don't mean it's sluggish; it's too choppy and rushed. Part of that came from the show's attempt to explore its multiple story ideas, but it does so quite clumsily. It's an example of what scope creep is to a show. I'm not saying that the show didn't make any notable progress. It was able to deliver good character development when the story took it slow, primarily looking at Alicia, for example. Her backstory and scenario were already interesting, a revenge story coupled with the disgraced hero narrative, besides even Neruru was also interesting, but instead of trying to solely focus on that, the story wanted to include more lore and exposition, hence churning the story into a rushed war climax that later stopped delivering character development during that arc. This, unfortunately, results in the following action sequences lacking emotional impact, and some characters start to feel more like plot tools (like Dorel, who starts to act more like a backstory dump during crucial action sequences) than actual characters as it later progresses. Another issue I had with the story is the baby, since he's nothing more than a plot device in the entire anime and lacks plenty of baby personality despite the anime desperately trying to show you a lot of crying scenes, and I mean A LOT. I'm confident that if the baby didn't exist and somehow were to be replaced by a secret key, it wouldn't change a damn thing about the story at all. Long story short, many of its story aspects needed more time to flesh out, but due to the show's format of only allowing 21 minutes of storytelling and exposition, it feels oddly rushed in the end. I think the story could've worked if it had lowered its scope, which would have helped create more breathing room for the more interesting story aspects it managed to flesh out, like Neruru, who got sidetracked for the sake of the story. But wait, there's more! We need to talk about the ugly, too! It stems directly from Clevatess. Yeah, it turns out they actually don't know how to write Clevatess in his own damn story. He's directly the main source of my complaints, because Clevatess has reached the maximum level of wasted potential; it's like watching the boss when you play him as a playable character. The story's decision to make sure to turn Clevatess into a useless character in the later chapters was utter garbage for a direction, because it cuts Clevatess away from more unique and interesting interactions, thus he's far inferior as a character compared to others since the story desperately wants to build him as its own surrogate. If you need a reminder, Clevatess nuked a kingdom because its domain was attacked by its heroes, then later shown to be extremely fragile and useless in human form in the SAME EPISODE! Whenever Clevatess (as Clen) tries to apprehend an issue through action, he ends up getting thrown around like a ragdoll, even though it's shown he has shadow powers! I really did not like what they did to Clevatess, especially looking at how rushed and straightforward Clevatess starts acting more 'human' without any needed development. It's pretty obvious that the story wanted to make sure Alicia gets all the screentime for action, but all it did was make me wonder why make Clevatess the main character, if he's not going to do anything in the first place? Might as well turn the title into The Adventures of Alicia. Long story short, the anime fails at trying to keep itself grounded, since it wanted to be a narrative masterpiece for some reason, despite lacking the creativity or writing to pace the series, so it ends up being a disjointed mess that tried too hard to go beyond the scope it's supposed to go for. So it's not going to feel satisfying for any ongoing watchers. Although I have to give credit for the way they handled the first half. Alicia and Clen were interesting at that time since the anime had a valid reason to keep up the human facade that terribly backfired at the end of the series. However, I am pretty drained after the show, even knowing the show will get a Season 2, I don't think I can continue watching when the show did a flimsy job at delivering a war arc when it mattered most. Thank you for reading.

Clevatess — Modern fantasy, written the traditional way, reminiscent of the classical era of the 80s/90s, and it's a BANG. I miss the days when anime WAS anime, not like the mainstream slop that is now seeing all of the divisiveness that comes out of the modern era, where hype is king, regardless of quality, that can even "sanitize" brainrot into the masses that see the medium being so hated as it is now. That said, when anime gets a time to represent itself by going back to its roots, there are works like that which give the medium its rightful name, and it doesn't needthe hype to back it up, which one such person can prove to be true: mangaka Yuji Iwahara, with his latest series of Clevatess: The King of Magical Beasts, the Baby, and the Corpse Hero, coming forth as his third anime series adaptation since Studio Sunrise's May 2010 feature film of Ibara no Ou a.k.a The King's Thorn, as well as Winter 2016's Dimension W. To understand Clevatess is to understand the author's origins, and Yuji Iwahara has quite the impressive resume of his careers: a graphic artist for Hudson Soft's games back in the 80s and 90s, then shifting to manga work with Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine in 1994, before branching out to some series that you might've heard around the grapevine: 2000 to 2002's Chikyu Misaki, 2006 to 2008's Gakuen Sōsei Nekoten! a.k.a Cat Paradise, and 2009 to 2011's spin-off of Darker than Black: Shikkoku no Hana. So clearly, the author knows much about the sci-fi, supernatural action world...to create a dark fantasy series during COVID times? Talk about quite the gamble for a still-flourishing manga series that just continues to be unapologetically bold and uncensored with its narrative themes, and the more you watch, the better its world expands with lore so deep into the rabbit hole that it's easy to get in but even harder to come out of. I'm a testament here, and that's a fact after watching so many dark fantasy series throughout the years, that no other dark fantasy-esque show has gripped me harder than what Clevatess has done to us over the Summer season alone. The story of a group of heroes ordained by a kingdom to slay devilish beasts and claim their rightful places in history — that's what you get with the 13 Heroes dealing with the Lords of Dark Beasts, with the strongest of them all being the dragon demon king of Clevatess, whom one such Lord can annihilate kingdoms far beyond its reach that it needs 13 people to get the job done, as the remaining survivor of Alicia Glenfall can attest to the truth in a future where the legend remains true to this day. However, as history cites many claims that need to be proven true or false, the Kingdom of Hiden, where the origin of the 13 Heroes legend stems from, is itself annihilated to the point of no return, with all of its citizens dead from the massacre of Clevatess that seemingly has no interest in conquest but will defend its lands if attacked. All but one survived, and it's a baby that has lost its mother, and seeing no other option, it's Alicia's responsibility to take care of the infant while going off the deep end to understand her role in the story of legend, as well as the state of humanity posthumously from Clevatess's wave of destruction. And this story truly goes ham, as one truth leads to another in what seems to be an endless spiral of lore that has not just Alicia but also her coming to know Clevatess and being reborn thanks to him saving her from a near-death situation, accompanied by the same baby that has the Dark Beast convert himself into the likeness of humans and study both humanity and the baby, whom he dubs Luna to keep his sanity from turning into the demon lord tyrant. Together with the troll slave child of Nell (whom Clevatess, Klen in his human form, calls Nelluru), who provides the much-needed nutrition as do developing babies needing their breastmilk, the trio set forth, journeying around the region to understand not just humanity and its course, but who Luna is and what she'll bring to the course of action when it comes to the crunch. Honestly enough, on the topic of badass women, you can call Alicia one tough nut to crack, as she embodies the "sticks and stones may break my bones, but not my spirit" fire within her that proves her loyalty and discourse to whatever and wherever Klen goes, knowing that a part of him resides within her for an exchange in power between life and death. The no-nonsense hero makes her presence known to everyone that she's a force to be reckoned with, set aside for the enemies that provide a challenge to her, as the legends that surround her get more nuanced on their true narrative that surprises even the Dark Beast Klen himself that the way he sees humanity is a barrage of information with regards to violence and betrayal, so he soon chuckles at how different humans are from the dark beasts themselves. Such an irony that humans are no more different than tyrant beasts, who, bestowed with power and control, seem excessive to the point of domination? This is definitely Klen's perspective from a talking/standing point. Even Nelluru, who's used to human abuse and torture, can be a tool in the right hands, though Klen doesn't care about anyone else other than himself and making sure that the pawns themselves do not die out on him until their roles have been met according to his satisfaction. It's a wild, wild world out there, and it is only humorous to the one who sees fit. The only elephant in the room I can consider to be a fault is on the production side of things, as above-average as it looks coming from a studio that has seen its fair share of action-oriented shows within the last decade, but it still looks amateurish as it looks. It's only by the weight of debut director Kiyotaka Taguchi, whose expertise as a film and TV director is most famously known for his Ultra tokusatsu series, that the show even holds weight to begin with, delivering an insane work that seemed like it took years to get to this point. Whatever it is, Lay-duce got it right being their newest Magnum Opus representative. Furthermore, the director himself is playing another role as sound director alongside music composer Nobuaki Nobusawa, and the music is also a high point for the series as a whole. It's bombastic, to say the least, and it does have an insane effect. Even better are both of the theme songs themselves, from Mayu Maeshima's OP filled with hype to English singer Ellie Goulding's debut English Anisong serving as the ED, with the notion of a book that's just as illusive but that plays a part in the narrative of the series as a whole. Really, what can I say? Clevatess is everything I wanted of a dark fantasy series that stayed true to its roots and held nothing back, especially when it comes to its story elements and the emotions that it embodies. This is truly a show for the ages and a lesson to show that sometimes, tradition beats modernity in more ways than one. What an amazing show to behold; this is a series that DESERVES and breathes hype in all the correct ways possible. Bring us more, because this is only the tip of the iceberg for what Clevatess has to show.

I’ve become pretty good at picking out anime of the season from the first episode and Clevatess is the latest entry in my book. From the premiere, which is a masterclass in establishing a dark fantasy world and ticked every box I look for in a first episode, I knew this was going to be special. Three months later, I’m happy to say it not only stayed as my Anime of the season, but consistently improved as the show went on. I had so much fun watching this every week, the pacing was perfect, the characters are great, the combat/magical system is well thought out,the story gives you just enough every week while leaving you thirsting for more and it doesn’t shy away from brutality. I enjoyed the unpredictability of this story a lot and the only issue I have with this is that it’s not a two cour show! If you can only watch a few hours of anime a week, Clevatess is one of those shows that needs to be in your list. We’ve seen the whole demon lord as the main character premise before. What we usually don’t get, though is a demon lord having to genuinely rely on the supporting characters to get things done. For example, there’s Maou Gakuin where we have Anos bulldozing everyone he fights or Demon Lord Retry. While technically not a “demon lord” in the traditional sense, Clevatess/Klen more or less fits this role and because of plot reasons, he has to walk among and work with humans. He can’t simply overpower everyone and instead works in tandem with his party members to overcome obstacles. This makes every conflict in this story much more interesting because it usually involves Klen using strategy and being the brains while Alicia is the brawn. There’s not a ton of fights in this 12 episode run, however the ones we do get feel very tense and often involve twists. Things just never felt dull in this show which is great. The other component of the show not feeling dull is this story! I am such a sucker for a good dark fantasy. I’m not sure if it makes sense, but I love “metal”stories that feel like a heavy metal track brought to life and that’s what Clevatess is. It’s a gory, brutal, twisted and cruel, but damn it it’s amazing. The show does a good job of being dark, but not edgy. Some shows try to be dark fantasies and just end up being cringe edge feats where horrible things happen for shock value, but in Clevatess everything feels purposeful and contributes to the narrative. Simply put, the messed up stuff in this series fits in with the established parameters of the story and mechanics of the world. The exploration and mystery aspects were also a big part of my enjoyment. I really like how rich and thought out this world feels. Humans having to fight for survival and not being the dominant species in this world is great. As human beings, we are naturally curious and driven to explore. In the world of Clevatess, that curiosity and drive leads humanity to conflict with the dark beast lords, seemingly impossible hurdles for humanity to overcome with their current level of technology and strength.. until the events of the show. It’s hard to talk about it too much without spoiling, but the way both sides of the conflict begin to realize they’ve been misled and become stuck in their narrow way of thinking is great. We see this on a micro scale in the relationship between Clevatess and Alicia who in many ways are the embodiment of this eternal conflict between humans and the dark beasts. Once the story gets going on and their relationship develops, they see the other side for who they really are and form this really cool bond. I liken this to Ragna Crimson with the two leads there and these worlds have a lot in common actually so if you enjoyed that sort of story, you’ll enjoy Clevatess. So the story’s great, what about the production quality? Animation isn’t crazy, but it’s passable. The art style and direction of the show are great though. The sound design in this show is some of the best I’ve ever seen. Reminds me a lot of fire force and sengoku youko. Every single blow and action in this series resonates with you thanks to the scintillating audio. It adds weight and dynamism in the fights and makes for a much more engaging experience. Again, there’s not a ton of big fight scenes in Clevatess, it’s very much a world-building, lore and mystery driven series as we work to find out the truth about the conflict between humans and dark beasts and humans and beasts coming to understand each other, but still, it’s nice that the few action scenes we have are well done and weighty. I could go on and on about Clevatess, but it’s really hard to describe why this story is so good without spoiling things. The first episode needs to be gone into blind so you can appreciate the WTF moments there and it’s just up from there. If you like dark fantasy stuff or just mature storytelling, give this a watch. Clevatess gets 9, out of 10.