Grimoire of Zero

[Kraco]

http://i.imgur.com/8CrpikF.jpg

"The story follows a half-beast mercenary witch-hunter. The half-beast, half-human breed, also known as beastfallen, are thought to be born through witchcraft and are regularly shunned and hunted themselves, but their physical prowess is also appreciated as soldiers and witch-hunters, so that's how he's making his meager living. That is, until he meets a witch calling herself Zero. The witch is looking for a lost grimoire and offers the mercenary a deal he can't ignore despite his deep-rooted hate for witches."

Genres: Fantasy, magic, witches, action.




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This is pretty standard sword and sorcery fantasy. The characters aren't half-bad, though, and the setting is quite grim despite the graphics being nothing like in Berserk. People are hunting witches and burning them nonetheless. It's especially interesting because witches used to live alongside humans not so long ago that a bit older people wouldn't remember it. However, politics shifted quickly and seemingly made the witches the enemy of humanity. Of course it's not like the witches would have simply accepted it without fighting back. In that way this depicts the human nature realistically: Those in power can't afford to suffer the presence of possibly uncontrollable witches, so they need to be removed.

And no, I didn't photoshop in the line in the screenshot. Back in the day I heard Skyrim was quite popular in Japan as well. Unless that line was created by the translator or HS, of course. My Japanese isn't good enough to know from the soundtrack.

[MFauli]

Still promising, but ep2 was a let-down. Very filler-ish story. Hope it gets into higher gear soon. The setting is great.

[Kraco]

Episode 3



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This has quite decent character interaction. The sex slave excuse came nicely out of nowhere. There hasn't been too much story so far, I wonder if this even has such a thing, and this is certainly no Bahamut in any way, but I've enjoyed the eps so far, nonetheless. It was some grand Errol Flynn sword fighting in this ep, though.

[MFauli]

The lack of story is why I´m rather disappointed so far. This is 12 episodes, right? Means, the story won´t go anywhere. Even 25 episodes would be too little at the current pacing.

This episode´s story didn´t even make sense. Having slaves is clearly legal. So why did tiger-Guts get involved with that wolf-guy? Yeah, sucks for the slave girls, but in world with slaves, there´s probably 100000000 more slaves. All of them miserable. Does he plan to give up his own mission in favor of freeing slaves? Because unless that´s his goal, rescuing 3 slaves is completely meaningless. Moreso because those girls will most likely return to slavery or prostitution, because of their status and poverty.

Bascially: Wolf-guy may have been an ass. But he didn´t do anything wrong, legally speaking. And morally speaking, Tiger-Guts´ actions were meaningless.

Also, can they stop teasing tiger-Guts x Zero? I´m constantly picturing how they´re attempting to have sex, only to end up with Zero dead, because Tiger-Guts´ dick must be as thick as Zero´s entire body, splitting her in two from the inside :/

[Kraco]

They did say in this ep Mercenary's official reason was to reduce the ill will humans have toward the beastfallen. As it is, the beastfallen are hunted for profit, religious reasons, and amusement and very much discriminated against. If one of them goes sporting beautiful human women as slaves, it will only increase the humans' hatred, out of envy if nothing else. On the other hand the dog dude made the mistake of confronting Mercenary, that is, catching his attention, and then doubled the mistake by calling the women witches.

[MFauli]

So your argument is that tiger-Guts wanted to decrease ill will against beastfallen. Let´s see:

- He enters the city, telling the guards about his 2 beatiful sex slaves
- He frees three slaves in the middle of the night where nobody notices what happened

Win?

[Kraco]

The slave thing wasn't his idea. He was very displeased by it.

He wasn't freeing the girls in order to make himself a hero. It's just that when one beastfallen irks in humans, all the beastfallen will be the victims of that ill will. That's how it goes. When you are talking about a minority, every single individual represents them all in the majority's mind, especially in the negative aspects. I'm sure you have noticed that in Germany these days as well. Beastfallen are barely tolerated, and are considered below humans, so what do you think human dudes will think when they see a beastfallen walk the streets with beautiful human slave girls in tow? They will think all of those beastfallen bastards will need to be deported and a wall needs to be built to keep them out.

[KrayZ33]

It's not hard to say that all muslims are terrorist.
That's what Mercenary was on about.


In the end however, he didn't have a reason to have a kind heart imho.
As for the girls, they'll just return to the village they came from.

[MFauli]

There are beastfallen in Germany?! If so, I better be quick and find some hot beastfallen girl :>

[Kraco]

Episode 5


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The story is either very simple or there's yet much to be revealed. Hard to say which one. This gives a really simple feeling, but for some reason I keep expecting it to get more complicated. Perhaps I'm wrong. It's not bad in any case.

[MFauli]

It´s very disappointing so far. The story just feels so ... small. This is based on a fanfic-novel, right? It really feels that way, too. Like the author only knew he wanted to have a furry hero, a hot loli-not-loli, and a shotacon. Then everything else was thought up after that.

There are some typical scenes that just annoy me. Like the Dumbledore jumping on top of the looter and attempting to kill him. WITH WHAT JUSTIFICATION?! The guy didn´t hurt anybody. He´s a looter. So at worst you can label him a thief. Does a thief deserve death? I don´t think so. And considering the whole village was murdered, it´s questionable that you can even call him a thief. Who else would take the deads´ stuff?
But it´s okay because Dumbledore is one of three main characters. sigh

And fuuuuck Loli-not-loli. She watched that surviving guy die, THEN had the gall to tell Dumbledore "not even magic can bring back the dead". OF COURSE! ROFLQUITCHIBO. How about had you used your superior healing magic just 3 seconds earlier? We saw her heal small wounds within seconds in previous episodes. If she focused all her might on that guy, she definitely would have been able to save him.
Ridiculous scene.

[Kraco]

Episode 6


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Thirteen was quite a good speaker. No doubt the incense was also some nasty stuff that dulls the mind.

The party broke up quite completely. The kid is waiting to be burned alive, Mercenary hits the road, and Zero will continue alone, I suppose. Or more likely the story brings them all together again.

[shinta|hikari]

Well, Zero was being a little too emo about it. I mean c'mon, she just tossed aside the kid like trash. How do you think another one of your party members would feel? A little doubt is normal. She also knew that 13 could amplify that doubt with magic, and also knew Merc was under a spell. Why would she suddenly cancel their contract without even hearing his side of the story? She doesn't even know that 13 already gave the merc the humanizing spell (real or not) she promised him, so there really was no reason for him to stay with her anymore. Even so, he looked pretty shocked by what he was doing when Zero snapped him out of the spell.

I like how there is no clear good or evil in this show. Zero and Thirteen are pragmatic as hell. So is the merc.

[MFauli]

I cant take this story seriously after those first 10 seconds.

Let-s fight to the death!
bells sounding
Let´s go to lunch!

:|

You can´t tell a serious story and then do shit like this. And don´t try to defend this, pls. It´s shit.

It would have been more interesting if the sorcerer actually turned out to be a good guy and Zero the villain. But this anime isn´t brave enough to shake up usual conventions.

[Kraco]

These sorcerers from the cave are all weird people with a common sense quite different from people in the large world. That explains both Zero's dealings with the kid & Mercenary and the abrupt end of the battle. Basically it's like Thirteen said: They don't give a shit about stuff not personally interesting to them. Their general ethics also seem to differ from that of the common people. That's also where you made a mistake MFauli: It seemed like a serious fight, but it obviously wasn't. There's no doubt they had similar bouts in the cave, and those also ended suddenly if the schedule so dictated.

Mercenary is the only one of the central characters with a solid head, yet he also understands he can't really understand the sorcerers. That would have made brainwashing him all the easier for Thirteen.

[shinta|hikari]

I'm with Kraco on this one. This deviation from generic moral heroes is what makes this show good. Prioritizing dinner over a grudge about almost killing her contracted merc was definitely a sign of how abnormal Zero and her brethren think.

And 13 is indeed sorta the good guy. He was doing things that prevented the witches from further persecution and judged the stupidity of the Zero clan fairly. Zero, on the other hand, just wants her book, going so far as to hand over that kid when she had no use for him.

[MFauli]

That´s the excuse I expected, Kraco, but I don´t accept it. It was a fight to the death. They went at it full power. Yohei even threw a dagger at the sorcerer to kill him, but he luckily had an automatic magic shield. Before that, sorcerer tried to kill shotacon.

If you want to go the "they have screwed up morals due to their upbringing", then my reply is that this anime did a horrendously bad job at portraying that. As it is, it came off as random, shallow and way too lighthearted in how it resolved itself. But that´s a general problem with this anime. It´s also a problem with Rokudenashi and ShukaSuka. Unfortunately, lots of fantasy-anime are doing a really bad job at portraying the gravity of the situation they´re trying to tell. Since lots of them feel like they´re trying to ride on its tails: Re:Zero did it infinitely better. The dire situations of Subaru were presented so fantastically, it evoked emotions from me while I was watching. With these 3 current season-anime, I don´t feel any emotions. I watch them cause they´re kinda fun. But I´ll probably quickly forget about them once the next season comes. It´s a problem.

[Munsu]

Just caught up to episode 9, this has been a solid and entertaining show. The "twist" in the last couple of episodes have been meh though.

[Kraco]

12 - Final

I finally watched this till the end. It's not like I'd have ever decided to drop this, but I somehow just lost motivation to keep going.

All in all this was kind of lackluster. The characters could have been interesting, they had interesting personalities and such, but for whatever reason they were devoid of drive. I guess in that sense the plot twist (that really did nothing for me) of Thirteen being both the good guy (sort of) and the bad guy isn't surprising: There was zero shounen spirit in this show, even though it had Zero. Without the shounen spirit, what does it matter if there's no good and no bad side? What does it matter if there really was no big villain to defeat? In a sense that would make this more realistic, but making realistic stories interesting takes a different approach. This was like one of those Hollywood films where you can immediately see the actors were only doing their job, nothing more.

I guess this was worth finishing, but little more.