Hortensia Saga #01 — This Grave is a Grave

January 6th, 2021

 

And other moving lines from Japan's finest writers.

Impressions:

I was trying to figure out why they decided these random dudes should be identical twins. One of them is a father figure, the other is the actual father, but killed off essentially immediately. Isn't this needlessly confusing? Then we get to the halfway point of the episode, and while the two characters are standing in front of a big honking tombstone, one goes "This is my family's grave" and the other gasps in shock. This is leading up to the declaration of "I want to get stronger!" It's also kind of weirdly PG-13 despite putting a sword through a dude's face and stabbing some clerics in the neck with arrows.

The artistic direction… The writing… The production… Nothing here is particularly good. It does try a little bit with the action scenes, but is badly lacking the animation budget to make them look good and even if it did, is far too verbose in far too banal ways. In the last five minutes alone, at least three different people say something along the lines of "be strong to protect the things you care about." It might be able to pass itself off as a very budget Fire Emblem kind of story at best, but the emphasis is very much on the low budget side. The characters aren't interesting. The plot is completely generic fantasy dross. The production is the lower end of mediocre. I guess at least the dumb magical animal was only around for about 10 seconds, but since the second episode is apparently focused on the little sister maid character and it, I suspect this is going to be getting far worse before it gets better, if it ever does at all.

     

Next Episode:

Posted in Hortensia Saga | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Katie Johnson says:

    Haven’t even seen this but the screens are giving me super heavy Fire Emblem vibes.

  • Ark noir says:

    There’s a difference between fire emblem comparisons and plagiarism. I see you Roy.

    I watched the android version video on YouTube of the 1st part of the show. Makes more sense and more interesting.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y8yo_8VNBL4

  • The Phantom says:

    I knew this was just a giant promotion for a gacha game, I have to praise them for showing blood and death at least, but yea is generic and kinda cheap considering the game is likely making tons of money.