In the world of Ars, humans lead a decades-long war against giant beasts that ravage the lands and feed on their resources. Those tasked with fighting them are champions called nagimori, who utilize the destructive power of kannagi: beings gifted with uncontrollable magical powers.
While mourning the death of his war partner, former nagimori Jiiro crosses paths with Kuumi, a young woman who has just awakened her magical powers. After the pair form a contract to save the city from a giant beast attack, Jiiro learns that Kuumi has escaped a laboratory and is being hunted by the underlings of Mezami, the head of the research facility.
Reluctantly agreeing to help Kuumi flee from her pursuers, Jiiro starts traveling with his new partner and her friend Myaa, a young girl with a cat headdress. As the unlikely trio wanders the Arsian lands, top officials begin setting their plans into motion—and the group of adventurers soon discover that men are to be feared more than monsters.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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KANLen09
"Finally, a fantasy anime that goes: We don't need to copy every other fantasy Isekai world to ever be made...let's copy Attack on Titan instead!" - Gigguk, Winter 2023 In A Nutshell I'm always pumped for original shows that pleads its case to showcase something that is different to diversify the season that it came out on. And Ars no Kyojuu a.k.a Giant Beasts of Ars, made from the minds of studio Asahi Production and internet company DMM.com (from parent company-cum-producer DMM Pictures)...other than it being more Monster Hunter than AOT, is sadly yet another waste of opportunity for a rounded ringleader idea of sorts than itis to actually have some exeuction, which was mild to say the least.
The original head scriptwriter for this show being Norimitsu Kaiho, he was the brainchild of Summer 2020's surprise hit Akudama Drive, and even classics like 2015's Gunslinger Stratos and 2013's Suisei no Gargantia a.k.a Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. In fact, working on the latter series (that was spearheaded by Nitroplus's Gen "the Butcher" Urobuchi) as an episodic writer should give him enough reason to learn from that experience and come up with something that's grander and more cohesive, because I find that there is a lot of similarities between this show and Gargantia: a post-apocalyptic world where humans are at war with mysterious entities. But what came out with this show, honestly, I'm still having a problem wrapping my head around what this show is trying to be.
There're essentially two storylines in Ars no Kyojuu: the central focal one that showcases the war of magic-wielding humans and the Ars's giant beasts, defined as Clerics and Paladins who are destined to work together to take these living monstrosities down. The other is a kingdom sort of thing where the central focal story takes hold in full sight, for that exact kingdom to evaluate the mysterious happenings, especially with the central cast. I felt like this could be done just a tad longer and executed better, but the story and plot is so wishy-washy that it feels half-baked at best, and not worth the extra time that this should've gotten.
The characters here are the core root of the show: the Cleric in the form of Kumi the 22nd and the Paladin in the form of Jiro the Already Dead. Being part of an experiment that expunges Clerics like Kumi with clones that are of sacrifical use as signs of power under the Empire's mad researcher Mezami, Kumi is mortified to find that as the core of the Empire's program, she is essential to the success of the experiment for her uncontrollable powers. It is then that she coincidentally meets Jiro out of nowhere, the Paladin truly living up to his "Already Dead" name after suffering from the loss of his Cleric war partner, the latter whom he finds himself protecting Kumi when she was being chased by the Empire's lackeys. The sign of giant beasts comes, and they're both drawn abruptly into forming a contract to save the city from imminent attacks. It's this conjecture that Jiro finds himself reluctant to agree to helping Kumi on the runaway path, bond with same-day friends like Myaa the Cat Chapeau and others like the herbalist Romana and young-fledgling warrior Moran. The T-Pose with the bond of both Jiro and Kumi together to form Anthrovincia, yelp, that has to be one of the weirdest transformation sequences I've seen in anime so far.
First off, what's up with all of the animal sound references, purretty please? Apparently, Myaa may look like one Nyaa Chapeau, but it turns out that there were a bunch mooore, woof. The Myaa animal cult of rawrs, meows and the like, they're actually all one spirit intertwined altogther, kuma. If you notice that Kumi is wearing the ring, that actually acts like a control device of her Cleric powers, and essentially Myaa is just one Chapeau of like clones made for this specific purpose of tracking the ring's movements, meow. But NGL, it at least gives the show some purrsonality to evoke some originality that the show otherwise would fall victim to more subpar mediocrity. What a shame, woof...
To be honest, I've never been a fan of Asahi Production as a whole. Sure, they made a standout show in the form of Tenchi Souzou Design-bu a.k.a Heaven's Design Club back in Winter 2021 (the highest rated of the studio's works so far) but almost the entire catalogue of their anime production are shows that are just on the mediocre to average side. And Ars no Kyojuu is practically no different from the rest of the pack. Sure, the action looks decent and the 3DCG much improved over what came before, but it just doesn't look like it's much refined above all else.
The OST is the only good thing about the show, doggone it. PENGUIN RESEARCH's OP is very good, upbeat and honestly, a banger in the slew of mediocre OPs this season. Harumi's ED is smooth-sailing calming down-ness, but the visuals (or visual rather) is really disappointing.
Ars no Kyojuu a.k.a Giant Beasts of Ars could've been a potential for one of the most unique shows of the season...but it's more like a Giant Pile of Arse that isn't all Attack on Titan-esque, but a story and plot of moving material that doesn't seem to find a correlation to connect the many dots together, or just make it seem like an idea that quickly faded as fast as it came. What a disappointment and a waste of time and resources, something that I will gush heavily because it's an original anime. A noble concept, but bad execution.
Jozuwa-_-
Beast of Ars felt like a JRPG consisting of colorful and visually attractive main characters, with a fairly interesting setting and lore, but with the gameplay being an afterthought, and having dungeons and bosses that are nerfed to "Baby Mode". It's been tagged as Action, Adventure, Fantasy Anime. But it barely got any "ACTION" as it only had a few battle scenes which only lasted a few minutes, if not seconds when it does happen. It is also lacking in the "ADVENTURE" aspect since they barely struggled to get to their 'Main Story Quests' destinations. And the closest to "FANTASY" it got was making me fantasizeabout Jiro's "Giant Beast" spearing through Romana's "Ars". (Excuse the childishness. Been holding it in for 3 months.)
I genuinely wanted this Anime to be at least an overall fine one. I quite appreciated how the main characters and the setting weren't that hard to connect to from the get-go. Not that it says much about its level of quality though. But, considering it had a mediocre animation, those little things were quite considerable.
But alas, it failed where it matters the most… the payoffs. Every battle that was presented as "dangerous", "threatening" and/or "big deal" ended in a blink of an eye by quickly giving enemy monsters a single poke to their big red eyes. And more disappointingly, the supposedly main boss immediately unleashes their final form without having to be pushed to their limit but still ended up defeated in just a snap. (Frieza and Cell must be disappointed)
There seem to be a lot more important story details they kept for a sequel but, I won't be looking forward to it that much, now knowing how weakly they handle the conclusions to about everything they set up/build up.
STORY (5/10):
Some of the backstory set up are fairly interesting but are being wasted by poorly execution. The "World of Ars" setting exists but barely mattered until the last 2 episodes as the story focused more on the heartless-humans-plays-around-with-human-life cliché, which effectively made the Ars-related stuff feel like an afterthought.
CHARACTERS (4/10):
Jiro was given more background compared to the rest of the main characters. A warrior who has lost direction in life after losing his waifu in battle during a war, and now finds himself protecting someone, a "Kannagi", like his wife, after a chanced meeting as some kind of redemption. Kuumi, the heroine of the Anime, serves as the positivity symbol for the story, a damsel in distress, and an important key to Jiro's redemption, and by the last episode, an important key to the Ars lore as well, it seems (they're keeping it for the sequel). Unfortunately, her entire character is just the usual made-to-be-evil-but-turned-out-being-an-overly-kind-and-sweet-human-for-Anime-reasons. Romana and Myaa have been given some hint of mysterious/secretive background, with the former playing the responsible older-sister figure and healer role, and the latter being the sassy co-captain and initiator of banter. But there's not much to write about them yet as well. There's also Meran..... his there too.
That Meran bit was supposed to be a joke but, it says a lot when the comic-relief duo of the enemy goons does more in their few seconds of screen time than him during an entire episode, who's mostly being a passive character, reacting to things being said and being a punching bag to Myaa's insults. The rest of the characters are not worth mentioning (Yet?).
MUSIC (5/10) & ANIMATION (4/10):
OP and ED are fairly fine. Fitting for an Anime, but not too generic, in my opinion. (I have both included on a playlist.) Side note: Maybe it's just me but, the "silhouette" sequence during the OP sequence looks kinda off. The VA for some of the characters were fine, if not fairly good (i.e. Jiro, Kuumi, Romana).
Art for this is definitely… "very simple", to put it nicely. Faces are distorted from time to time, and of course, the lackluster battle animations. Not to mention, the random out-of-place CGI animations. But overall, I'd say the "very simple" old-school style animation fitted this Anime well enough. But this Anime really needed so much more action scenes than the very little amount it got.
OVERALL (5/10):
The material kind of showed some promise, which made me hopeful enough that it will be good enough by the end. But unfortunately, it gave me disappointing payoffs to most of the story bits that piqued my interest. With the biggest culprit of all being the lack of intense emotion-filled battles.
And just to end this with some positive remark, I'd say: I don't regret the time I spent watching this Anime since the main characters had pretty good chemistry… and Meran is there too :P
geekgirl42
Man what a letdown. It was a pretty decent original fantasy show; and I give a smidge more leeway to original projects since they are taking a bigger risk too. Premise was suitably interesting to keep me going through the show. Cast was likeable enough and had some decent story beats in it. Could have focused a little more than it did but that would have been a nitpick had it not been for that last episode. I was thinking as the episode was wrapping up; it's okay, I've seen worse, then they piss me off in the last 30 seconds to make the mildlydisappointing ending really disappointing. It's so unfortunate really, that the ending kills the show for me.
There's not much to talk about in terms of production value. It's pretty average across the board so I don't have much to say about it other than the opening song is kind of catchy and the CG was okay most of the time.
This is such a disappointing ending. I can't really recommend it to anyone barring a guarantee of a sequel season of which I am not confident in that happening.
