The Case for: To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts

What’s up Shoganates!!

If you read my last article you already know that I’ve been watching A lot of Miru Tights…along with Vinland Saga, Dr. Stone, Fire Team, along with the ongoing Demon Slayer and Black Clover. Let me start this by saying the latest episode of Black Clover was DOPE! Julius NovaChrono is a beast and without spoiling anything for those who haven’t seen it yet, that episode was very good even though you could see what happened coming a mile away.

That said, yes I have been mainly watching those anime I mentioned above but I decided to give a couple more a try and here is what I think about them so far.

I’ll start with BEM. Apparently this is a remake, I didn’t know that but a good friend of mine told me so, and I believe him. Having never seen the original I’m going into this one fresh and I must say I am enjoying it so far. Story wise its nothing fancy; demons do good deeds so that they can one day become human, w/e. My fascination comes from the soundtrack! It sounds like a Cowboy Bebop/ Samurai Champloo/ Megalo Box chill vibe, Japanese Jazz. Im really vibin it.

 

 To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts caught me off guard. I honestly clicked on it on a whim and the first episode was meh. I usually like to give an anime 3 episodes to catch me so I watched the next few episodes and I will argue that this anime has some hidden depth. The story is about an elite group of warriors that were constructed to win a war. This group of warriors is led by a captain of course and he seems like a bad-A. They do there job and the war is now over and the world has no use for them anymore…sounds familiar right? Here’s the anime twist, these guys all had special powers. No, like for real special powers, they could each turn into a different creature. Not Animorphs style or Killing Bites for that matter but they could turn into some pretty mean looking creatures. For example, one guy turned into a dragon, one into a 3 headed snake, and one into a minotaur. Pretty cool huh? Oh and get this they retained their human intelligence too, that right they didn’t revert to a beast brain. Whats the catch? Some of them eventually started to go bonkers. The Captain makes an oath with the Incarnates (as they are called) that if they go bonkers the only one to kill them would be another one of them (only Incarnates kill Incarnates). That was all like the first episode, lots a background information and world building that didn’t really seem all that unique or robust. Then we hit the second episode and from here the story actually gains depth. Without spoiling too much the Captain is now hunting down his former comrades. He seems to have retained his sanity but some of his warriors have not.

The Captain’s troops can all suffer from this loss of sanity. It really seems like its a matter of when, not if. Its a side effect from whatever was used to give them that ability. So in the second episode (SPOILER ALERT) the daughter of one of the Incarnates witnesses the Captain killing her father and she sets out on a vendetta to kill the Captain. When she finds him and eventually talks to him she decides to stick with him to find out WHY her dad had to be killed.

I am excited to see where this anime goes with the story because it has potential to really explore some deep aspects of war and the after effects. Clearly the Incarnates that still exist after the war are suffering from some form of PTSD along with the fact they have this side effect from becoming Incarnates in the first place. They all had to come to grasp with the fact that they were heroes but now are completely unneeded and in some cases unwanted. They once had human appearance/ personality but now are stuck as the beast they once transformed into. They are suffering and the Captain is the only one that can ease that pain by killing them and I’m sure as we progress through the episodes we will see that, that responsibility is taking its toll on the Captain as well. There are some other aspects to the show than just that but I think the biggest case for watching To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts is the internal struggle and suffering the Captain will have to go through to fulfill his oath to his comrades.

 

Am I off on this or am I spot on for once? Let me know what you think!