English Dub Season Review: Seven Mortal Sins Season One

Is Seven Mortal Sins a sin or god send?

Hands down this have been the most irritating show to review. Not even taking into account the hilariously stupid writing, characterization and plotting it is so annoying to try and research this show when googling Seven Mortal Sins brought up just The Seven Deadly Sins over and over again. Even after several weeks and episodes, it took a while for google searches to finally shift to show web pages actually about the Mortal Sins. At the same time, the anime has many aspects that feel cobbled together like the show was being finished just as it started being posted. Like in the initial episodes the intro is a very stock slideshow of very scenes in the actual anime except for a few loosely fitting visuals. It wasn’t until episode 5 and this followed episode 4.5 aka a clip show of the previous 4 episodes. Who has heard of a show that has done a midseason clip show of 4 episodes? But these points really only have to do with the show’s frankly poor name, branding, and management, the actual show itself is a coin flip between hilariously awful to dully inept.

The basic story is that Lucifer (Nicole Endicott) has been cast down from heaven by God for her sin of pride and on the way down she crashes into a church and meets the innocent Christian girl Maria (Madeleine Morris). Then Lucifer swaps blood with her in a moment that was so disjointedly handled I had no idea what had happened until the show had to spell it out and falls even deeper into the pits of hell and meets the seven demon lords of hell. To do a quick round up there is Asmodeaus (Morgan Garrett) the demon lord of lust, Astaroth (Jad Saxton) the demon lord of melancholy, Beelzebub (Arielle O’Neal) the demon lord of gluttony, Mammon (Annabel Thorne) the demon lord of greed, Belphegor (Ella Davis) the demon lord of sloth, Satan (Dawn M. Bennett) the demon lord of wrath and Belial (Elizabeth Maxwell) the demon lord of vanity and the leader of the Mortal Sins. But after the show quickly introduces them and Lucifer makes her prideful boast she’ll take them down she gets her ex-angel ass handed to her and is booted out of hell. Along the way, another demon lord Leviathan (Brittany Lauda), the demon lord of envy, joins Lucifer’s quest to take on the sins and his kicked out with her right to the feet of Maria. It’s here our new demon lord of pride steals Maria’s heart and forces her to accompany her and Leviathan on their world trek tour to defeat the mortal sins one by one to get her revenge.

Now just add as many boobs, pentagram censored vagina shots and a myriad of sexual torture visuals as you can and you will already have a pretty solid idea of what to expect from the mortal sins. Definitely fan service wise it knows what it wants to be, each episode very much takes advantage of sexualizing our leading demon ladies as they are put in the most suggestive and most blatant of sexual situations. Now I am no prude to sexual content in anime, a show that I like to point to in terms of sexualization done smartly is Keijo where the main premise is butt wrestling. In Seven Mortal Sins, ignoring the off-putting censor pentagram, its sexual content is very dull. Not because it is animated badly or anything but for especially myself I can’t really connect feelings of lust upon characters who intrigue me like a sack of potatoes would.

But even then that’s nowhere near close to my main issue with the show. Seven Mortal Sins key issue is that it just has no idea what tone it wants to set. Does it want hyper sexualized drama or does it want to be campy tit-waving cheese? It ends up trying to play both sides and it just doesn’t work, especially as a drama piece. Later in the series, we go more into the leader of the Sins Belial’s backstory and it is told quite straight with the levity of the situation being that Belial is dressed very hyper sexualized. I don’t mind drama but in a show like Seven Mortal Sins, it is far better when it just stops taking itself seriously and becomes just an excuse to show some boobs. The absolute best episode of this show is episode 7, Guiltless Gluttony, where it takes the piss out of itself and plays to the anime’s hilarious episode formula. Without fail, an episode usually goes like this, Lucifer challenges one of the sins, gets beaten embarrassingly easily, she then gets tortured or taken out of the episode for a short while then she comes back all pride filled beating the sin of the day. It is like clockwork and it just gets so gut-bustingly silly especially in Guiltless Gluttony where Lucifer gets taken down by… food poisoning. Not even by the sin of the week directly she just gets food poisoning and is hospitalized. Truly she is the fearful demon lord of pride.

That is where the series shines in all accounts, from narrative to even voice acting when the anime is allowed to just be unashamedly sexualized and silly it is entertaining but then the plot comes in to ruin the fun. The storyline surrounding Maria, in particular, is a real rain on the parade. She feels so unnecessary to the story but at the same time, she is a pivotal character to everything. Trying to wrap my head around that paradox is irritating as her importance is laid upon her by Lucifer and we don’t get any idea of her importance to things until episode 9. To be harshly honest, following the tale of Maria, a human combination of a wet blanket and door mat, is about as thrilling as watching said blanket and door mat. If Maria had a more active choice in the series of events then I could see enjoying her nice girl persona but because she is so passive and written to be so accepting she is just left too bland to care about.

So, in the narrative, if the show could just have stayed kinky but funny that would have fixed my main issues with the series as everything else is pretty solid honestly. The animation and art style fit even allowing for great visual representations of all the sins and their methods of getting their followers. The main trio Lucifer, Leviathan and Maria can have good chemistry together even when their delivery is stilted to a pathetically inept state. Plus, again it’s stupidity with its writing is just funny to watch even though I’m sure it wasn’t the creators’ intention. In the grand scheme of things, I’d advise skipping Seven Mortal Sins, it really just isn’t a well-written show and no amount of clever thematic visualization or boobs changes that. However, if you are just in the mood to kill time and watch some barely competent writing make excuses to show as much suggestive imagery as possible then you will have to take on these Seven Mortal Sins.