English Dub Season Review: The Seven Deadly Sins – Dragon’s Judgement Part One

The Seven Deadly Sins face their ultimate challenge in the final season of the hit anime…or at least the first half. It was honestly a surprise when I reached the twelfth episode’s end and had run out of episodes to watch. Last season came out all at once, so I had expected this to be the case with the final one, especially because it was the final one, but given that it only concluded in Japan mere weeks before its release on Netflix, I suppose that’s to be expected. The unfortunate side effect of that being, for me at least, that I binged the second and third seasons again over a couple weeks to get ready for the big finale only to find out that I wasn’t getting it. And what’s weirder is that the twelfth episode here could actually work as an acceptable, if rushed, finale, and I seriously wonder if people only watching it through Netflix will think that’s the end. We’ll get that last dozen of episodes soon enough I imagine, but for now, let’s look at this batch and how it advances the story.

Picking up where the last season left off, a second Holy War has erupted in Britannia, with the Holy Knights, Giants, Fairies, revived Archangels, and the Seven Deadly Sins against the forces of the Demon King. The demons are spearheaded by a turned Meliodas, former leader of the Sins who has taken matters into his own hands to free himself and his love Elizabeth from a centuries long curse that has trapped them both in a never ending cycle of death and tragedy. But neither side is a united front, as Estarossa, one of the remaining Ten Commandments, goes rogue and inadvertently unleashes major secrets about what ending the previous Holy War. And while all of this happens, the immortal Ban of the Sins literally goes through hell and back to reclaim Meliodas’ emotions, while also revealing an unexpected connection to unlikely source.

Given that, as I said, I expected to be talking about twice as many episodes here, there isn’t as much to say here as when the last season came out. But there are still some major points to touch on, notably how this season serves in inching us closer to the story’s conclusion. In terms of animation…it’s pretty dang bad. I mentioned in the previous season’s review that the shift from A-1 Pictures to Studio Deen would only really show up for those eagle eyed viewers who care about that sort of thing. Having now seen the third season twice in addition to this one, I must now retract that assessment as the corner cutting here is HORRENDOUS. The memes do it no justice. It’s just such a drop in quality that I don’t know they got enough positive reception to even make this season.

In terms of the plot progression, this half of the season mainly focuses on three fights against the three remaining big villains: Zeldras, Estarossa, and the Demon King. The Zeldras and Estarossa fights include massive swaths of the casts from the good guys, plus the two tacked on demons from last season fighting with Zeldras, while the Demon King fight is pretty much just good-Meliodas and Ban plus one surprise character against the Demon King. Surprisingly, each fight feels pretty well balanced in how each character contributes, either capping off or significantly adding to the arcs of most characters. The Estarossa fight ended up being less impactful than I first thought, but still reached a natural end point. The Zeldras fight meanwhile added a bit too many sudden twists and unearned exposition, seemingly to pad things out to the point I just lost track. The Demon King fight is has two sections, the latter half being what I mentioned could feel like an adequate ending to the series despite the Demon King himself being pretty detached from the story up until this point…and it seems it’s going to be dragged out into the second half of this season, but we’ll get to that when we get to it.

Overall, these first twelve episodes move things forward for the story, but it’s just another piece of the whole and not the decisive closure that I assumed I would be getting. I mean, there is a sequel manga going on right now and at least one more movie, so even when we do get that back twelve, this story is far from over. Thankfully, aside from the animation still being terrible, we still get more of the adventure we’ve been following since the first season, with things lined up to see the journey of Meliodas and his friends through to its natural end. We’ll talk about the back half when that drops, probably with less to discuss there, but we’ll see.