English Dub Season Review: The Kingdoms of Ruin Season One

Overview:

Adonis is a human who learned magic under a witch named Chloe. The emperor has Chloe executed, which leads Adonis to seek revenge against mankind.

Our Take:

God created witches to protect mankind with their magic. Over time, humans grew to fear and hate witches. They made scientific advancements that renders their magic useless and the humans rid the world of all witches. Adonis is taken under the wing of Chloe, a great witch. She teaches him magic and tries to escape with him to live a normal life. However, they are discovered and Chloe is killed. Adonis is imprisoned, but he is accidentally set free 10 years later by another witch named Doroka. He then vows to seek revenge on mankind for what they did to Chloe.

I like the show’s premise and the first episode really pulled me in. The humans in that episode are all disgusting and unlikeable, which kind of justifies Adonis’ revenge plot. Adonis never gets to that unlikeable point because of that and because he’s not acting like he’s the just one here. He knows what seeking revenge entails, but he doesn’t care. He’s consumed by anger and wants to avenge his fallen master.

We later learn that the not all of the witches are commendable like Chloe. Doroka is the other main witch. She has her pros and cons. I think she’s entertaining and she has good chemistry with Adonis. I like their dynamic a lot. She’s also very naive and too forgiving. We learn why, but she’s still too nice to a fault.

The show implements a lot of ideas and introduces a lot of characters. The problem is it drops them almost immediately after. There are several instances where a character who is meant to be a threat to Adonis comes along, only to be killed off either in the same episode or the next one. That creates some huge missed opprtunities. It also half-asses a lot of explanations and leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

The action is also hit-or-miss. I like it in the first half, but it doesn’t hit as hard in the latter half. There are two reasons for this. The first one is that the shock wears off after a while. The second is that the animation quality, especially in the fight scenes dips a little in the second half.

I like the visuals in this show otherwise. I think the character designs are nice for the most part. There are couple characters who I don’t care for design-wise. Yamato and his sister Yuki look out of place to me. Yamato has massive earlobes and Yuki just looks like a living doll. They’re not the only odd-looking characters in this anime, but they stick out the most.

The voice acting is pretty solid. Alexis Tipton as Doroka is the standout performance for me, but I usually like her work anyway. Denise Lee as Ophelia stands out to me as well. She hasn’t had a lot of anime voice acting roles. I hope that changes in the future. She definitely has talent and I would like to see what else she can do in the anime world.

Overall, The Kingdoms of Ruin is a mixed bag. The show has some nice ideas and an interesting premise, but it fumbles the bag a lot of times. It doesn’t commit to most of its ideas and it tries a little too hard to be edgy and in your face. It still has some enjoyable characters and intense action, so the show isn’t without its highlights. I just wish there were more of them to speak of.