English Dub Review: The Seven Deadly Sins: Cursed by Light

After finally getting to watch The Seven Deadly Sins: Cursed by Light on Netflix recently, I can, at last, say that the show knows how to help newbies to some extent while serving as the final installment of this beloved Netflix anime franchise. Starting from the beginning, the movie clearly begins with one large info dump on who the titular “Sins” are, giving two different recaps of the characters in the opening ten minutes despite the last season having only just finished. After that, we cut six months after the Demon King’s battle as we see many things shown, such as certain characters getting married. What happens to Arthur and Merlin, Zeldris and Gelda’s relationship, basically most of the cast from the previous seasons had some updates on their whereabouts (While certain characters such as “Merlin” only having a cameo for a few seconds). Of course, the film itself most likely rewards people who have followed the series since the beginning until the lead characters get word of the Demon world being under attack by an unseen entity…

I’ll admit that the tone threw me off before the proceedings of the story as it didn’t start out the most exciting. Because the titular Sins and the Kingdom are in peaceful times, most of the conflicts of the series have already been resolved from the previous seasons and our core cast is starting new lives now. The Second Fairy King Dhalia and the craftsmen of the Giant race Dabuzu do come along to add some excitement to the story. However, despite the massive time-skip, the real meat of the story seems to narratively focus on both brothers Meliodas and Zeldris.

From a technical standpoint, there are moments of genuinely good animation scattered throughout the film, however, these are vastly outweighed by the simple, barely moving pictures which they are notorious for using. Some parts had very nice animation, while some parts were wonky in places when it attempts to utilize CGI animation. And for those that despise CGI being used in 2D anime, there are also some subpar appearances of the technique being used in this film though the animation isn’t necessarily as dreadful as it could be, it still underperforms given the presumably greater budget of a theatrical release.

Also, the music captures the epic fantasy stuff that it’s going for in a world where magic and otherworldly creatures co-exist as Hiroyuki Sawano who has a consistently excellent track record of doing Epic Anime music for shows such as Attack on Titan, Blue Exorcist and Kill La Kill has once again delivered in spades with a grand orchestral score which perfectly adds to the intensity of the action.

Overall, if you are a hardcore Seven Deadly Sins fan and want to see more of your favorite cast of characters in action, then this might be the movie for you. It feels like a respectable send-off as it ties up some loose ends for the mythology of the series. The story does get interesting in the latter half of the proceedings as we’re introduced to the real threat who’s manipulated things behind the scenes, yet this reveal is relatively anti-climactic as the “Big Bad’s” true motivations are in nutshell, a very backwards way of thinking. But at least the Animation and action scenes were good in places…