Shuumatsu no Walkurie, Not So Grand Execution

Every century, the Gods hold a meeting to decide humanity’s fate – whether or not they should perish. When the Gods decided that humanity has failed to redeem themselves once more, a decision has been unanimously made to put the human race to extinction.

However, at the very last second, a certain Valkyrie along with her younger sister proposed that the humans and Gods have a one-on-one duel to determine humanity’s fate in the next 1000 years. The Gods accepted this in fear of mockery of their pride and this is Shuumatu no Walkurie.

On paper, it sounds like a great anime with an interesting plot, especially for the action lovers out there. The anime had so much promise especially for the manga readers. Yet in all honesty, the anime failed to cement itself up there in the higher up ranks. Also, to be frank, it was an utter disappointment.

First off, the pacing of the fights is pretty slow. There are certain scenes which could be made quicker instead of the final product, unlike the manga which goes straight to the point and is more direct with the story-telling.

Not to mention, the backstories of the characters make for 70 or even 80% of an episode – with the remaining 30 or 20 going to the fights. Backstories are meant for build ups, not to be the vocal point of an entire episode.

And fights aren’t as spectacular as you would hope or imagine it to be. The fight scenes are basically just a slideshow of moving stills. This is definitely not what you want to be seeing in an action anime, especially with a plot this grand and epic. This is also arguably one of the reasons why the anime didn’t make it to the top.

And the commentating scenes is too much and very unnecessary. It’s really hard to feel the tension during fights especially when long, unnecessary shots of the commentator is thrown in during fights. They could have at least minimized the scene duration especially considering the frequency they do this.

The only praise I have for the anime is that they (finally) nailed the song and soundtrack. The songs (finally) help to lift the atmosphere up especially in an anime where the fight scenes didn’t really feel impactful and felt like GIFs were the driving force of fight scenes.

To elaborate what I mean, every character’s entrance feels epic. Take Kojiro Sasaki’s for example, with the grandly-composed music coupled with the traditional Japanese sound effects to still give a touch of traditionality. And my personal favorite, Jack the Ripper’s entrance theme. The theme emits chills as well as fear as the commentator describes his ruthlessness and cold-heartedness.

Overall, coming from a manga reader, I definitely have high expectations for this anime yet it definitely didn’t deliver. It’s very sad since the anime had SO much potential to make it to the top but poor episode directing and lazy animators ruined the anime.

I still have hope that next season (if there even is), they would change studios since the next fights are in my opinion, some of the most climatic ones and are definitely more epic than the fights we see in this season. Well, let’s hope that the anime can redeem itself, but I don’t really want to have high expectations on this one.