The Seven Deadly Sins: Analyzing the Poor Animation Quality & Storytelling

The Seven Deadly Sins is a franchise that has become quite popular and is often quoted as one of the most entertaining anime series of the 21st century. It’s quirky, it’s epic, it’s mildly pervy, and has a great plot, which is what a lot of people would expect from an anime show. But, the series is far from being perfect and as the episodes and seasons progressed, people have begun to realize that The Seven Deadly Sins are not as good as they had thought. In this article, which is going to act as a sort of review of the series as well, we are going to analyze the main issues with The Seven Deadly Sins anime series.

The Seven Deadly Sins seems fun, but if you dig deeper – there are many problems

As we have said, The Seven Deadly Sins is a manga series written and illustrated by Nakaba Suzuki. It is one of the best-known series of the 21st century and while it is fairly popular, it never reached the cult status of some of its contemporaries. A sequel to the original manga was also released and is currently active; the series has also been adapted into anime format as well.

The main focus of the series is on Meliodas, one of the titular Seven Deadly Sins, who aims to gather and unite the six remaining sins so that they can rid the world of evil together. During that journey, full of adventures and battles, the characters grow, both as fighters and as people, which is what definitely added a lot of depth to the overall quality of The Seven Deadly Sins as a series. But, while there certainly are some great elements to the series, The Seven Deadly Sins has often been criticized by critics and fans alike.

One of the most commonly addressed issues is the series’ fanservice. Although it was less pronounced in the anime adaptation than it was in the original manga, The Seven Deadly Sins is definitely one of the best (or worst, however, you look at it) examples of fanservice in modern-day anime. It’s not just the most obvious thing – Meliodas’ perverted attempts with Elizabeth, which do act as a form of comic relief and are not ill-intended, but there’s just too much of them – but there are also other elements that add to the main issue, like the designs and clothing of the characters, as well as a lot of replicas and situations that are borderline ecchi. This, of course, lowers the overall quality of the series and dilutes the potential depth that it could have.

Many of the fans also cited a lack of originality as a major issue. Sure, the author did a lot of good with the main characters and their development, but the story does little to nothing to break free from traditional shonen tropes and to create a work that is intriguing and compelling. It’s not bad, but it’s never good when your series lacks originality.

Following up on this, the villains have also been criticized for being stereotypical and we can agree here that the author did not put in a lot of effort to create compelling villains. They are mostly predictable, as they embody various tropes, and they have very little (if any, in some cases) development over the course of the series. And while the villains are not the focus, we understand that this is a shonen series after all, so we also need good and compelling villains.

As for the visuals, the fans have been divided about them, which brings us to the next section of this article.

The animation quality of The Seven Deadly Sins was – at times – its worst aspect

The Seven Deadly Sins have, as you will probably know, a specific animation style. It is not that different from other anime titles, but it has a lot of Western influences, and many fans and critics have described the series’ specific style as being “cartoony”. And we can agree. Yours truly is not a fan of the series’ style, as it simply doesn’t suit me visually and it is somewhat cheap, so to speak, but it’s not bad and there are definitely worse stylistic choices out there (just remember Baki or JoJo). But, while the style is a matter of preference, the animation is not.

Namely, over the course of the production, the animation style has been deteriorating significantly. The quality had been dropping with each new season, so by the time the original anime ended, we were forced to withstand some questionable decisions like the one you can see in the picture at the top of this article. We don’t really know the reasons for this, but it probably has to do with the fact that the later seasons were rushed and made by studios that had already had a pretty full schedule, so a lot of the animation work had to be outsourced, which resulted in the poor quality.

Be that as it may, the animation is mostly good, but we had to prepare you for some horrible moments from the later seasons. On the other hand, this is where the story gets better, actually, so you can compensate for that. A bit.

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