nelda.boyer - 2015-03-16 14:36:30

I decided to give this series a shot because a few voice actors whose work I enjoy were involved. For the record; I haven't read the manga, or seen the original sub, nor am I a fan of ecchi. That said, I couldn't imagine recommending this series to anyone who is.

The story of Holy Knight is standard fare. An emotionally distant and duty-driven girl is compelled to sleep with an awkward, nervous boy, himself given a task he's not yet aware of. Said boy is best friends with a jealous, possessive girl, who is overflowing with one-sided affection for the boy. All of the (of age) girls have massive tits. If you're expecting any twists, you might find one, but it's revealed so late in the game that it can only be hinted at. The whole OVA is about as eventful as a standard series pilot.

The writing – especially in the first episode – is riddled with poorly woven expository dialogue and lines that are just plain bad. "Oh not again, I can't believe my alarm didn't go off again!", followed by "geez Shin, you're late again!" "If you keep ignoring me - I mean, your studies, then one day I'll become a famous novelist and forget all about you, Shin, so there!" "You are one of the best students in my ancient folklore class, Chizuru." One character's incessant usage of acronyms is one of the most annoying habits I've seen dealt to an anime character, as a matter of fact it might top the list. At every moment, you are aware that these are characters, and that you are watching a show. The writers have seen to this.

Whenever I hear a diehard anime purist decry dubs as universally insulting to the hearing, I tune them out. I can't recall hearing a Funimation or Viz dub that wasn't at least solid, if not stellar. I hadn't heard a dub that seemed to justify such vitriol in my life, until I watched Holy Knight. Collins' performance as Lilith is the sole professional-quality lead work on display. Anthony Sardinha, Corinne Sudberg, and to a lesser extent, Michele Knotz, do well in the bit roles they're given, but their contributions are minimal. Talbott, Zekas, Pollack, and Nugent are especially inept. The ratio of wildly forced, un-inspired utterances to believably delivered lines is probably in the ballpark of 8:1, if I'm being generous. I was cringing for about an hour straight. I legitimately can't remember a dub that was this consistently horrid. 

The score of Holy Knight does it's job in much the same manner as the art. It never felt the least bit out of place, but just minutes after finishing the series I couldn't remember a single note. Honestly, that's fine with me, but if you appreciate epic scores you won't find one here. The sound design is spotty, sometimes satisfactory, sometimes distractingly bad. At one point a burning torch is dropped, producing a sound like that of a tin can being dropped on a tile floor. It's a flaw, but in the grand scheme of things, it's far from the most glaring.

I went into this series without expectations, honestly hoping for the best. Needless to say, that's not what I found. Holy Knight is a kind of bad I'm not used to. It's an uncomfortable bad, not just because of the contrived dialogue, or the shallow characters, or the gratuitous and disgusting loli panty shots (oh yeah, that's a thing), it's that all of these sins have coalesced into a single insult to the medium. I see no more fitting rating than a .5/5.