phickle - 2013-05-22 09:19:55

Zektbach is the pseudonym for a bloke who makes fantasy themed electronica music. The music all comes together as part of a story of sorts in the forms of character CD's and so on. To expect a story of any real quality from these is perhaps asking too much. And, to be fair, the music is pretty cool, which is what he's selling. Lots of ladies doing chanting and all that. But still, the anime based of it is awful.The story is about a woman with a magical sword who lazily swings it against hordes of heavily armoured grunts on CGI horses with terrible aiming capabilities. The fight scene at the start is pretty much entirely a disconnected from the siege scene that happened to be going on at the same time, except with lots of characters we don't care about and strange CGI horses, of which all 10000 or so fail to hit her with bows and arrows even though she's travelling in a straight line. And then she attacks them with her magical sword. This sword man, it's beyond glorious! It destroys anyone who stands in its path with its wide knowledge of physics and biology formulas, along with some Matrix hacking to go along with it. Why does this sword use maths yet the girl wielding it uses dancing? I do not know, for it is never explained. But little is explained in this OVA, so let’s not worry about that for now and head back to the story.So, emotionless and personality-less girl who wields the sword then has a bunch of s'life conversations with her childhood friend (a generic moe girl who looks totally out of place in amongst an Arabian setting) and her brother, who's one of those bishies who spends his time cracking vaguely flirtatious lines, read off the 'idiots guide to being a flirtatious anime character' handbook, while leaning nonchalantly in doorways. The cliches go on and on, which, while bad in itself, gets even more jarring when they toss in cliches that don’t fit together. Everyone is so stoic and emotionless, yet they're also doing that whole leaning nonchalantly in doorways thing? The two just don't click.Being only 30 minutes long, the plot leaps about at a rather silly rate. Barely 10 minutes after an adoring crowd bow at the feet of our heroine, they put her up on a cross and bay for her blood, shouting crucify her, crucify her. But then *spoiler* she breaks free! Which I would have thought was a pretty surprising thing to happen for the viewing public, but everyone was so stoic that they simply treated it as though the fact a mass-murdering machine was on the loose should be treated using the same tone of voice they use to describe an oncoming wisp of cloud. Maybe they too saw how inevitable and obvious that she was going to escape that they had long since gotten bored of the story. The main character seemed pretty bored by it too. She had just killed all her friends, her love interest (RIP brother, may you lean nonchalantly on heavens gates), and the people she claimed to have spent her life protecting, yet she seemed utterly disinterested in the whole thing. Neither was she particularly interested in the fact she had this amazing power. Characters in this anime simply weren't capable of contorting their faces in such a way to express anything other than stoic indifferenceThe Epic of Zetbach is pretty dumb, but thankfully it's dumb enough to be entertaining. The magical sword cutting through CGI horses always got a laugh out of me, as did the bland reactions the queen had to the mass murdered escaping. Plus, the character designs are hot (I do rather like Arabian anime girls) and the music aint shabby, so honestly I quite enjoyed watching this. So bad it's good? Yeah, Epic of Zetbach holds that title with pride.