kaela29 - 2016-02-22 17:23:11

How hard can it be to find an assassin who seems to have sold her soul to the chocolate man and ought to be in a strip club? 

Oh god, what am I doing? Did I just start by criticizing Blade & Soul for it's fanservice? My mind must already be turning into kool-aid.... Oh right, the story. Perhaps a thing of note is that Blade and Soul does not look nor feel like a video game (as one might have expected), just your standard fantasy fare with the magics, totally not loli/shota/furries and stuffs. Blade and Soul is essentially another Queen's Blade... You know, as in, lots of sword wielding bimbos and... stuffs. Though, it's nowhere near as sexually rampant as Queen's Blade. Instead, in it's place, Blade and Soul can manage to be more retarded. Whatever semblance of an actual story there may have been has surely been bastardized; but to what extent has it been butchered I wouldn't know. And it seems like I will never know for certain either since NCsoft will never make an English release of the damn game. In any case, what we have here are heavy handed conflict and resolutions, and a plethora of awkward brief as well as irrelevant flashbacks (except perhaps the flashbacks we see between Alka and her master) that happen for something the show is entirely alien to. A thing called "emotion".

But that's not to say that Blade and Soul is particularly painful to watch. No, you'll be able to marathon this with relative ease. You will at least not feel like your mind is being relentlessly cut to tiny pieces by an utterly shat-upon pacing and heaps and mountains of contrivances. It still pretty much has every other problem that typically plagues a video-game anime-adaption, though. 

Which now brings us to the characters. One loli, three or four shotas, a wannabee cutesy stubborn drunk girl who suddenly turns to psycho bitch and back, a lady bar owner whose not afraid to get her hands dirty and is supposed to play the wise old hag yet is nothing of the sort.... Ugh, why am I even trying? One of the bad guys is a muscle bound oaf that does nothing but grunt! Everyone here changes whatever semblance of a personality they have as the plot demands it, particularly in the case of the obnoxious drunk girl and bar owner to jarring effect. And especially in the case with our dear lead Alka, she plays the role of the done-to-death assassin. One whose apparently supposed to be cool precisely because she's humorless and cold to the point where she might as well be holding a giant poster sign saying, "Please ask me the following question: 'are you even human?', thanks!". Only in her case, someone else would clearly have to write even THAT for her. She may be likable only in the sense that she might one day stop injecting herself with fifteen-hundred different tranquilizers on a daily basis.

The only real positive thing that came out of this mess was the ending theme. Which, curiously enough, is in stark contrast to the content of the show. That is to say, it has a lot of flow and emotion to it. Whatever the story was aiming for at the end of each episode, "RAINBOW" by LEGO BIG MORL took that trash and turned it into something that might make you think you're actually getting emotionally invested in.

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Not recommended. Unless you're in the mood to see nothing more than some boobs along with some silly sword action. - 1/24/15

rosendo.thompson - 2014-06-30 10:25:30

Blade and Soul is the latest game that is based on an actual MMORPG and not about people trapped in one. It mostly follows Alka, a mysterious swordswoman who is being hunted by the same people who murdered her master.

As stated the story is essentially about how Alka is trying to find the person who killed her master while at the same time trying to stay alive. To make matters worse, Alka herself has a bounty on her and can be identified easily by a tattoo on her body, meaning everyone is out to get her. On her journey she meets both friends and foe as she tries to free both body and soul.

The story background, while standard, sounds decent as a journey of self discovery. It's very hard to talk about why this does not work in this anime without talking about the characters first.

Alka herself has almost no personality at all. She is extremely reserved and rarely speaks. Near the end she gets some development because the story picks up for sake of finishing it and by then the viewer doesn't care. No connection has been made to Alka (or any of the characters) so when something happens to them it's hard to be interested.

It might be not as bad if Alka was the only character without a gleaming personality. The entire cast is bland and one dimensional. It might be said the main villain (Jin Varel) is essentially an evil version of Alka. Also, a couple of major character Karen, and Roana have the same issues Alka has in her development. It comes to late, done too fast, makes little sense, and no connection is made by the viewer to the character. To top it all off, there are reoccurring side-characters that seem to have no purpose at all but to take up time in an episode.

Now we can get back to the story. For the first few episodes things are very loosely connected and Alka is simply getting put into a different situation where she has to solve a problem. In other words, it goes nowhere. However, later on the story takes over and huge changes in the characters take hold. It's almost like watching two different shows. On top of that in the latter half you wonder what the point of anything that happened in the first half was besides simply meeting the rest of the cast.

Finally, we get to something good. The animation is really good and Alka herself is nice to look at. The sound is decent too. Overall the production values of the anime are fairly high. Also, anyone expecting a fan-service anime is going to be disappointed.

Overall the anime just had no balance. It had some decent fight scenes but almost all the attempts at comedy are tired. It doesn't really develop any characters and the couple times it does is ruined by pacing and placement. The show tries to get you to feel emotional but again, too early or too late. It's not even a good show for the sake of watching anime girls with large breasts. The game might be better than this.

daniel.adriana - 2014-06-29 21:49:14

Blade and Soul

An action anime that held so much potential but failed deliver on many occasions but still action packed. The progression is slow & characters have little to no development yet you still want to finish the series once you have started. I still found the anime intriguing for myself because of the animation style, action scenes & the main character, Aruka (Alka). The anime is right on point with the title, ’Blade’ representing the action & ‘Soul’ representing her inner objective.

I’ll try to keep it short & simple so now let’s do this review!

Story: Now let me give you an overview of the story: The main character, Alka, is an assassin whose master/mentor has been murdered & as per her ‘code’, she ventures out to find the killer. The journey is about finding the killer, Jin Varrel, but mainly, it’s about Alka finding herself, her soul. She meets other women warriors who each have an impact on her in their own way. What will she find on her journey? Hmm!

It’s a pretty interesting story when you read it but the anime doesn’t deliver it to its full potential. Given that the main character is an assassin, there should have been more of a back-story on Alka yet there was a void in that area. As I said previously, the anime is more about Alka finding out who she really is…finding her ‘soul’ & what is the meaning of her life but she finds her ‘soul’ through the objective of finding her mentor’s murderer. Nonetheless, I found myself continuing to watch because I wanted to see what she’d find.

Animation: Okie dokie, ‘Blade and Soul’ doesn’t disappoint when it comes to the animation. It’s a very clear-cut animation & you’ll find it very pleasing. High quality art & the character are well drawn as well as the setting. What I really liked were the ACTION scenes, they were actually real action scenes. I look forwarded to the fights because I knew that they would deliver some great, intense combat. The main character, Alka, is an assassin who uses twin blades so it’s great to see her style of fighting against others. You can see the details in each of the action scenes & I can guarantee you that you won’t be disappointed in this area. The fan service part of the animation is only shown on the characters’ appearance, nothing over the top like ‘Queen’s Blade’. You will see large breasted women through the anime & quite some jiggling in the action scenes but it’s nothing over the top. I also highly recommend to watch the ending song because there will be amazing animation done which seems 3D so don’t miss out on that!

Sound: There is nothing much to say about the sound but I’ll give my input on the opening/ending, as well as the soundtrack & character voices. Both the opening & ending really didn’t stand out but were pretty standard in my opinion, judging solely upon how it sounds. Some might find the songs attractive but my style is more something sung by Nagi Yanagi, KOKIA, or Angela, which this anime wasn’t close to at all. As for the soundtrack, nothing significant but what does standout is the noise of the blade & swords swooshing & colliding with each other, I did like because it added more depth to the action scenes. Character voices overall were done very well, I did find one character’s voice, Hazuki, to be very annoying at some points but maybe that’s just me. Overall, the sound is basic; nothing amazing but does the job.

Character: One thing I have noticed, the main character, Alka, has been made very similar to Clare from Claymore. Her personality is very similar in some ways. Given that there aren’t that many supporting characters & just one main character in this anime, there is little to no character development. When the main character is an amazing assassin, everyone gets curious on who she was before she became her present self but this anime doesn’t answer any of those questions. You have to just learn about the character through their actions & just accept which characters are good & which are evil. You will be left with many unanswered questions regarding their backgrounds & why the characters do certain things but that’s where you must bring your imagination in to effect, sadly.

Enjoyment: With all being said about the anime having a good potential in its story but weak delivery, I did enjoy watching this anime largely because of the action scenes. I didn’t find myself rewinding to watch them again but they were still worth watching since the animation style kept you from not looking away. There were many parts where everything was pretty slow but I still got through it so I’m sure you can as well. The credit for my enjoyment only goes to the action scenes, which were because of the animation.

Overall: Blade and Soul won’t ever make my top list & none of the characters either but it’s not an epic fail of an anime either like many say. Give it a chance if you’re okay with an anime not delivering it’s full potential when it clearly possesses it if it tries & the characters’ development is left to your imagination for the most part but has some action through animation style which is somewhat worth watching.