The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods is the third season of anime that’s based on the manga series. It is once again at 24 episodes long. The anime takes place in a fantasy world where humans and non-humans live together. There was a great holy battle several millennia ago that caused the Goddess Clan and Demon Clan to completely disappear. Now, the Demon Clan is threatening to return and wreck havoc in the world. The only hope for humanity is a ragtag group of unlikely characters who has teamed up, known as the Seven Deadly Sins.
The season starts off by taking place straight after the previous season, where the Ten Commandments of the Demon Clan have been revived and are still out there. The world is bleak, as the Commandments take over several villages and effectively enslaving and literally consuming the villagers. As a result, the population of the capital, already in low spirits after the battle and destruction, start to have shortages of food. After a short period to show us how several of the members of the Seven Deadly Sins has joined back together to fight, it then changes direction. The holy war from 3000 years ago is shown and fleshed out. Up until this point, we had only known snippets based on several offhanded remarks from the characters. Now, it details out the events towards the end of the war, showing how the Goddess Clan may not be as good or holy as you would expect, and even the Demon Clan has some reason for you to be sympathetic with.
There are some vague points and elements to the story that is harder to understand at first. From how several characters turn up both in the past and present, or how they are shown to be on different sides of the war. You have in the back of your mind that they will reveal it in due course but it’s hard to determine whether the silence and wait will be worth it.
As the Ten Commandments were shown in the last season to be extremely strong, even more so than several members of The Seven Deadly Sins, our protagonists have to somehow level up. The way it is done is better than Meliodas, but it still feels contrived at times. Basically, each member experiences something like an epiphany, and based on that growth, they suddenly gain in power. Unfortunately, the usage of power levels was already lame and cringy in the last season, but it continues to be used here and feels even worse since it amplifies everything that is wrong with the season.
There are a lot of giveaways showing off how low budget the anime had. While Meliodas and his relationship with Elizabeth have reached a peak and is significantly explored, you know that it will be a sad event. It is supposed to be mind-blowing, but that the poor storytelling ruins the moment so it loses a lot of its impact. Sure, there are several important key moments within the season, but it kind of conveys the feeling that it isn’t progressing too much. We have the first third being flashbacks, then the middle focusing on Meliodas and his demonic past, and then the final section on a big battle, and not exactly against the opponent that you would expect. Every section is dragged on for twice as long as it should have, and done very poorly.
The quality of animation dips frequently. Character faces and their proportions can be extremely off in certain scenes, even during close ups. There’s also a weird hybrid censorship where some blood is colored white, while others are the normal red. It seems like if the blood is spewing out from an attack then it’ll be white, but if the character’s already dead or just on them, then it’ll be red. Then it gives up altogether and foregoes showing off any sort of action so no blood at all, problem solved!
You can’t help but notice as the season goes on that there is the lack of movement and an abundance of static scenes during battles. It deliberately slows down the movements of the characters as if to emphasize power, but it is just terribly underwhelming. It is actually quite impressive at how it manages to make the battles, which are supposed to be epic, so uneventful and boring.
The story has become messy. It is a vast change from the simple recruiting story of the first season, and the slow threat of an invading demon army in the second. The addition of the Goddess Clan, the sidelining of a lot of the supporting characters, and removing any events that highlighted the strong camaraderie of the Seven Deadly Sins has pretty much removed all the enjoyment from this season. As if that wasn’t enough, it easily forgives the characters who had done so much evil and killed so many characters. They end up switching sides and becoming good, or at least neutral, without any repercussions for their past actions.
All of this culminates into the ending, which is supposedly a climactic all-out battle between the two forces. This ending, like the rest of the season, is terrible and weak. It ends at a really bad spot where it doesn’t even feel like it resolved anything at all. It sort of just… ends and you’re left wondering if there is actually a missing episode after this. Overall, The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods is terrible. While the previous seasons weren’t masterpieces, they were at least enjoyable for what they were. Wrath of the Gods loses everything about that: all the humor is gone, all the action is gone and all the epic music is gone. What we’re left with is a hollow shell, terrible story-writing and blandness everywhere.
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