World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman is a twelve episode anime based upon the light novel series. It is set in a world where some people have memories of their past lives. These people are then identified and sent to a special school where they are trained to fight against monsters known as Metaphysicals. This is because those people have special powers, so while the setting seems to be modern day Japan, there are all sorts of fantasy abilities ranging from magic to various oversized weapons.
The story follows Moroha, who at first does not remember his past life. This is soon remedied when we’re introduced to Satsuki. They were lovers in their past life and this is something that Satsuki does not allow Moroha to forget, so she comes on very strongly. Completing the main cast is Urushibara, who also knows Moroha in their past life, but here’s the twist, Moroha is naturally special and thanks to that, he has latent powers far exceeding that of his peers.
Moroha ends up unlocking his insane powers and gets recruited into the top group that helps out fighting Metaphysicals. Although you’ll be forgiven if you didn’t realise since the story has a strong fan fiction and wish fulfilment component to it. Moroha is your typical overpowered protagonist, that naturally attracts the opposite gender into falling in love for him. Given that Moroha had not shown anything to demonstrate that he earned those powers, instead of just effortlessly inheriting them, the anime becomes extremely predictable and generic. It doesn’t help that it ends up focusing on the fan service rather other things.
You would think with such a premise as spells and superpowers and gigantic monsters, that there’ll be plenty of opportunity for the action to come to the forefront and help redeem itself. Nup. Fight scenes feel clunky and their hits lack weight. It just feels like a lot of jumping around or speed streaks without any sort of choreography to help tie it all together into an exciting and tight sequence of attacks.
Playing into the disappointing fights is how predictable and generic those fights are. It’s like it took the template from other anime and then did nothing to try and differentiate itself. In all fights, Moroha will battle against his opponent, he’ll manage to hold his own but won’t be able to win. Then conveniently, he will remember more details about his past life and then have access to a more powerful ability to win the day. There’s only really so many times they can pull this off (i.e. once) before it gets tiring and cliched.
The anime also tries to pull off scenes that are supposed to get the viewer attached and emotional to the characters. Unfortunately Moroha from the first episode is exactly the same Moroha from the last episode. Likewise for Satsuki, Urushibara and all the other supporting characters that might have appeared in one episode. None of the characters develop at all, and it’s more so that they’ve just been introduced, we haven’t gotten to know them well, before the anime tries to pull this rubbish so you just can’t care about them at all.
All the problems that the anime has is amplified in the last few episodes. It does not spend the time to build up before going for the climax, so we get two major ones in the last four episodes, and this means more apathy and sighing. Moroha has reached god status, after awakening to his powers only a short while ago, he is now the most powerful person alive and everyone relies on him (heaven forbid how the world coped before he arrived). He also pulls the “I don’t want to kill anyone” card in a “war” that he instigated… alone. It’s quite sickening whenever he announces that he remembers and pulls off some ace in the hole out of nowhere.
It’s like the anime is trying very hard to be edgy and appeal to its teenage audience but without fully grasping that we need characters that slowly achieve that status. His harem of girls constantly grows with every episode, which wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t absolutely useless by the time half the season had gone. It all just feels superficial and pointless. The only good thing is the music that plays, but its effect is hampered by the fact that viewers won’t be caring about the outcome, because we know that Moroha will unleash some new overpowered move and win with little (meaningful) effort.
Overall, World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman is another anime to put on the shelf with other generic anime with overpowered protagonists right from the get go. It had an interesting premise that is promptly squandered by mixing in the stale mix of overpowered protagonist, a harem, no setup for its story arcs, poor animation, lack of character development, and many more. It’s one to avoid unless you really can’t get enough of this style.
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