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• Studios: LIDENFILMS
• Source: Game
• Genres: Action, Adventure, Magic, Fantasy
• Synopsis: “Hortensia Saga is a medieval fantasy tale of war and chaos. Three years ago, the king was betrayed and murdered by one of his dukes who then rebuilt the kingdom into his own. But now, the original heir to the throne has secretly come of age. Hiding in the guise of a man, she and her loyal band begin the quest to save her homeland.”

-Kotaku (edited by Myanimelist)

First Impression:

Hortensia Saga has a lot of red flags from the get go and the only reason that I’ve added it to my watch list is simply because MY FIRST STORY is performing the opening. That’s about it really, I’m somewhat curious about the story but I don’t have high hopes. Let’s dive in!

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ANIMATION CHECKPOINT

If you thought that this would just repeating 3 images continuously…well it’s actually 12. A dramatic charge was portrayed by drawing three difference positions and then looping them while adding wind streams on the top right and bottom left corner of the screen. The lackluster animation in addition to questionable actions by the characters make for a dull first 5 minutes.

I expected this show to have some gore and blood but opening to a sea of dead bodies is quite something! But putting that aside…let’s talk about army animation. It’s not a big deal to animate armies using CGI, in fact it helps quite a bit when the battles are large! Arslan Senki did this and I thought it was flashy and dynamic! But that was because they were all fighting each other and from a distance. These soldiers are uh…dead…and they were still animated via CGI. Yikes.

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I can’t make this up. Was this supposed to show Alfred’s lack of war knowledge or maybe the brutal tendencies of the enemy army? Either way it was laughable to say the least, so much in fact that I thought I needed to make the meme. The story writing just isn’t hitting right, the timing and bland characters don’t make it interesting enough to even try to get into the plot line. Keep in mind that this anime is based off of a mobile game of the same name. I’ve watched the opening scene within the game and there are slight variations but I didn’t think the story was terrible, until I saw this scene in the anime.

If there’s anything to compliment on this show, it’s the backgrounds. I love the earthy colors of the show, the browns and greens work quite well together to create warm scenery of the country side, whereas the dark blues and black created the Winter scene of the castle siege does a great job of creating an atmosphere, even if it’s broken a few minutes later because of the choppy animation.

Another element talk about are the character designs! I think they translate well from their 3D counterparts from the game. While they look good, they don’t move very due to the low number of key frames in the animation, so expect a lot of disproportionate art as we travel down this slippery slope…

Recommendation:

NO

Needless to say…it’s a no from me. If you want to support MY FIRST STORY and their anime opening debut with me then yay we get to suffer together! If you’re indifferent then you’ll probably have a better time watching something else lol.

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