Seven Mortal Sins – Episode 1

What’s it about? The prideful archangel Lucifer disobeys God and is cast into the lowest level of hell as a fallen angel. On her way to hell, Lucifer happens to meet a high school girl on Earth named Maria, who helps her. In hell, Lucifer meets Leviathan, and Leviathan explains to Lucifer about The Seven Deadly Sins, the seven demon king rulers of hell. After The Seven Deadly Sins seal Lucifer’s powers, Lucifer goes on a journey with Maria and Leviathan to defeat them.

Source: Anime News Network

It…. it’s porn, y’all. It’s unabashed porn centered around the deep and probing question, “hey, what if Lucifer was a super hot chick?” That’s what you’re getting here.

There is absolutely no reason for me to encourage seeking this out. The character models all have gigantic watermelon boob designs, barring the Token Loli (who’s really more of a token pettanko; there’s some kind of minor miracle at play where all the designs strive toward the adult end of the ambiguous anime age spectrum). Nor is this an anime that settles for boob and crotch shots; instead, not halfway through an episode a character slides toward the camera vagina-first.

Fighters get their clothes torn off so easily and frequently that Ikki Tousen would tell them to slow their roll. There is a great deal of nonconsensual groping amongst the all-female cast, from “feeling someone up to signal depravity” to the ecchi gold standard “that is not how female friends have ever behaved ever.” The cast might be  made up entirely of women, but the intended audience is almost certainly straight men. There’s the threat of a nun fetish on the horizon. It is a garbage show, and watching it will not enrich you in any way.

Also, I had an amazing time and I want to stick my face back into this garbage pit as soon as possible.

This premiere made me laugh. Like, actual out-loud delighted clapping in front of my monitor. From the opening minutes when a character walked in front of the waist-height camera and a poorly applied pentagram was used to cover her ass and presumably her labia, I knew I was in for a special kind of incompetence. Not only that, but its blatant THIS IS FOR SEXUAL FANTASIZING mentality is almost kind of refreshing after so many shows seeking to disguise the appeal to sex under the fetishizing of underage teens.

I cannot for the life of me explain why this is being broadcast rather than just released to DVD. The sheer amount of nudity means most shots have either those amazing pentagrams of big ol’ light bars taking up as much as a quarter of the screen, sometimes making it hard to decipher just who’s done what to whom and for how much. It is all but completely neutralized from its intended purpose as masturbation material, and what’s left is utter absurdity. Even the molestation scenes, more than enough to warn sensitive viewers away from the material, are distanced twice over by the absurdism of the material and the hamhanded censoring placed on top.

It’s a clusterfuck of ineptitude, leaving one plenty of time to ponder the excellence of the stupid, stupid plot. It does have one, incidentally, with internal logic that it takes very seriously. That’s part of what helps make it conceivably charming instead of calculated and skin-crawling like a lot of fanservice fare (seriously, I felt so much more skeeved watching Eromanga-sensei). Its battle scenes aren’t especially spectacular here, and that probably means they won’t ever be since most anime like to put their most impressive foot forward. But there are Very Serious Speeches aplenty, given by actors who seem to be having a grand time hamming it up. Shizuka Itou’s (an alias, apparently; I cannot say I blame her) Belial is a particular treat, what with her “how Bayonetta can we be without the lawyers calling” design.

There’s only one point at which the merry tromp of idiocy turns into active discomfort, as Lucifer is tortured and has her wings cut off. It’s a moment of uncomfortable nastiness that even the characters in-universe shy away from, and it kind of sours the fun a bit. Which is a good reminder, really. There are a lot of ways this show could turn unwatchable as it goes along, going from trainwreck spectacle to the pits of slimy, uncomfortable exploitation. That’s always the danger with this kind of experience. For now though, it’s scratching a School Days-shaped MST3K hole in my heart.