Übel Blatt – Episode 1

Content Warning: Gore, Hanging

What’s it about? Fourteen warriors set out to prevent an invasion: only seven return, leaving the others slain for a variety of reasons. Yet their deaths hide a grim fate, and now, one of those infamous fallen warriors is back twenty years later for revenge…

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I’m not really sure why I decided I wanted to review Übel Blatt. I don’t mean that disparagingly, only that I’m not sure what drew me in. As someone who loves dark fantasy–I’m looking at you Claymore–I was drawn to the notion of a new series to sink my teeth in to fill the BFS-shaped hole in my heart. But I’ll be the first to admit that I know next to nothing about this series outside the fact that it has luxurious hardcovers from Yen Press.

So I’m sitting down to this with a very open mind, curious about a fantasy that uses a lot of Germanic sounding words to hopefully do more than just title things. Will is slot in next to all the girls in one of my favorite series, or will I wish to be among Übel Blatt’s fallen? 

Only one way to find out.

Episode 1 immediately establishes the world of Übel Blatt as a backstabbing, cruel world. We witness the murder of a number of warriors by their own comrades, seemingly for no purpose other than glory and the right to live on with riches and fame beyond meaning. What those traitorous seven who slew their once-friends don’t expect, however, is for that era of glory to be disrupted by revenge.

Cut to the future. Köinzell, an elven-looking lad, meets Peepi and Geranpen. They’re all strangers who share the goal of getting to the Szaalenden Empire where the heroes of lore from the opening reside. While we don’t necessarily get a lot of information about Peepi and Geranpen, we do about Köinzell. He’s mysterious and has wicked skill with the blade, and handily takes on any fight that comes his way.

For now, this is the beginning of a quest, though viewers don’t necessarily know the why. All we need to do is follow Köinzell and his party as they make their way to the empire and likely, seek out revenge.

The best way to describe the colors of this show is “bistre brown,” a shadow I often used in my Tumblr writing days and a word I’m afraid to say out loud for fear of being thirty-two and unaware of how to pronounce it. Everything has this faint coloration, just like those maps American history teachers used to make us make that you’d dye with coffee or tea bags. I know it’s supposed to heighten the fact that these are Ye Old Sad and Bad Times, but it kind of just makes everything muddy. Then again, this is a pretty grim show that shows lots of murder and spurting blood, so…par for the course?

Unfortunately, that doesn’t obscure the fact that this series throws you into the deep end. The opening scene clearly has plot relevance but we don’t have context for everything that comes before it. Sure this world is a fantasy realm with elven-like people, but what of magic? What of its foundational world building? This world has two moons: do they play a role in the religion or worship in this world? What type of technology do they have if they have skyships? 

These are all questions I’m sure will be answered as it goes on, but for now, it leaves a bad taste as a reviewer. I firmly believe new viewers should be able to come away with a few strong bullet points from a premiere about the world they’re attempting to invest viewers in. Here…I fear that won’t be the case unless you’ve read a bit of the source material. I frequently felt like I needed to be familiar with at least the first volume of this series to engage on any deeper level.

Oh, and don’t let me forget to mention women in the society, at least at the tavern we enter: they’re all dressed like the only place to buy clothes from is Adam & Eve, which is great if it wasn’t ever single adult woman. Hand to god, if Übel Blatt has them, pretty much every woman we see on screen looks like they’re about to pull out a whip and ask me if I’ve been a nasty boy, even if they’re just serving a cold ale. It’s… weird, especially since a child also gets dressed like this since she needs spare clothes. I decidedly don’t like it at all. Hopefully this isn’t a trend in the larger series.

I’m not going to lie: at thirty-two, I’m not the target audience for this series. I think if I were in my early twenties, and definitely in my teens, this would SLAP, but now…now I just don’t want edgy anime. I like darker series, sure; I even like series that are pretty grim. But Übel Blatt just feels like it’s trying so incredibly hard to make me feel the inherent tragedy in this world that I found myself unable to pull away from the unpleasantness of this premiere despite it coming from a really popular source that I think I’d like.

I might give this one a three-episode try, if only to figure out the world building salad that gets thrown at us and maybe because I’m a bit of a masochist for anime that make me sigh and shake my head despondently. I imagine this series is popular for a reason: I’d like to learn the why of things, even if it’s not my thing in the end. Still, I find it hard to suggest you do the same unless you’re willing to give a series that feels out of time and place with modern anime a chance, whether or not you’ve read the manga itself.