Spoilers Ahead
After kicking off this website watching some of the funniest shit I have seen in a long time. I was desperate to find a complete car crash to bring me off the good anime high. Now naturally I thought this was going to be Gleinpir, but turns out I loved that show leading me back to the drawing board. So browsing the ever so trusty MAL I was looking seasonally at shows comparing overall ratings until I was left with two. Assassin’s Pride and Darwin’s Game. And after an extreme vetting of flipping a coin, well here we are.
Now before I delve any further into the meat of this show I want to define what exactly I mean when I say something is ‘trash’. Usually, when something is called trash, or compared to trash, that means it’s bad. Just in general. However when I say something is trash that doesn’t automatically mean that is the case. Some examples of trash, Domestic Girlfriend, Eromanga sensei, Aria the Scarlet Ammo, Black Bullet, and one of my most beloved Oreimo. Even though all those shows I consider to be trash, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like them, hell I would go as far to say I absolutely adore some of them. They are fun, ecchi and for the most part, just packed full of dumb drama and action. While things I call trash usually don’t hit more of the critical points I like to see the medium do. They at least stay true to themselves and for me, that is more than enough.
So now we know how to use the term trash like me describe this show. Bad. That’s it. This show is really, really, terrible. And it could not have come at a better time in my life.
Most of you will know by now that this show has pretty much turned into a meme of what not to do, inflaming manga readers and anime fans alike. It watches like a SAO fanfic written by a 3rd grader who just also happen to be really into vampires and lollis.
The plot follows a young and skilled assassin by the name of Vampir, Kufa. And if you couldn’t tell, other than being an assassin, he is also a VAMPIRE. I’m going to be real here for a second I was kinda shocked to find this out. So at this point, Kufa has been hired to help a royal family whose daughter, Angel Melida has yet shown she has the powers that run in her family even at her age of 13. Now right away Kufa haa doubts she is a legitimate child due to this and starts plan B, which is killing her. However, that night when he goes to her room he discovers she is nowhere to be found.
My first thought was “alright she is on the run cause she knows” but turns out, she didn’t, she just went outside was chased by some pumpkins then mugged in a park. Kufa of course seeing things wonders why she never asks for help during the whole spill, and why she kept standing her ground. In a real ‘you got guts kid’ moment Kufa decides that she is indeed the ‘daughter’ of the lord he was hired by and he was determined to get her power to awaken. Que up awkward make-out scene and boom, she is now a samurai.
This moment is followed up by a whole lot of nothing but teenage girl bullshit and some semi touching moments. I mean for fucks sake they skip a whole fight scene between Kufa and Madia, another assassin after Melida. Like it literally a shot of Kufa walking towards her, a weird scene transition, and then Madia with like no cloths on crying while Kufa sends her on her way. I was drinking when I watched this episode, I genuinely just thought I missed it, it had become a black hole in my brain, but no, I watched it again, three times, they just skip the scene. Now in my head, I’m like alright, the only reason to do that is production time. They have a limited amount of episodes and the director was like “I hate to cut it but we gottta do it somewhere.” And I’m sure a lot of people thought that.
Until they watched the next episode, which is just a filler. Yes, a filler, in a 12 episode series. What, the, fuck.
Up until this point I honestly had nothing good to say, and the scene in which Kufa is fighting Gin Williams and lets his vampire form come out just made that much more disappointed. It really did feel as if there were so many elements the writer wanted to throw into the story they literally just jammed it all in there without a care of how it would affect how the story plays out.
It has a heavy fantasy element mixed in with sci-fi dystopian, class warfare, magic users, and those who can’t use it. Monsters in the forms of ghouls and vampires, members of royalty experimenting on their serfs, guilds at war, and even shady crime syndicates. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author was so hyped up on cocaine when he finished this it would put David Bowie to shame, it simply is too much lore jammed into a very confined space. Now I have heard that the manga does a much better job at fleshing out these parts but as I haven’t read it I can not attest to that. However, it isn’t something I’m entirely against either.
It was around episode 8 something happens I wasn’t sure ever would with this show, suddenly, as if Melida’s hand its self-came out and smacked me, I was interested. The class takes a trip to a little village outside of the main area, they had names but I don’t remember or care enough to look up at what it is called. We discover that this town is ran by a lordship named Pricket, it is also important to note he is the adoptive father of Rosetti, the private tutor for Elise Medlia’s cousin.
Now the first thing that stood out to me was how strange the town was. Playing by strange rules that seemed on face value unneeded, the second major thing was this is where Kufa grew up and it was honestly the first time he gets any real development outside of being the love interest of Melida. It’s also around this time random people start getting attacked, at first it was nothing more than assault but it quickly escalates to a church being filled with dead orphans. I’m not going to lie the way this show was playing softball the whole bunch of dead kids thing, really wasn’t expecting it to play that card. So with the attacks becoming straight-up homicide at this point, the whole town is out of Kufa’s head who has been MIA most of the time they had been in the village. Knowing he was the tutor of Medlia they turn their attention to her, forcing her to flee the angry mob that was building outside of her dorm. Teaming up with her new teacher, Madia, yes that’s right, the person who tried to kill her at school, the person who didn’t get a fight scene, she is her teacher now, I don’t know what the fuck that is about.
Anyway, so the two skip the class events hunting for clues throughout the town. They discover there are locations within the town that have bizarre anomalies that occur there. Locations where the standard law of physics simply do not apply. Now due to this they are restricted but the duo quickly learns that there are also false ones, places the lordship claims are these locations, but they simply weren’t. Searching these areas they discover that the Pricket household was up to more than it was leading on. Spanning years the lord of the house had been taking people from town, secretly doing experiments on them virtually practicing eugenics. It is with this discovery Medlia finds out that the one who is terrorizing the town is Rosette who is also a vampire but isn’t as in control as Kufa. Nearing Medlia as to attack, Rosette is stopped by Kufa while he’s in his vampire form as well but Rosette manages to escape. Transfixed and confused Medlia stares speechless at her teacher, turning towards her he kneels mentioning that he will erase her memory and she will never recall seeing him like that.
Earnestly however she refuses. Saying that she is not scared of him and it’s quite the opposite, she is happy that he is being more open with her before she moves in kissing him. Seeming to appreciate the gesture he explains to her that he used to live in this town as an orphan and Rosette was his adopted sister. However there was an attack one day and a lot of people died, including her. Not being able to take it however Kufa turns her into a vampire but suppresses her memory so she will not suffer from the hunger that plagues his kind. Staying by her side as a protector, not her brother.
It’s at this point the show is at its best, it took way too long to get here and there was no way that this was going to redeem the series as a whole but that moment and what followed was pretty good, and a ton of fun to watch. They hunt down the monster that murdered all those villagers years ago, making a combo of vampire siblings and all the bright young talents from the school in Flandore they destroy the arachnid completely erasing his existence.
Of course, we cannot allow Rosette vampire edition run free so after a joyous reunion with Kufa he once again erases her memory, blocking both events from her mind.
Assassin’s Pride is bad, I wish I could sit here and tell you otherwise but it is polling one of the slowest, boring, confusing and just general over written works. I’ll never tell anyone not to watch something, all shows no matter how poorly they are done give something, however small it may be. But if there is a line up of shows and limited time to watch them, I wouldn’t even bother with this one, and if I had to put a number one it, it would be a 3 outta 10.
Thanks for reading! Be on the lookout for Domestic Girlfriend manga review coming soon, now we are talking about some spicy trash!
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