3 out of 5

Directed by: Yūichirō Hayashi

‘The Carved Seal of Flames,’ the first anime Garo series after the video games and tokusatsu series that established the concept, sets itself up with quite an uphill struggle: in its first 12-episode cour, neither “hero” is very interesting; the villain isn’t very interesting; and there’s no real feeling of ‘threat’ since the former is kinda in training.  (And continually reminded as such.)

This does end up making the second cour much richer: character twists have impact because so much time was spent pursuing a purposefully different direction, and the sudden increase in stakes that accompanies feels similarly earned, instead of becoming just another world-ending prophesy that pops up every week in shows of this nature.

Garo’s general gist is pretty straight forward: there are demons called horrors; there are knights in shining armor – Makai Knights – and wizards – Makai Alchemists – without shining armor which battle these demons.  And then there’s the Knight who is the big badass savior supreme – Garo, the golden knight, who’s a pissant named León in this instance, with a drunken father named Germán.  Those latter characterizations are the rub that make the show a bit of a grind.

For twelve episodes, León will don the golden armor, get angry (angry bad for revenge instead of angry good for, like, heroic vengeance) and botch things up; his pops will knock him down, then giggle and go drink with some prostitutes.  Meanwhile, Mendoza, our scheming villain, kicks off his schemingly master plans to take over the kingdom of Valiante and use his dastardly devices to control Horrors and something something Ultimate Evil.  It’s repetitive, and though the main character designs in Garo (MAPPA studio) have a unique sleekness, the battles – resorting to about one per episode – are the camera whipping non-sensically around a CGI Knight and a boring fangs-and-bat-wings Horror, always in a suddenly open, non-detailed space so that they can battle freely.  Occasionally will cut to a castle tower exploding to punctuate the battle.  So even the action leaves much to be desired.  The glimmers of the mythology we get add some interest, and there’s this weird sense that the show is holding back which keeps you watching…

…Which is confirmed when Alfonso, the prince of Valiante, becomes a larger player in things.  The Carved Seal of Flames then drops a pretty fascinating bait and switch at its halfway point, which suddenly gives all of the major players a big perceptive spin – in how they view things; in how we view them – and the show becomes aggressively more interesting.  There are a couple of bottle horror-fighting eps which slow down the pacing, but even those episodes themselves are much more fun than the show’s first half, suggesting how this could have been a longer-form freak-of-the-week show and still been okay.  But the decision to keep a looming Big Bad in view was ultimately wise.  And it could just be a bias based on liking the plot direction more at this point, but it feels like after that hump everything becomes better: the fights, while still generally set up the same, feel choreographed to have a bit more wallop; the Horror designs become insanely awesome; and there are even a few fascinating swerves with side characters – giving them unexpected backgrounds or paths – that suggests this whole roundabout design has been just that: a design.

I came back to this after watching, and enjoying, Vanishing Line, the third anime series, and honestly, I might suggest the same.  That show front-loads the good stuff, making it easier to settle in when it buckles down for more overwrought fare at the end, and armed with a “sense” of what a Garo show could be, I kept moving forward with Carved Seal of Flames.  Ultimately, I’m happy to have done so, but I’m not sure I would’ve had that faith just based on the initial 12 episodes.