Who Would Like this Anime?
It’s an ordinary fantasy adventure. With neither much drama nor any redeeming features at all, really.
Translation Where?
With the original nyaa down, I’m actually not quite sure what release I’ve watched, but it was probably this one. There weren’t really any problems with the subs, not great, not bad, surely nothing to avoid this anime for.
Premise
I’m trying to recall how this all started, but my brain’s like “nope.” But instead of rewatching the first episodes, I’ll just ask Wikipedia to help me out here: “[The] prologue is centered around the precognition-gifted priestess of the Gael tribe, Rhiannon. She is kidnapped by a rogue priest of the Holy Empire, Drwc, to be used as a sacrifice in a ritual meant to resurrect the Demon King Arawn and put Drwc in his favor. As a response the Gael people burn their village and swear to bring Rhiannon back or exact revenge on the Empire. In the middle of the ritual, as the Gael people attack Drwc’s soldiers, Arawn is resurrected and offered Rhiannon. At this point, he kills Drwc, frees Rhiannon, and proclaims no intention in wreaking havoc which the legends attributed to him. Instead, he shows interest in Rhinannon’s brother Arthur, the First Warrior of his tribe. Rhiannon, on the other hand, falls in love with Arawn, and by declaring her decision to marry him, makes him the chieftain of the Gael tribe (hers and Arthur’s father was the previous chieftain, but Arthur could not assume the title due to being the First Warrior).”
Visuals
The art is kinda good. While the backgrounds are sharp and the sky pretty detailed (I assume it’s a copypasta stock sky), characters seem sort of blurry at all times even in the 720p BD release. The characters are, however, well animated. Scenes vary between fairly detailed and overly clean/empty.
Conclusion
Now, I don’t want to spoil anything in my very first line, but Tears to Tiara must be one of the worst anime I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen quite a lot. Bad ones too. Oh, and if the screenshots seem to be taken at random, it’s because they are. I had no idea what to pick at all.
Basically, it’s a story about a not-so-evil demon king who gets to become the chieftain of a tribe which is hunted down by the rather-evil empire. Why? I dunno, probably for no reason; and if there is a reason, then I forgot it – that’s just how great a story it is.
Tears to Tiara has its good points. Two, to be exact. Its world and the visuals. You can read more about the visuals under “Art.”. Regarding the former: Tears to Tiara‘s world is feasible and believable. You get a good grasp of where things are and where everything’s situated, what things looks like, just how this fantasy world works. That’s to be expected from something that had an RPG as its foundation.
Not great but okay is the story as a whole: Don’t fall to the empire. It slowly but surely gets there over the course of its more than twenty episodes and doesn’t do anything too dumb in the big picture. However…
What’s utterly killing this thing are three points. The story in its details, its small arcs, and the “comedy.” Those three combined are a triumvirate of retardedness I’ve rarely seen to this amount before. Now have a bunch of examples that were burned into my mind – into that part that’s responsible for major headaches:
1) There’s an elf joining them, one wielding a gleave. She literally just rises out of the ocean and wants to join them. The demon king returned so she’s gotta do it. I could shrug that off, no problem. However, immediately after, they burn a pelt that’s been lying on the beach, without questioning it. Of course, the elf then realizes she’s missing something oh so important. It was the pelt, without it she can’t return to her tribe. So she keeps crying that she can’t go home anymore and the outcome is that she has to stay with the one who burned it for the rest of her life. So a forced “harem” member in five minutes. How convenient. Or stupid. Is that all to it? No! Of course she’s a klutz! How cute, eh? She can’t wash clothes with soap by hand without drowning herself in bubbles (fucking simple work), she can’t milk a cow even though someone carefully explains to be gentle when pulling the teat, she basically tries to rip them off. Is that cute? I call that mentally challenged, it has nothing to do with being a klutz or awkward, she’s just mentally challenged.
2) Arthur, the “strongest warrior” of their tribe. He looks more like the protagonist but actually isn’t. No, the demon king is the protagonist, even though he’s flat as a flunder in character and everybody just fawns him for no reason at all. Arthur kind of seems like a real person – but of course the writers didn’t want him as the protagonist, they want him to be an idiot. He blindly runs into any trap, picks fights at the obviously most inconvenient of times, and towards the later half of the anime snaps at the demon king within ten seconds, tries to stab his own sister, then stabs the demon king, and finally, within five seconds, totally regrets it all. Like, what? Why make everyone into such obvious retards? Just, why?! Or Morgan, the supposedly hot-blooded girl: I wouldn’t call repeatedly drawing attention in one of the enemy’s capital cities hot-blooded, I’d call it retarded. She’s even restrained and silenced by the others but struggles to get free and keep trying to draw attention and get them killed! Jesus Christ!
3) There’s a big forest in front of their refuge, Albion. Imperial troops tend to roam those in search of them. They’ve encountered those soldiers there roughly two times. But no matter, a bunch of children go there by themselves to look for mushrooms, one of them gets abducted – surprise. After that arc has concluded, three characters of the main cast, two warriors and the healer girl go there by themselves to collect mushrooms again. The healer is left on her own and, fucking color me surprised, gets abducted. What has to happen for those dumbasses to realize that the forest isn’t a place to just roam around in without scouting first?! I just can’t believe them!
There also was one character arc that I almost found interesting. I say “almost” since it ends in a totally retarded fashion, again. It’s about the girl named Octavia. She’s actually a faithful imperial soldier, but gets double-crossed by her own superior and then joins the “good side.” Her antagonist is actually a girl she was together with during her trainee days, and when they fought a duel back then and the other girl lost to her, Octavia decided to not finish her off, which made her go insane since she took it as an insult. Bottom line, the other girl actually didn’t finish Octavia off back then. Since they were basically lovers. All of which gets revealed during their final fight in which Octavia then does finish her off. So why did the other girl go insane if she actually wasn the one who didn’t finish Octavia off?! I mean, she was there, why would she not remember that part?! And if they are in love, then why does fucking Octavia kill her in the end?! It makes her look like the bad guy!
I literally can’t relate to any of the characters, I can’t take any of them seriously. They keep acting in a stupid manner, jammed into forced story twists. Speaking of forced things, the same goes for the comedy in here: It’s so forced it hurts. You see the puns coming from a mile away and they aren’t even funny.
The last seven-ish episodes then have a turn for the better: It becomes something like standard fantasy. Nothing spectacular, just plain standard fantasy without the abovementioned stupid stuff. I’m not saying it’s great, but it’s okay in the end. So only like 70% of the anime are obnoxious, the remaining 30% are okay.
All in all, take the last few episodes away and the serious parts of the story are too retarded to be interesting, and the “funny” parts aren’t funny. So who’s Tears to Tiara for? I can only think of one kind of people who could enjoy this: Die-hard fantasy fans who’ve literally seen it all and are out of options. This will be one of the worst fantasy anime you’ve ever seen and to be honest, it’s just a waste of time, just because it gets enjoyable in the end doesn’t make up for hours and hours of crap. There’s just so much more and so much better fantasy anime out there, why this? It’s a game/eroge adaption and sadly, that kind of adaption usually ends up like this. I’m surprised it’s even two seasons long. The reason why is just beyond me. From me, this thing gets two points for the visuals, another one for its world, and one more for the last few episodes. That adds up to 4 out of 10 points and feels about right to me.
Rating 4/10
