Not even the term hot mess applies to Holy Knight.
What They Say:
Holy Knight is the story of a young male vampire slayer who reluctantly falls in love with a beautiful female vampire exchange student and their personal struggles to avoid their bloody predestined conflict.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Sometimes, it works best to try and produce a review by attempting to work through the material.
So, the story supposedly goes that the main female character has to run away from only for her to be in the present trying to get a child conceived. In that pursuit, she sees the male lead and the male lead’s female friend from childhood and attempts to whisk him away so that she can conceive his child. As said female lead attempts to have her virginity taken by the male lead who has his virginity interruptions ensue which prevents female lead from attempting to conceive the child. As the story progresses, it becomes more apparent that the world is embedded in vampire lore, Where vampires run amok along with transforming animals that can talk to people. The male lead’s female friend gets dragged into the issue while men who want to kill said vampires. This scenario then leads to…
Okay I’m done attempting to work through as because, by now, you can tell that I simply do not know what I was watching. I will however, provide details of what I thought happened.
Holy Knight attempts to be a modern day vampire lore drama, however it fails at trying to be that drama. It lacks the urgency of importance of conceiving a child or why characters are doing the methods that they’re supposed to. Rather it just kind of throws it in there with paper dialogue being read to catch up the audience. At multiple times I felt that I was watching parts of episodes that I somehow missed. It was to the point where I will admit, I went to check the episode count as well as the series to see if I missed anything. Nope two episodes and both not really redeeming at all. As a drama you ’re supposed to make people connect with characters, not even the NSA could connect them. You’d have a better chance of finding Jimmy Hoffa than the plot and if you can find it properly, please tell me.
Now let’s focus on the sexual content of Holy Knight. There really isn’t that much sexiness in the series so much as sexual assault that leadenness only the darkest parts of anime and it’s adult counterpart. Clothes that peel off easier than fruit rollups, panty shots, all of them are so uselessly implemented throughout Holy Knight in a horrible effort to sexually tantalize the audience. Instead of parts coming off as ecchi comedy in certain situation, it comes off as “edgy” with no redeemable fan service in anyway and the laughter parts non existent. It’s forced, contrived and pointed out directly more annoyingly than little kids begging for candy (sorry little kids no offense). It’s to the point where you can easily see the parts where the director was saying “here’s where you’re supposed to be aroused” which just makes it easier to roll your eyes through.
The constant assault of the female lead, verbally, physically, makes it feel misogynistic and that goes as well for the female friend of the male lead. Ripped clothes have been a stable of ecchi anime, yet it’s one of the very few times it comes off a cruel trying to demean the female characters without purpose. Boob grabbing jokes, once again, trope of ecchi anime, once again, not handled with any agency other than to mess with the female lead and poorly at that. Forced kissing, which should normally be a trope that makes you feel icky, comes off as revolting unintentionally as it pushes a point of women not being useful at all in Holy Knight.
On top of that they managed to create new pet peeves. Never would I thought acronyms can be abused. Never would I thought that I would absolutely hate on typical cat girls. Never would I thought would I get irate at imbecile body guards, and yet Holy Knight manages to make these happen. Their virgin bashing jokes come off as just plain insulting and has no real merit to the story at all. In fact, it just feels out of place entirely. Not to mention Holy Knight enacted a whole bunch of my old pet peeves (character abandonment, incoherent storyline, etc.) which only made things worst.
In Summary:
I’m going to be blunt: I’m giving MB Voiceworks a mulligan. When you have a work such as a Holy Knight, you can only do so much to redeem it. Even with that in mind, it becomes obvious that the adaption is considerably not up to snuff of standard works. With a different work, they can produce better work ask give themselves a chance to truly thrive. If this dub is the extent of their ADR prowess, it is going to be a rough ride through the anime community.
As for Holy Knight, to say that you would need to consume substances in order to enhance the show would be an insult to those who do consume said substances to enhance various events (which I would like to take the time and say you do not need to do substances to have fun). The plot is scattered throughout. It has significant pacing issues that only could be resolved by simply resetting the series and redoing it in the beginning. I can’t remember the characters, I can’t really describe plot after watching it. After watching and coming up with an initial draft I decided to sleep on it thinking if they were any redeemable factors: there are none. Do not waste your time on Holy Knight.
Grade: F
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Nintendo Wii U Gamepad
Authors Note: I just read the description now, and trust me, you’d never think that description happened in a million years. Shout out to Chris B for finding a description.