English Dub Review: The Seven Deadly Sins: Grudge of Edinburgh Part One

If there’s one good thing that working for a cartoon blog/newsite has afforded me over the years, it’s the ability to check out new shows I keep putting off. For the longest time I’ve put off shows like Seven Deadly Sins. When the movies come along, it’s a great entry point to get a basic grasp on what everyone is supposed to be about. Well, this is true most of the time, anyway. Grudge of Edinburgh may not be that time.

The story was top notch…for what we got. If I were to pay for a physical copy, or go to the theatres to see this, I better be seeing something with it, or I’d be pissed as fuck. Grudge of Edinburgh clocks in at a paltry 52 minutes which is roughly two and a half episodes in length. I can’t even say this is an The Avengers: Infinity War / Endgame type of situation, because at least Infinity War told a complete story. Grudge of Edinburgh doesn’t. It ends on a softball of a cliffhanger. Oh, and we get to wait until August to get the second part? That’s just lovely.

Anyway, Grudge of Edinburgh did a great job getting us to that cliffhanger I was talking about earlier. We follow Tristian (who’s the son of the main character of the main series, Meliodas) as he’s trying to control not only a power that can take him over, but also his power to heal. We start the movie with a scene of Tristian training with a kid who we later find out is Lancelot. Because the movie is very short, we have to push the tension to a break neck speed, so that we can get that combat we hunger for during an anime movie.

Ultimately, that’s what most anime movies are: a vehicle to get from one action piece to another. Grudge of Edinburgh added enough tension with Tristian’s powers to keep us guessing just long enough to make us think Tristian could lose himself to his power. However, the twist cliffhanger was where things were more bittersweet. On one hand, I’m screaming “Holy shit! It’s that kid from the beginning!” On the other, I’m going “wait, this is over already?” All of this just made me want the full movie. But no, I get to wait until August.

I have one major gripe, though. There is one lesson Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero has taught me. CG anime done in the way of a cut scene you’d see in Dragon Ball Fighter Z is not the way. The jerky animation is distracting, and takes away from the great storytelling…which is not normal for an anime movie. That’s what makes the animation so frustrating.

I know this is going to be the way of the world going forward, because its more cost effective. Just like in Super Hero, and to a lesser extent One Piece‘s Red, the CG helps makes the action sequences feel more dynamic. However, just like with Super Hero, the constant CG feels like I’m watching a DB Fighter Z cutscene instead of feeling an absolute banger of a fight sequence like in Red.

If this is the future of anime, it makes me glad my wheelhouse is 80s-90s anime.

Overall, Grudge of Edinburgh has a great, short story that leads right into part two. The only thing I would want is to watch the entire movie. Splitting it into two parts hurts. And I get that it will take time due to the animation. However, if we do something radical and use traditional animation, I feel that the audience will expand. This full CG animation thing isn’t it at all.