English Dub Season Review: The Seven Deadly Sins :Four Knights of the Apocalypse Season 1 Part 2

We return once again to the universe of The Seven Deadly Sins to continue the story of its fledgling spin-off, Four Knights of the Apocalypse, which now officially concludes its first proper season. When last we left new protagonist Percival, he had left home after witnessing his knight father kill his grandfather and had gained a merry band of adventurers who vaguely filled the personality slots of some of the old protagonist group. But as one of the fabled Knights of the Apocalypse, it was only a matter of time before Percival met the other three, which he does here. Two of those three you may have met before, if you watched the two movies released between these shows about Tristan and Lancelot, the kids of Meliodas, Elizabeth, Ban, and Elaine. The fourth, Gawain, is a totally new character, aside from the fact that she is essentially a diet version of Escanor, down to even wielding his old powers. With the title characters finally having gathered, it’s uncertain what will happen to Donny, Nasiens, and Anne, but they’ve held their own as protagonists so far, so hopefully they won’t be pushed too far into the background now that the main group has united.

The plot for this section is pretty much the same as the first one, at least for the first half (third quarter?). The Percival Platoon continues on their journey and facing Holy Knights from Camelot as they move forward, garnished with the occasional involvement of a legacy character from the old show. In one such case, they come across Gowther, who has taken to looking after demons who sat out the big Holy War at the end of the old show, which is a much more wholesome use of that character than…most of his existence, so that’s a neat way of developing his character without having him take up too much time away from the new protagonists. After that, a smaller arc gives the group one last big fight to show their chops before the rest of the Knights are introduced, punctuated by the reveal that Sin, the little fox companion who has been leading them the whole time, is actually Lancelot. And finally, the rest of the season brings them to Liones, which naturally has the most returning character appearances and locks everyone into the fight against Arthur while giving the Knights a chance to all work together for the first time.

Unfortunately…this is where things crash and burn, possibly irreparably, though if you’re a fan of this series it may not phase you at all at this point. Essentially, while the rest of the characters are having varying levels of proper development and growth, Lancelot goes off on his own and meets a twelve year old girl named Guinivere who kisses him on the mouth, vowing that he will love her in four years when she is his age and he is twenty. If that wasn’t bad enough, as I have hinted in previous reviews, returning Jericho finally makes her own reappearance and reveals that she (as an adult) fell in love with Lancelot as a child after being stuck in another realm with him for years (something that is very quickly glossed over) and has now joined Arthur’s side so she can be with an illusion version of Lancelot. So, to sum it up, they turned an existing character into a pedophile, and then foreshadowed that the character whom the pedophile is in love with may also become a pedophile at some point in the future, which makes the imprinting nonsense in Twilight look tame by comparison. So…yeah, that really tanked my enjoyment of the show, but if that doesn’t bother you, for whatever reason, I’m sure you’ll have a fine time with this. Either way, there’s only enough released manga material to make one more season at the moment, so we’re probably not going to get more anime for awhile anyway, but if they do I’m sure we’ll cover it. At gunpoint. Or maybe they’ll kill off Jericho really quickly and we can just forget that part ever happened? Please? I’ll be your best friend!