English Dub Season Review: The Idhun Chronicles Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

A teenager named Jack arrives home one day to find his dad strangely comatose on the couch. He calls out for his mother, only to find a strange man standing over her unconscious body. The man moves to attack him, but suddenly he’s rescued by two magical men. They take him back to their homebase, located on Limbhad. There, Jack formally meets Shail, Alsan, and Victoria, the three members of the resistance.

They come from a world called Idhun, where three years ago, a tyrant called Ashran took power. Many fled, and now Ashran is sending an assassin by the name of Kirtash to track them down. He’s helped by a sorcerer called Elrion, the one who took Jack’s parents from him. Whenever magic is detected (some Idhunians can use magic), Kirtash comes on the scene to end whoever started the magic.

Together, Jack and his new friends battle against Kirtash and Ashran in an effort to have peace rule once again on Idhun. But it’s a hard struggle to fight, as Jack and Victoria are barely able to control their powers. Eventually, they manage to infiltrate Ashran’s palace on Idhun, but Elrion catches them and places a curse on Alsan. Shail is killed protecting Victoria from Kirtash, and she’s tired of it all. As the resistance falls apart, Jack alone is the one who can hold them all together now.

Our Take:

This is one of the more interesting Netflix anime series’ in a while — at least from a behind the scenes perspective. The Idhun Chronicles is the company’s first Spanish-produced show that it’s calling an anime. The series has been in the works for over two years, and is based on a trilogy of popular books in Spain. It’s a little unclear at this point whether the other two books will be adapted, but if the first five episodes are anything to go by, I wouldn’t mind if everything stopped here.

The Idhun Chronicles is not a hard-hitting show. Sure, there’s blood and guts. People die in battles fought with magical spells and clashing swords. But there’s never any real gravity behind it because we’re never given enough time with the characters to care about what’s under the surface. And the show hides it well. Even after five episodes, Jack is virtually a blank slate. I suppose having both your parents die and your entire life uprooted will do that for you, but it makes him a boring main character to follow. He’s also just really, really dumb. In the first episode alone, Jack gets fed up with this new magical world. He tries to jump off a balcony to escape Victoria’s monologuing, injures his leg, yet keeps limping away into an overgrown forest. In the forest, he sees a mystical barrier, and runs full speed at it three times before realizing it’s no use. His sole moment of real intelligence comes when Alsan is trying to teach him how to fight. When he tries to give him a sword, Jack points out that guns would be much more effective against the evil tyrant.

From a plot standpoint, Idhun does nothing to set itself apart from every other adventure/sci-fi/drama in recent history. There are the rebels, a band of youthful underdogs, and the big bad evil power, who sits atop his throne and makes lackies do his bidding. Jack is the orphan who has nothing left in the world, and so devotes himself full time to fighting evil. Shail is the brains, Alsan is the braun. We’re never really quite sure what all this fighting is for beyond simplistic concepts like restoring peace and other such platitudes. This is the type of show where almost every episode includes lines of exposition like: “Three years, ago the bad guy used astral conjunction to exterminate all the dragons and the unicorns.”

All this might be forgivable if the series look good. Unfortunately, The Idhun Chronicles does not look like a show that took over two years to animate. Character designs are bland and forgettable, the settings are generic, and there’s not much actual movement to the animation in most scenes. The series does work in some nimble direction and unique camera work to combat this, like a closeup of a bike tire churning gravel cutting directly to a wide shot showing Jack pulling up to his house. It’s very nice, and almost makes me squint past the rest of the visuals. Almost.

As a new series from Spanish creators, The Idhun Chronicles is a show I’d love to see be successful. I just wish it were more enjoyable to watch as a viewer. Rather than crafting a bold new tale, the choice to rely on a series of popular books might be the downfall here. Science fiction and fantasy work well in books because our imaginations can fill in the gaps for us. Unicorns and dragons might be exciting to watch on screen, but in this series, they somehow feel a lot more dull.