How would you rate episode 1 of
Devils' Crest ? How would you rate episode 2 of
In the near future, a class of elementary school students goes on a field trip to playtest the upcoming Full Dive VRMMORPG “Actual Magic.” But when they awaken from their time in the game, the real world is a markedly different place. The building is damaged, the staff is dead, monsters roam the halls, and, most surprisingly, the kids are able to use magic in the real world as well. Now it's up to them to survive and solve the mystery of what's happened to both themselves and the world.
Devils' Crest is based on the Demons' Crest light novel series by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by Yukiko Horiguchi . The anime is streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Fridays.
How was the first episode?
I can see why Amazon chose to kick things off with a two-episode release instead of a single episode for Devils' Crest : This first episode is all setup. Basically, we get a single extended scene that shows how the game system works through "show, don't tell". We see the taming skill in action as our heroes catch a horned rabbit, and we see magic and combat as they go on to fight a dragon. However, it never tells us why or how this information matters. In fact, the episode doesn't even convey the anime's actual premise—it just ends suddenly on an unsettling cliffhanger after an episode-long info dump.
That said, beyond the world-building, a few strong character-interaction scenes jump-start character development. While this first episode is mostly focused on the core group of Yuuma, Sawa, Kenji, and Minagi, there is one scene where our heroes meet their classmate rivals and clash with them. While it doesn't deliver much depth, it at least gives us a baseline for who each rival is and their place in the classroom social hierarchy—i.e., above our heroes.
But really, that's all there is to say about this first episode. It's basically just a group of kids playing a video game—and something weird happening when they log out. It looks above average, and the Ado opening theme is a good one (the opening animation matches it well). But, to be frank, if it weren't for the pedigree behind this anime—i.e., Reki Kawahara of Sword Art Online fame—I don't know how interested I'd be in watching episode 2 even with the cliffhanger.
After a rather bland first episode of kids playing an online game, the setup starts to pay off. We can immediately surmise that Yuuma is the last of his friends to wake up from the test-play session. He understands the least of what's going on—making him the perfect audience proxy. He's confronted with a once pristine room now filled with rubble and broken VR pods—and he is attacked by what looks like a classmate using a severed human arm as a club.
In the ensuing fight, the series premise is laid out: the real world is now infected with monsters, and our elementary school heroes can use magic just like they did in the game. And, of course, given the aforementioned severed arm and the body they find later, the danger of death is very real. So this isn't the story of being trapped in a VR death game or forced to play a real-world one. Rather, Devils' Crest merges the two.
More than that, all the adults are either dead or missing. This leaves us with trappings similar to Sword Art Online , but with a Lord of the Flies twist (though that latter bit has yet to pay off in any meaningful way).
Beyond setting up the premise, this second episode is focused on character development. It is filled with flashbacks that tease important past events regarding our young heroes. From these, we learn not only why Sumika—Yuuma's friend-turned-monster—is more than just the class princess she first appears to be, but also why Yuuma refuses to give up on her. It adds more emotional drama to their conflict and makes her circumstances as tragic as they are mysterious.
And on top of that is the looming ethical dilemma. Under the magic system, Sumika is a tamed monster—meaning she is Yuuma's property. While he tamed her because it was the only alternative to killing her in self-defense, he may soon be forced to decide whether he should use her in battle or not—and given her current state, he can't even ask her feelings on the matter.
All in all, this episode is a major step up from the first episode but still feels like it is mainly just laying the groundwork. Hopefully, with the foundation established through the first two episodes, this show can get moving in earnest from now on.
I appreciate how much misdirection this premiere had. I know the episode started and ended with a horror vibe, but most of the runtime was spent implying a darker past and future than I originally guessed. One minute it seems like this is going to be a “trapped in a video game" type of story; the next minute it seems like there's some kind of conspiracy going on involving these children. The narrative jumps around a lot. Given how young the characters are, I wonder how far apart the current dark circumstances are from the past some of these characters are still dealing with.
Sometimes it's hard to win me over with a premiere that feels like it's dropping me in the middle of a story that has already started. A part of me was put off by most of the dialogue being characters talking about each other, as if I was already supposed to know who everybody has history with. I think that is only a detriment if the show never plans on properly delving into those relationships and how they impact the story. Thankfully, the show promises it will do exactly that. I also wonder whether the game that took up most of this episode was just the inciting incident, or a smokescreen to establish those character dynamics.
There are so many elements at play here, but I'm not sure what matters and what doesn't yet. I'd like to think the pods and the online game tie into the larger narrative because there's so much attention to detail that it would be a waste if they didn't. While the action isn't anything super flashy, I appreciate that all the characters fight like the actual game class they represent. So many video game-inspired anime have everybody shoot off large, flashy attacks, so I'm glad the action was used to establish camaraderie between the leads while also hinting at a larger world. There's a lot of potential here, and I'm curious to see what exactly gets followed up on.
So it does look like the game and class system tie into the larger narrative, like I originally wanted. However, it didn't tie into the story in the way that I originally thought it would. It looks like the show is going for an inversion of the typical “trapped in a video game” setup, where players escape a video game only to realize that many of the dangers and mechanics of that game bled into the real world. I love the idea of certain fantastical elements that feel very natural or commonplace in a game becoming absolutely horrifying once moved to the real world. The fact that the game mechanics seem to have infected Watamaki and turned her into some kind of night creature adds an extra layer of unsettling to this setup. I am curious what happens next.
The show goes out of its way to explain very specific world-building elements to answer a lot of questions. The contact lenses create a holographic interface that all the kids acquired to play this game, and that's what lets them see their game HUD. They even use the fact that some senses can't be viewed through a device in the game to figure out they are in the real world. It leads me to believe the devices are less a way to interact with these supernatural creatures and more a means for people to channel the abilities to fight them. But then what exactly happened between when they got into the game and when they got out? How much time has actually passed, and what exactly is going on?
Those questions get me curious and genuinely excited, but my biggest problem isn't the plot or the setup; it's the tone. I don't think a couple of kids discovering a dead body is a scene that should've followed the one where the girl of the group was being stereotypically jealous of the fact that the boys think another girl is pretty. It also felt especially weird that such a comment came from Sawa, a character who, so far, has wanted to take the situation most seriously, given that she woke up before Kenji and Yuma. I have no idea why she's dressed the way that she is either. I think it's implied that the suit is a manifestation of her magic, but the other two boys didn't have anything like that when they activated their magic for the first time, so either something else happened before Sawa woke up or this is the show's weird, shallow attempt at just putting the one female character in a cute devil outfit. The atmosphere and literal implications of the story are terrifying, but the show hasn't done enough to justify having these weirdly cute slice-of-life moments in between the heavier stuff. Some of the dub performances also don't help, with Kenji in particular sounding a little stilted and over the top, but not in a way that fits. If the show can better establish how seriously I'm supposed to take it, or lean in the direction that best serves the story, I know I would be more excited to see what happens next.
From the creator of Sword Art Online , the influential series where if you die in the game you die in real life, comes Devils' Crest , a new anime where if you die in real life, you die in the game! Fascinating!
Seriously though, it's fine for writers to have a niche, but I can't say I'm particularly enthralled by either Reki Kawahara 's fixation on full-dive VRMMORPGs or his talents as a character writer. The episode starts with a cold open: a child wakes up in some kind of pod, only to find all the others broken open and empty. He looks around for a minute, lost, when another child wanders in, covered in blood and holding a human arm. Wow! How intriguing!
I mean, not really, but let's say I was intrigued for argument's sake. Cut to twenty goddamn minutes of the most boilerplate, unoriginal footage of a group of children playing a video game. They define terminology to each other; to their credit, they explain “instances,” a word not everyone might already know, instead of dungeons and hit points. They all know each other in real life, so they squabble and replicate all their real-life dynamics. I know you'll be shocked when the class bully rolls up and arrogantly declares that he's totally going to own the anodyne protagonist at the game. One of the boys in the party is kind of dim, and the girls constantly scold him.
They beat the boss and – brace yourself – they can't log out! Holy cow! What could possibly be going on!!