Nanatsu no Taizai – 05

One of the problems facing this series is the presentation of threats. In many other shounen you can just bring out some powerful villain and have him force the protagonist to get stronger. In seven deadly sins however our main characters are already veteran legendary warriors with tremendous power. So just adding in a strong warrior would undermine their status as legendary. So the author has to find ways to place the Sins in disadvantageous positions. The two villains in this episode did just that.

Our first villain attempted to poison Meliodas but when didn’t work he used the princess as a way to prevent Meliodas from going on the offensive and forced him to defend her. On top of that the villain had what seemed to be a method of teleportation. So the threat was not to Meliodas but to those he was protecting. This made Meliodas think out of the box and presented a better fight than a battle of who call pull out the biggest deus ex machina. The second villain also used a troublesome technique, making Daine mistake Meliodas for a holy knight and for Meliodas likewise. Leaving the episode with the two unknowingly fighting each other. This is a great threat to a character who is already powerful. Using their power against them.

While I find the villains costumes ridiculous at least their methods are interesting. But there were some small issues here. The fanservice for one. When escaping Ban the third sin stripped a female knight of her armour. Which turned out to be a waste of time because it didn’t fit. All so we could have her be embarrassed in her underwear. Well we do need the money shots don’t we? Still Ban is at least proving to be a enjoyable Sin, even with the unoriginal personality. It was good seeing him in the flashback egging on the Meliodas to strike him in anger only to see him get angry for the first time. He’s going to need a little more fleshing out to differentiate himself from the many other battle manic type shounen characters.  Another was the doctors death. This because it was pretty obvious what the intent was and this being a shounen series I have to wonder if he’s genuinely dead. Shounen characters have survived swords through the chest before gentlemen. This series so far has been solid but future episodes depend on whether they can keep these overpowered character’s battles interesting.