Bastard!! Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy

Put it on after getting home from the boozer as something to just watch till i fell asleep and found it enjoyable enough after 13 pints of Stella and some jägers bombs. Dumb cartoon that you don't have to take to serious to enjoy.

I don't know if I should even like this, I'm certainly not target audience for this kind of production (or maybe I am) but I bloody love this. The writing is masterfully stupid with humor that hits you unexpectedly and frequently, accompanied with animation that's mostly top notch.

Nobody who's thirsty will protest the sexually themed animation, it all adds up to brilliantly mock male ideals and Hollywood tropes in my view, and yet, my primal brain does enjoy "Bastard!!"s great renditions of the female form - albeit idealized. Anyone who's tired of conforming to sensibilities of contemporary society, or everything else in our downspiraling world, may find some much needed stupid escapism here and I can't think of anything better than these perfect bite sizes of well animated debauchery to forget my day and bask in the glorious light of Dark Schneider - who, in my heart of hearts, I confess I wish to be.

Violence and nudity is not an issue. The way it's written is what I hate. Dark fantasy is supposed to be dark like Berserk, Claymore or close to Attack in Titan. This was just weird. To me it seemed tonally deaf with nudity and violence aimed at a more mature audience while the dialogue is on par with Dragon Ball Z or Samurai Pizza Cats.

Edgy good guy "I'm going to kill you for I am a mighty wizard and handsome to boot!"

Badguy: "No you won't and I will lick your virgins from head to toe, because I'm evil you see?! Muahahahaha!"

Edgy Good Guy: "Now you've done it, I'll..."

Then the minions squirt mud in awe of their master and then the protagonist when he beats their master.

The women in the harem are worried but also insecure about the other girl within aforementioned harem. Every fight that could be cool gets overly explained and becomes ridiculous, because of the overly present sidecharacters fawning.

^This doesn't happen to this extent in good Dark Fantasy Anime. There was an attempt. It failed. Better luck next time Netflix. Maybe get Ghost in the Shell 1995, the Berserk series 1997 in your library or fix Helsing's subtitles not being in French on Dutch Netflix...

"Bastard!!" Is a rare sight to see on Netflix, yet it's a breath of fresh air at the same time. In a move against their painfully "woke" content as of late, "Bastard!!" Takes the edgy harem anime and mixes it with the dark fantasy genre, which sometimes comes off as a little confused. Still, it's a pleasant mix of gore, humor, and intriguing "ecchi" (or sexiness) that can feel contrived at times. All in all, it's a fun anime that panders to a crowd not hung up on strange ideologies who just want to enjoy some anime without it being censored into oblivion. That said, the show is strangely frightened of nipples, as the occasional bare breasts look like the female equivalent of a mannequin, while the main male character has at least some semblance of nipples. If the creators could have found a solid through line, Bastard could've easily been a 10/10.

The production values are only ok but hell has finally frozen over. LIDEN FILMS produced a presentable adaptation that doesn´t skip any plot beats on top of that! Many viewers will be confused why the promised "boundary-pushing" edge fest lacks gore, nudity or sex and has this much levity. Nudity and gore are rare until Vol 18 in the manga. That volume introduced Porno Dianno -she looks just like one would think- and throws the already splintering plot in the trash. The manga then fully gave up, moved over into a Seinen magazine and unwounded into a hard-to-follow comedy porno without real continuity. There is even a time jump to fully weed out the previous audience. Aka. Me. The first 60% of the manga pushed Shounen Jump boundaries but not Shounen demographic boundaries. The Devilman was published 12 years earlier and went waaay further. So did Jump´s very own Fist of the North Star 4 years before Bastard. The Netanime on the other hand skipped gnarly executions that would have been in ep 1&2, ep 6 didn´t feature the pornographic sex scene the fully redrawn Kanzenban version of Vol 2 has, ep 8 lacks a head explosion and so on. Even the 90s OVAs added nudity and settled on a grittier tone but the 2022 version remains committed to staying presentable to 13-year-old-boys. That was the manga´s demographic for a decade so fresh viewers can only stay for the plot. The bonkers later stages of the manga will simply never be reached due to the faithful and thus slow pacing. I prefer the 6 much faster-moving OVAs from the 90s due to better designs, animation, colors and all the skipped fluff but those only reached 2/3rd into Vol 5. S1E13 ends 1/5th into Vol 5. I wouldn´t mind an adaptation till Vol 12 and then transition into an original ending leading to a 3 season show. The manga starts ripping of Evangelion a few volumes after Vol 12 and one thing is not like the other...

In summary: Don´t expect a Hard-R Dark Fantasy near-hentai and set your expectation for a horny yet flaccid 80s-themed teen action/comedy/fantasy hybrid instead. For that the anime works fine and it´s not an isekai! 6.5/10.