To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts – Review – Episode 1

As mentioned in a previous post, we will be reviewing Summer 2019 Anime shows: To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts (aka Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e) is a supernatural science fiction fantasy drama anime. It’s part of the Summer 2019 season of Anime and it’s actually pretty good (so far)! I’ve watched the first episode and it definitely looks like following (provided it can sort out it’s timing and pacing a little).

The show opens with the scene at the start of a battlefield. A female commentator fills us in with a backstory, “The new continent of Patria. 100 years after immigrants from the old continent established a new democratic nation here, the discovery of a new energy ore called Somnium caused conflict between the northern city of industry and the southern city of mining, which erupted into civil war, splitting the nation.”

Then there are scenes of the northern army headed towards an impenetrable looking walled city and suffering (and mostly dying) from the onslaught of munitions being fired on them from the relative safety of the battlements.

The narrator then goes on to tell us that the Northern government, fearful of losing the war, used forbidden technology to give themselves an advantage.

Basically, they found a way to turn normal people into an assortment of powerful monsters called Incarnates.  Sure enough, we then see a group of human looking soldiers wearing white, suddenly change into Incarnate monsters and proceed to rip the enemy a new one.  It was pretty one sided, they seemed almost indestructible.   For this, the citizens of the north refer to them as Sacred Beasts.

However, there was a scene later in the episode with a rather disrespectful Northern Army officer who thought of the incarnates simply as weapons and that pretty much set the scene for where the show was headed I think.

As the episode progresses we again see the terrible destructive force of the incarnates as they sweep through the southern kingdom – but we also learn that each time they change from human into an incarnate (and do battle) they become more susceptible to a soul draining illness which lessens their ability to control their power and destructive capacity.

Cain and Hank, Incarnates Officers of the Northern Army

The three main protagonists in this episode are two commanders, Cain and Hank, both childhood buddies, and a scientist called Elaine.  It seems that Elaine (who accompanies the Incarnates but isn’t actually one herself) was the scientist who actually made them incarnate.

Elaine feels very responsible for this work and is endeavouring to try and produce a cure for this loss of soul/control that the soldiers are suffering but as we learn, she seems to have failed. She decides that the destruction that incarnates could cause would be catastrophic and inevitable even in peacetime. She doesn’t think that she will be able to find a cure anytime soon and therefore decides that as the war nears it’s concludion, to destroy the soldiers by shooting them herself and then to take her own life.

She explains this to Hank (there is apparently an unrequited love interest here by the way) and before he can argue or even discuss it with her, she shoots him! I don’t think she would have made him a particularly good girlfriend and any designs Hank might have had for getting inside Elaine’s undies were pretty much dashed with a shot into his belly.

Lovely but deadly, Elaine is about to shoot Hank

She then turns to Cain who had followed silently behind her. She thanks him for agreeing to help her finish off the rest of the soldiers before they kill themselves.  But Cain has had second thoughts and says, “no.”  With a maniacle laugh, he shoots the hapless Elaine in the boobs and the camera pans away as we see a bleeding Hank pass out.  Frankly this was all very rushed and dramatic and didn’t particularly follow well from the way the characters were being set up earlier in the show.

Cain shoots Elaine

Hank wakes up in a hospital and is approached by a drop dead lovely military official called Second Lieutenant Liza Rencastle (of the Patria Intelligence division) who tells him that he has been unconscious for two months, that the war has been over for a similar amount of time and that Elaine, Cain and many of the other incarnates split up and disappeared.

Worse still, many of the incarnates are losing their souls/control and killing citizens/civilians and causing trouble.  Many are being hunted.

The lovely Lieutenant Liza

Hank looks awefully well ripped for someone who has been in a coma for two months!  No wonder Lovely Liza looks concerned/confused/hot and bothered (difficult to tell 🙂 ).

As the end-credits roll, we see that Hank has left the hospital and is fighting a fellow incarnate who is stealing jewels and expensive objects from some people that he has just killed. Hanks hair turns white (but he still pretty much stays in human form) and he quickly dispatches the incarnate dude.  The final, final end (there seemed to be quite a lot of final scenes) introduced us to another major character, a teenage girl who we are led to believe, is the Daughter of a Dragon!

The scene plays out as though Hank has killed the Dragon (an incarnate) who had a daughter who is now, understandably, quite upset with Hank, who, has some explaining to do.

Mean looking Teen – The Dragons Daughter

It was all very rushed to be honest, the opening seemed pretty well paced but the end was all over the place.  The manga is quite popular (although some have said that its a little boring). The graphics on the anime were ok and it seemed that the story could develop into something quite interesting but I’m not sure what yet.  I’ll definitely be looking into this again next week, but so far, I’m not certain if I’ll be following show this after the three episodes (I normally watch sci fi anime for three episodes to give them a chance before deciding to follow them or not).

I’d rate the a worthy and possibly great 6.8 out of 10. What did you think?

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The pictures, characters and everything else associated with the ‘To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts’ series is, as far as I can tell, owned by MAPPA, Tokyo MX, BS11, MBS and Crunchyroll. All rights reserved.

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