TENROU: SIRIUS THE JAEGER

DESCRIPTION

CAST

REVIEWS

• 

  Azureal

  65/100
  A rough gem for Action fans, a turd for story enthusiasts.

  Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger is a work that perfectly embodies the words ''It works but could do better''.

  It's production and conceptualization was helmed by Masahiro Ando, better known as the director of the widely known animated movie - Sword of The Stranger.
  And his brand of cinematography and overall flow is apparent in every aspect of the show.

  The premise of the show isn't anything that has never been seen before or exceptionally original, it's the unique execution that makes it stand out, the atmosphere and the creative psuedo-victorian take on Japan that looks extremely pleasing to the eye. Though that's as far as the setting goes, it doesn't really play any major role in the overall plot and the show could easily take place at any other setting without losing anything.

  The story revolves around Yuliy - a member of a secret organization called the '"Jaegers" and their goal to hunt the vampires which aligns perfectly with his interests since he has a personal agenda against the blood suckers due to a traumatic experience in his childhood.

  The plot itself is extremely wavy in terms of quality - at points it can become gripping and sometimes it's paced poorly resulting in janky progression.
  For a vampire story, the vampires besides the deuteragonist of the show - Mikhail, the big brother of Yuliy are left largely unexplored and while there is a valid motive for their actions, it never really comes across as most of them are just following the guide book on how to be a generic "Muahahaha I'll kill you" villain.
  And that doesn't apply to only the vampires, as the rest of the Jaegers bar Willard are just as neglected beyond their initial moments. A large chunk of the supporting cast is literally there so the show has more characters, even though they contribute almost nothing to the plot.
  The show mainly plays with the dynamic between Yuliy and his brother, and to a degree with his father/son relationship with Willard which had great potential but the show's tight runtime left us scarce on actual character building or flashbacks to get us to know and care about their connection.

  Putting aside the story, it's the visuals that take the cake in the case of Sirius, the animation is phenomenal, fluid, with proper easing and flow and the show doesn't lose even the slightest bit of consistency in detail when they go for sakuga (high-budget, full frame animation) scenes, which is usually the case for many other anime.
  The action scenes are choreographed akin to a martial arts movie and are just beautiful to look at, they're made all the more impactful due to the great use of particle effects and proper timing when it came to playing tracks from the OST.

  The character designs are also great and pretty memorable, designed by the one and only Kinu Nishimura, famous for being one of the most major illustrators for the majority of Capcom's fighting games back in the 90s.
  She's a primary artist for Street Fighter 2, 3 and 4 and is involved with the Capcom VS SNK games as one of 2 primary artists, as well as the Darkstalkers series.
  So now you know the reason as to why the characters look so unique and cool.

  The sound design is stellar, with fantastic use of sound effects and a good soundtrack which consists of a lot of epic songs that will get you pumped in the given moment. Their memorability is questionable but they're a good listen nonetheless.

  Overall, the world of Sirius delivers a compact story with tons of great action but it does fall short in more than a few aspects and it could've been so much more. Here's hoping that there's a sequel one day, given the possibilities it's world has it would be a shame not to double down on it.
  I do recommend watching the show, if not for the interesting dynamic between Yuliy and Mikhail then for the amazing action and animation from Masahiro Ando's creative mind.

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• 

  carcar435867

  75/100
  Gorgeous animation that has the unfortunate fate of being paired with a cliché and predictable paint-by-numbers plot.

  What really upsets me about how poorly this series ended is that it started out SO strong. The first 2 episodes of this series are an entirely different beast than how it ended up. With brilliant animation, fight choreography and an interesting setting it has all the makings of what could be a classic but it is just utterly bogged down by its writing. ***Not a spoiler free review

  Sirius the Jaeger is not a flawless series by any stretch of the imagination. The character designs for the vamps are hilariously on the nose and so absurdly cartoonish compared to the other more grounded designs in the series. And this over the top sensibility extends beyond just the character designs and into the plot that makes up the very fabric of the series itself. For all the subtlety the animators poured into the minutia of its smallest movements and delicate shifts in facial expressions the plot itself is just so utterly lacking in any subtlety whatsoever. With a plot absolutely riddled with clichés upon clichés the writers couldn't even be bothered to at least make it interesting; the clichés are just so cut and dry, there are absolutely no interesting motivations for the opposing party at all. It was purely Good Guys vs Bad Guys.

  There are glimmers of brilliance at times especially with the first few episodes and the first arc they had which really gave me FMA vibes (in a good way) but all of that was lost as the plot progressed and it lost anything it had they made it so captivating in the first place. As beautiful as the animation was it wasn't able to save it from the bog standard "OH we gotta find this mcguffin that contains all the knowledge of the universe so we can gain eternal youth/limitless power and take over the universe" shit they've got going on. I said it reminded me of FMA but it totally failed to capture that gray morality that made fma SO strong and in the end only resembled FMA superficially.

  One of the most egregious sins the series commits is by ignoring its supporting cast. The other Jaegers look like such full and dynamic characters but ultimately they just felt like set pieces that Yuliy could work around rather than integral players in the plot. They were just props. Worst of all halfway through the series the main character just buggers off on a solo mission and leaves the rest of the Jaegers behind only to replace them with some other guy that we're supposed to care about for some reason. And then to top it all off the very end of the series comes totally out of left field with this random moral that was not alluded to AT ALL or built up over the course of the series. The writing doesn't give us a reason to agree with the conclusion that it puts forward even though it had so much time to convince us of it if it actually wanted to. It was more like they realized "aw shit we gotta end it somehow and we didn't think of a real way to end it so let's just make something up and call it a day".

  TL;DR: Brilliant animation, watch it for the first 2 episodes alone. But if you don't want your entire experience with this series to be soured stop watching it halfway through.

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