Grimoire of Zero

Episode 5

It's a “two steps forward, one step back” situation on Grimoire of Zero this week, with the episode making notable improvements on some of the complaints I've brought up over the past few weeks, but not before forcing its way through a slog of a first half. I'm starting to see glimmers of a series that isn't just occasionally entertaining, but consistently so. Grimoire of Zero isn't there yet, but it might get there someday soon.

That first half really is a chore to get through though, and it all comes down to the problems with this series' direction. The events in questions should be interesting, seeing as Albus and the others have made their way to a village of witches that have been absolutely slaughtered. These scenes should be tense, affecting, and engaging; instead, they're painfully uninteresting. This is largely because the animation, the dialogue, the entire rhythm of the show goes unchanged regardless of how the scene changes. For the last five episodes, whether we're in the middle of expository dialogue or wacky hijinks or even the show's scant few fight scenes, the feeling of the show doesn't really change. As we find out more about how the mysterious Thirteen that Zero and Mercenary have been tailing has laid waste to a village of witches on behalf of a government that hates all magic users, we should be on the edge of our seats, but everything blurs together tonally, as if the gang is still chumming it by a river in the middle of the woods.

Things do pick up in the last half though, with Thirteen's arrival leading to a sequence of events that's much more interesting than anything we've seen before. Mercenary's flashback to his days of reveling in bloody, inhuman combat draw a great contrast to the cuddlier exterior Zero relishes so much, and the whole sequence of his consciousness being blasted out of his body was much more visually creative than having the crew just stand around talking. The show's limited animation still made the scene more interesting in concept than execution, but it remained a step above the show's more frequently generic trappings.

The same can be said for the beginning of Thirteen and Zero's battle, at least mostly. For a show that's ostensibly about a society hunting down magic users, we've yet to see much magic happen. Thankfully, Zero and Thirteen have enough bad blood between them to hurl some magic fireballs at each other, which is always appreciated. I also continue to enjoy Zero's fierce protectiveness of Mercenary, and since she's known Thirteen for at least a decade, she does seem to be an adult, so I'll be more comfortable if the series decides to make them a romantic pair.

While I enjoy the material between Zero and Thirteen, Thirteen himself is a really underwhelming presence, at least in this episode. His dialogue is the usual trite pile of clichés, and his character design is so uninteresting that you could mistake him for a background character, were it not for his oversized magic staff. There's plenty of time left for him to make an impression, and I really hope he does, because a weak villain is the last thing this series needs.

I will say that GoZ has the strangest sensibilities when it comes to how it ends episodes. Often it seems to just cut off in the middle of a scene, which I can tell is the show trying to create suspense with a cliffhanger, but the execution is just slightly off. I still want to know what happens next week, but it's in spite of these kinds of directorial decisions, not because of them. There's hope for Grimoire of Zero yet; we just have to see if it can overcome its own clumsy execution and fulfill its untapped potential.

Rating: C+

Grimoire of Zero is currently streaming on Amazon's Anime Strike.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.