The Seven Deadly Sins Season 1, Part 1 Blu-ray Review

By:AlanV [yasr_multiset setid=9] Elizabeth, the third princess of Britannia, embarks on a perilous journey to save her kingdom. Her aim is to recruit a group of powerful warriors known as the Seven Deadly Sins, to fend off the now corrupt Holy Knights. The knights are incredibly powerful and used that power to overthrow the king, and are now ruling the lands with an iron fist.Luckily for the princess she walks right into a tavern owned by Meliodas, the Sin of Wrath and captain of the Seven Deadly Sins. It just so happens that he’s also on a quest to find the rest of his comrades in arms, and he agrees to bring her along for the ride. This chance encounter kicks off the adventure that is ahead.Unfortunately, this meeting between Elizabeth and Meliodas is where things start to unravel. Elizabeth collapses on the floor from exhaustion, so Meliodas “helps” her by taking off all her armor and gawks at her while she sleeps. He is even kind of enough to fondle her breasts to make sure her heart checks out OK.This basically sets the tone for these characters and their relationship. Meliodas steals her panties, shoves his face directly into her crotch and a variety of other confusing moments. The weirdest part is that Elizabeth doesn’t seem to display any kind of emotion during these episodes. Not fear, anger or pleasure. It just feels as if she’s a doll that is waiting to be manipulated by Meliodas for a laugh, which ends up more awkward than funny.The raunchy humor works much better when it’s between Meliodas and Diane, the Sin of Envy. She is a member of the Seven Deadly Sins, has known him for a long time and been to battle with him. She is always making aggressive moves towards him, but it makes sense because that is part of her character and the bond between the two of them.The most enjoyable connection is that between Meliodas and Ban, the Sin of Greed. It’s basically a bromance that has developed from a mutual sense of respect. It’s just dumb old fun when these two share any comedic scene together. Ban also happens to be one of the more enjoyable characters because of his demeanor.It’s a shame that the moments between Meliodas and Elizabeth ruin the atmosphere. The first 10 minutes set up what feels like will be a fantasy epic, but it’s hard to digest its moments of seriousness about a fight for the future of a kingdom with all the ham-fisted fan service. It also feels as if they would’ve focused less on the humorous aspects the story would’ve been far more engrossing.VideoThe Seven Deadly Sins is presented in 1080p, and looks sharp on Blu-ray. The bit rates for these discs is very healthy, usually in the mid 20Mbps range and often popping up past 30. It’s not the most visually stunning show, but it certainly looks nice. There were no major issues encountered while viewing the series.AudioThe audio on this release is a bit different than most. It comes with the standard English and Japanese tracks in Dolby TrueHD 2.0, but is also sporting a Spanish language track in 2.0 as well. This is most likely because the show debuted on Netflix. Regardless of which language is selected performances are solid on all three languages.ExtrasThe most disappointing part of this release is how few extras there are. There is only a clean version of the opening and ending songs, Next episode previews, along with some trailers for other Funimation properties.The Seven Deadly Siins starts off strong with its story but quickly falls into a fairly mediocre fantasy anime with some misplaced fan service. The place where this first part of the season ended did make it seem like it might be worth investing time into, as it was more interesting than the rest, however whether the second half of the season will redeem itself to make it worth the payoff is unknown.