Notes on Streaming: TO THE ABANDONED SACRED BEASTS, Of Blood and Monsters
What begins as a bloody battle of beasts soon morphs into a moving meditation on the true price of warfare.
To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts
Now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Set on a world and in a place that resembles the fabled Old West of the United States, circa the 1860s (i.e., during the nation's divisive Civil War), a new anime series soon reveals its true colors.
The first episode explains that the nation has been divided into two warring camps over a major issue (not slavery, by the way). The North defeats the South (?!) by means of a forbidden technology that empowers ordinary soldiers to transform into giant monsters.
As the war is ending, Elaine, the brilliant scientist for the North, has come to the regrettable conclusion that her experimental formula has led to a special squad of soldiers who will soon all lose their sanity and wreak incredible damage and destruction. With no solution in sight, Elaine decides that the squad must all be eliminated, including Hank, the squad's leader and her secret lover.
Things do not go as planned, and Hank is soon committed to a forlorn path that brings tremendous sorrow and pity for all involved. The second episode well illustrates the misery that Hank brings as he seeks to eliminate all remaining members of his squad, and also brings him a companion, a young woman known as Schaal, who demands answers.
Based on an ongoing manga by a duo known as Maybe, first published in 2014, the anime series is set to run for 12 episodes. Of the three simulcast episodes that I've watched so far, available weekly (on Monday) via Crunchyroll, I've been struck by the variety in storytelling and the evident desire to draw upon larger themes that is manifested, especially in the second and third episodes.
Slavery has not been explicitly mentioned, but the idea remains that the soldiers who were experimented upon were all willing and valiant men with noble goals. (With one, possible, spoiler-y exception.) They then found themselves enslaved to a scientific formula with unforeseen consequences to themselves and others.
That's not the same, of course, as people who were kidnapped from their native lands, chained up, transported thousands of miles away, and brutally, even murderously treated as though they were animals. Still, there is the fleeting idea -- perhaps only in my own mind -- that these soldiers are somewhat akin to refugees, who only want to live a quiet, peaceful life, provide for their families, and contribute to their communities, yet are constantly dragged into larger battles, against their will.
We shall see.
Summing up: Great premise, plenty of action, strong drama, a little comic relief.
