Rusted Armors – Episode 1

Content warning: Transphobia

What’s it about? During the Warring State Period, warlords and clans are fighting amongst themselves to claim land for themselves.  In the midst of this chaos, Saika mercenaries are trying to protect their home village, but unfortunately the civil war arrives at their doorstep.

I knew this was going to be terrible, but I hoped it would at least be entertaining since the opening theme song had me bopping my head (maybe this was me projecting onto the song).  It’s an incredible thing for a show to still disappoint me despite the extremely low bar I set in order to get through it.  

Any goodwill that I had was immediately ruined when the camera started doing a weird spinning sequence in the beginning of the episode, which gave me a headache.  The CG is really awful to look at and somehow the show still expects you to care about the plot.  Basically it just throws the viewers into the middle of the conflict without trying to get us attached to any of the characters.  Most of the time, they are protecting their home village, but even when they have some down time it still doesn’t make us care about them in the slightest.  The one character who had any personality whatsoever is a trans woman named Ageha, but her gender identity is mostly disrespected by her comrades (I would’ve abandoned all of them).  

I wish this was entertainingly bad, that way I could at least say I had a good laugh and that maybe folks can watch this for the fun of it.  This is Kawahara Shinmei’s first time directing a series and while the series composer, Ezaki Ohine has some writing experience under their belt,  I find it completely vile that the production team would greenlight this quality of animation to be aired for public consumption.  I said this in my previous review, but I’ll say it again: this kind of quality is going to keep happening, if animation companies continue to value profit over their workers.   

If you managed to get through the credits, there are after credit scenes of the voice actors going on a trip to Yanomiya Shrine.  I feel really bad for them because they prayed for the series’ success and hoped for a season 2.  I sincerely wish them all the best and I hope they get better projects in the future; but YEAH, I don’t think their prayers for Rusted Armors are going to be answered.