Scum of the Brave – Episode 1

Content Warning: Blood, violence, censored gore, drug use, child soldiers

What’s it about? Down-on-his-luck deadbeat Yashiro rescues Aki from the demon lord’s mafia. No good deed goes unpunished, as Aki takes a shine to the grumpy washed up fellow crime fighter and entreats him to help her rescue her classmate. Is high schooler Aki’s trust in this cold-hearted, exhausted middle aged man misplaced, or will they rescue her friend in this modern-fantasy crime-fighting action series?

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Coming into the year of the fire horse, Scum of the Brave wishes it could burn with the passion of a wild fire, but the animation is so janky, perhaps it should have debuted last year in the year of the wood snake.

Vending machines magically change orientation in a scene and characters move with a stilted quality that betrays exactly where the show runners cut their losses. One might wonder if this was the result of bad resource allocation, or that they simply ran out of time to file their master, since the show aesthetically doesn’t look that bad despite the completely abysmal lack of polish.

The quality of the animation does greatly vary, however, so it’s likely the latter explanation, and that the show simply did not have enough time to spiff up the opening shots. But that raises even more questions, such as wondering why you would skimp on quality control for the opening moments of your show, especially when first impressions are invaluable. 

But beyond that, Scum of the Brave is very much your run of the mill edgy battle-fantasy. It stars Grumpy McGruff Guy and Saccharine Sweet the Heroine. By their powers combined, they can probably unleash a ton of violence. The series is primarily based on a popular webnovel series, which has gotten a somewhat successful webcomic adaptation. 

It’s got good bones at least, and stands apart from a lot of the typical fantasy-adjacent mush we’ve been getting for anime adaptations as of late. Scum of the Brave is a mix of urban shonen beat em’ up series with a touch of fantasy where the crime lords leading the Tokyo underworld are straight-up magical demons. Everyone of consequence seems to have some kind of cool super power along with some attitude.

Aki and her classmate, Yashiro and his card game buddies, the gruff but oddly charitable bartender: beside the canon fodder mooks the cast brutalize throughout the show, everyone’s got as much quirk as their special abilities, giving a solid amount of potential to be a fun battle-oriented series, if not for the production quality issues.

The only thing to really keep in mind, perhaps, is the show’s setting. Life comes cheap in Scum of the Brave and the heroes of the show, including the high school crime fighters, are sanctioned to kill. Yashiro even notes Aki and her classmates are part of a special school designed to recruit and train more Braves to fight crime, essentially training them to be government assassins.

And amidst the seedy fight between good versus evil, Yashiro’s own scumminess exemplifies how no good person becomes a Brave. The man is poor, lazy and short-tempered. He has long since lost any qualms about killing people if it expediently solves a problem. He can lie as well as how a fish drinks water and is an all-round boor. It’s an incredibly rote personality, but it works, I suppose.

Meanwhile Aki seems to be anything but, and her bubbly personality and apparent ability to hold on to a normal human standard of morals delivers an interesting counterpoint. Is she just as unhinged as the others beneath it all, or does she have something more profound inside her? She’s a character worth interrogating.

Finally, one issue to also consider is the show’s drug use imagery. Braves are normal people, but they fight crime while boosted with magical powers delivered via a compact injector. Similar to a stimpack, as seen in a variety of videogames, the injections imbue the Braves with magical superhuman strength that lets them survive getting shot and falling head-first off a roof.

It’s an element in an urban fantasy setting that invites a number of questions. Why have it be an injector? Will injecting yourself with magical stims eventually have some negative ramifications? Who even makes these injectors, and how are they controlled?

I’m willing to see what more is in store for another episode, as this could all be kinda fun. It’ll just depend on whether the animation quality will hold up for the cour.