The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System — Episode 1

Content Warning: Photosensitive Imagery, Parental Abuse, Blood

What’s it about? Born into a prestigious family of master swordsmen, Elymas Edvaugh’s future is ruined when he awakens a defective class. Disowned, down on his luck, Elymas suddenly regains memories of another life, only to realize that the world he lives in currently is just like a VR game he once experienced. Now, his defective class may prove to be his greatest strength as he rewrites fate and charts his own path to success!

It is a dark and stormy night when our premiere begins. Elymas Edvaugh, one of many masters of the blade, unlocks the Heavy Knight class—a class known for its weak offensive abilities and widely considered to be defective. In a lineage that prioritizes strength above all else, this may as well be a curse from the gods, especially since it results in Elymas’ ruin. Born an heir to his household, he was expected to have a successful Ritual of Divine Blessing. So when he ends up with a junk class in this world—but a skilled class in his time in our world playing a VR game—it looks like that’s curtains for his story as a rich noble.

But of course, this isn’t the end: Elymas Edvaugh’s story is just beginning, and while his distant cousin Malice stands to take his place in his father’s heart, Elymas’ returned otherworldly memories mean he holds the ability to turn this wicked twist of fate into something that gives him power beyond human imagination. It’s just up to him how he’ll shape his destiny…

First things first: this show is loud. Like they are going ham on the sound effects, from every magic barrage to the swing of a sword. It’s also very visually hard to look at as it seems be at a higher frame rate, though that might also be because of the wild amount of camera movement that’s going on. Definitely heed that photosensitive warning because I, a migraine haver, had the start of one by the end of this episode. That said, it’s nice to see fantasy anime not have a muddy color palette: while things are desaturated, they’re not to a point where the world is washed in brown. 

At least not completely. That’s Exiled Heavy Knight’s sole victory.

That loud presence also extends to the animation which is… unsettling because of how smooth everything is. At first, I was like, “Is this AI?” but I think it is strangely worse: it’s GoHands overusing camera angles and jiggle physics for every. Single. Movement. And it sucks because it really does make it hard to engage in this very mediocre premiere that has a villain who is literally named MALICE. Like, would it hurt this premiere to have some subtly in anything it does? Apparently so because it never lets up with anything during its twenty-four minute run.

This was borderline unwatchable for me, not because I was immediately bored by the “twist” of Malice taking Elymas’ place as heir, but because there’s just too much damn movement. My eyes were stinging and no lie, I had the start of an aura migraine by the end of my review. Whether it was the hair wiggin’ like a Tyler Perry wig form the beauty supply or the retro panning shots of cityscapes and environments, this had me longing for my ice pack and dark bedroom. On top of that, The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System isn’t even particularly interesting. It’s the same concept as so many web novel to light novel to manga to anime adaptations we’ve seen before, and at this point, it’s a sin, especially when the season has forty plus series to cover.

My verdict is that I don’t think anyone should watch this unless they can handle ANGLES ANGLE ANGLES FX ANGLES as the type of animation on display here. Even then, I’m not sure anyone’s missing anything because in truth, Exiled Heavy Knight just isn’t all that interesting, even though it kind of has potential to be a just okay series. From its complicated (pejorative) opening fight to its ending, I found myself wishing I was sent to another world where maybe, I didn’t get sick, though that seems par for the course with GoHands as a general experience.