A wyvern, a skeleton, and a sentient mandrake walk into a bar…
Talk about false advertising. If you read the premise for Ishura, it would lead you to believe that it’s some kind of isekai battle tournament. Not something I’d be particularly interested in, and it would’ve completely passed me by if I hadn’t been watching every first episode of the season. As you can tell from that write-up, I wasn’t super impressed with the first episode either. It introduces two character that I assumed were the protagonists, and that they’d be heading straight to the tournament.
Instead, they were were just a small part of a much larger cast, with episode after episode introducing more of them. The fact that I never lost interest during all this means it must’ve been doing something right. There was just enough to the characters and setting that I wanted to see where it was going. The tournament? Doesn’t even start in the first season. Instead, it’s all about a city-state rebelling against the kingdom, starting a conflict that everyone gets caught up in one way or another. And the isekai aspect? It barely matters. Two of the characters came from another world, but it doesn’t go into a lot of detail. As far as everyone else is concerned, they’re just violent weirdos.
I’d say I was pleasantly surprised by Ishura, but that just betrays my low expectations. Still, it’s a show that plenty of things to like. There’s some political intrigue, and (most) of the characters are more than just walking superpowers showing up to fight each other. Some of them are pretty unique, like the mandrake gladiator carrying dozens of poisoned swords, or the three-armed wyvern with a shotgun. The fights themselves are entertaining and well written. I liked some of the plot lines about characters pursuing their own agendas, like how Elea found a young girl with godlike magic powers and is acting like a gentle teacher towards her while also trying to eliminate anyone who knows about her abilities, so she can monopolize them for her own gain.
There’s also a recurring theme about how, from the perspective of the common folk, all these people are maniacs, power-hungry monsters who trample the less fortunate underfoot without giving a damn. Yuno can only watch as her home town is reduced to rubble while people like Soujirou and Dakai treat it like a playground. Harghent, himself a general, is almost pathetically helpless as his ‘friend’ Alus does whatever he pleases.
However, for all the interesting ideas in Ishura, it didn’t manage to combine them all into a strong cohesive story. It was trying to do so many things with so many characters that there was a lack of focus. Although I enjoyed the fight between Alus and Regnejee, it didn’t feel like an important part of the larger conflict. The whole final battle takes place in two different cities, and at times I struggled to remember where we were, or which side the characters were on. It doesn’t help that most of them are thrill-seekers, mercenaries, or otherwise lacking a real personal stake in the outcome of the war. This may tie back into the idea that the world would be better off without these people, but there wasn’t enough focus on that aspect either. It did a lot of things pretty well, but nothing was great.
This was also only the first arc of a longer series, which means there’s plenty of loose ends. That’s not necessarily a problem, but it doens’t help the already messy structure. Still, I enjoyed it overall. It’s a rare light novel fantasy that doesn’t feel derivative. A second season has already been announced, and I will certainly be checking it out.