The Downfall of the Seven Deadly Sins…

Article at a glance:

• Seven Deadly Sins had insane potential, great concept, strong early mystery, fantastic character hooks, but somewhere along the way, the story just… lost the plot.
• The manga still shines with some genuinely peak moments, yet the later arcs spiral into messy power scaling, character sidelining, and lore bloat that drag the whole thing down.
• By the time Chaos, retcons, and character rewrites show up, the series that started as a tight, intriguing adventure ends up buried under its own ambition.

Look, I’ll make this clear. I inherently love the concept of this anime. This is such a cool interpretation of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, and other interesting Biblical lore in general. There was so much they could do with this story, and yeah, for a good while, they were cooking. But then slowly, things started falling apart. And I am not even talking about the production quality. Yeah, sure, the production quality played a huge part in the anime’s downfall, but man, you can’t blame everything on the production.

I speedran through a lot of 7DS manga, and I have a lot of thoughts. Yes, the manga. I chose the manga simply because it’d take less time than watching the anime and because I wouldn’t be distracted by the production issues nearly as much. And don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of like here. The conclusion to the main story feels natural and deserved, but for a while, things make no sense.

So yeah, welcome back to another one of these long-form articles, and today we are talking about the downfall of The Seven Deadly Sins. So let’s just get started,

Spoilers ahead, of course.

The Good

As I said, I absolutely love the concept of the story. The whole idea of taking all these Biblical concepts and making a whole fantasy world out of them is pretty creative and interesting. To add to this, the story has SUCH a strong opening hook. The world is full of mysteries, the “gather the team” aspect is surprisingly well done, the backstory of each Sin is interesting, and there’s still so much you WANT to learn about. Also, the first opening theme is an absolute banger as well.

The power levels made sense early on, too. This made the early fights more interesting; I can’t say the same for the later fights. Oh yeah, speaking of, there is only one person with a consistent Power Level throughout the series: Escanor. Escanor is absolutely the best character in the whole series. One of the most iconic anime characters, perioud. He is a power fantasy done well. Every single time he is on screen, you KNOW you’re about to see something crazy. Even the conclusion of his character is heartfelt. I salute you, my glorious king, Escanor.

Speaking of conclusions, the manga had a decent ending. Sure, it was a bit messy at times, trying to juggle so many plot threads. But the core character arcs were finished the conclusion felt natural. That’s more than what I can say for a lot of other manga endings. But well, just wait, this will get worse..

The Bad

Late series power levels make absolutely no sense. Meliodas is probably the worst offender of this. His power levels jump so quickly just for the plot to progress. Instead of being interesting, most fights just become a slog in which the winner is whoever the plot finds convenient. When the Ten Commandments are introduced, they are terrifying, but after just a short while, they’re treated a actual fodder. This applies to the Sins like Diane, King, and Gowther, too. Even Merlin’s power is inconsistent as hell.

Also, the series starts with each Sin having more or less equal narrative weight and importance. But over time, it’s just Meliodas, Merlin, Ban, and Escanor that are important. Don’t even get me started on the side characters. The series is named after the seven deadly sins. So you know, you’d expect them to be important, but nah, it just turns into Meliodas and his trauma show in the latter half. It gets to the point where we start cutting off arcs from other characters just to add more lore to Meliodas. Every single major event somehow loops back to Meliodas.

This one is a relatively minor complaint compared to the others, but the tonal inconsistency and uneven pacing kill me sometimes. Like, you could come back from a dark backstory with heavy narrative implications, and the next scene will literally be a random joke.

The UGLY

As much as I appreciate the ending for its narrative closure and completion of character arcs, man, it did end up creating a whole other mess, too. The whole Chaos thing comes out of nowhere, and it just feels like cheap sequel bait. And that is exactly what it is. They introduce a whole new cosmology so late into the series that it ends up undermining what was otherwise a pretty good ending. This plays into a larger problem with the series in general. The whole story is so caught up in introducing grander stakes that it just forgets to let things breathe and sink in.

Merlin and Meliodas have to be two of the most frustrating characters in the series, man. As I talked about earlier, every single major event from the past is SOMEHOW related to Meliodas. It is almost as if nothing happened without him being present for it. What’s this? A cool plot twist? Yeah, you BET it is related to Meliodas. And of course, Merling. They did her so dirty. First off, her “real form” sucks; there was no need to do that. Also, her “true motives” make zero sense and completely undermine her character arc before that in the whole series.

Beyond that, I do think that this show has a little bit of a loli problem… but uh.. yeah, let’s not talk about that. And of course, the production issues… but as I said, I won’t be talking about them as much here.

That is all for now

Honestly, it hurts to see how much potential Seven Deadly Sins had. The series starts off so strong but then it just falls off a cliff after the Ten Commandments arc. There are still a bunch of interesting things in the story, don’t get me wrong, but the consistency and charm just evaporate. And I didn’t even talk about how characters just show up unharmed later on, even though you saw them basically get atomized in a previous scene lol. But yeah, let me know what you guys think in the comments. I will take my leave here. See ya!

Also, check out my thoughts on May I Ask for One Final Thing here!