Tanitha's Cosmic Musings

Happy New Year 2026 everyone. I hope this new year will bring people love, joy and happiness.

Except for books, I also love watching every medium available, from series to films (a big shout to “K-Pop Demon Hunters”) to anime. For the past month I have been watching Bastard!! a shonen anime series with 2 seasons, with Season 1 having 24 episodes and Season 2 having 15 episodes. The story is not complete, but sources say that Season 3 is in development hell, so we will see if it ever comes out, or if I will have to seek out the manga series to read and see what happens in the end (if the manga is complete!).

This series should not work at all. From the exaggerated character of Dark Schneider, to Metallicana to all the shenaningans that happen in this series, everything is absolutely messed up in some way. First of all, the world building: something happened 400 years ago and it reset civilization. So here we are 400 years ago, and there is a dark wizard, Dark Schneider, that has been put inside a boy, Lucien. In order to bring back the wizard, a virgin girl with priestly powers has to kiss the boy while performing a magic ritual.

Almost every character in the series, is named after heavy metal bands. Almost every spell cast is named after heavy metal bands. Dark Schneider is an allusion to Dee Snider of Twisted Sisters. The Helloween spell is obviously an allusion to the band Halloween. Metallicana is an allusion to Metallica and so on. And it was a fun thing to try and find all the allusions and easter eggs to heavy metal bands and songs.

The magic system is as arbitrary as it goes. When someone alludes that this is the most powerful spell in existence, you can bet that in the next moment, or in the next episode, there will be a more powerful spell cast by someone. Every episode, without any hint of how/why, a number of characters are more powerful than the last episode.

And let’s not count how many times Dark Schneider has regenerated, come back to life, regenerated limbs. And not just him but most characters seem that they cannot die, unless they are the baddie. And even when they are the baddie, you know that there is a strong possibility, that they will come back in one of the next episodes.

Sometimes the characters seem to be exaggerated versions of themselves, sometimes they act like little children, even when they are fully grown adults. Especially the main character, Dark Schneider, acts like a schoolboy at times, a teenager at others. All the characters lack consistency; the minor or background characters act mostly like a chorus in a sarcastic rendition of a greek tragedy or comedy, in this case.

Was this an enjoyable series? Absolutely, and whilst the above would be disastrous in another series, in this one they work to its advantage. Would I rewatch it? Doubtful. I do not think this is a series that I will watch again in the near future. I enjoyed it the first time around, but I do not think I will enjoy watching it a second time.

My next watch will be Fallout: Season 2 on Amazon Prime. Let’s see if it will be as good as the first season.