The Seven Deadly Sins: Prisoners of the Sky (2018)

"When shooting stars traverse the heavens in a cross, Britannia will be met with an enormous menace. It will signal the beginning of a trial, preordained since ancient times. And mark the onset of a holy war... between a guiding hand of light and the bloodline of darkness."
- An old Britannian poem found in Nanatsu no Taizai chapter 16

Nanatsu no Taizai (Seven Deadly Sins, 2012) by Nakaba Suzuki is a long-running shonen manga series, known for its Dragon Ball-esque fights right down to the introduction of power levels, that has taken the world by storm during its run as it has at times managed to become the second best selling (in yearly sales) manga series, only behind One Piece. The story of Nanatsu no Taizai takes place during an older era of Britannia, following a mysterious boy known as Dragon's Sin of Wrath "Meliodas," and the adventure to find the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins gang that were exiled and thought to have died. The story moves with heavy emphasis on medieval settings, and it deals heavily with past events, regrets (the main characters each have their own 'sins' which they have committed that they have to live with) and slight amounts of romance with most of the characters.

The franchise so far along with the manga has two animated seasones, both 24 episodes in length, each adapting their respective arcs that take about 100 chapters per, and it also has a short animated special season between seasons one and two, but it's not special at all in reality, and it consists mostly of mediocre anime original material.
In 2018 the series got its first animated film along with a special manga chapter leading to the movie -the chapter done by the author Nakaba - that deals with a canon event, a battle between Mael of the four archangels and Meliodas of the ten commandments fighting each other in the skies with some neat yin-yang themed artwork as well.

Absolutely baseless hype

The Prisoners of the Sky film itself deals with a human-like being with wings, a 'Celestial' Meliodas-lookalike named Solaad who arrived down from the heavens as Meliodas at the same time as Meliodas goes up to the sky islands with Hawk the pig. The first half to movie deals with mostly irrelevant stuff and the important parts are handled in a mediocre way. While the OST is great as always with the atmosphere it creates, the movie itself is incredibly slow and the animations are very rough to look at, especially in the first half. The movie is clearly mass production stock-grade stuff, created only to give fans of the anime series more content to watch. It's too bad that the content in the two hours of the film is still not enough for me to prefer it over getting more content from the weekly manga chapters.

The plot of the movie is kind of silly. There's a group of demons hailed to be comparable to the Ten Commandments, although they are much weaker than they are hyped to be when their feats are showcased, and their leader's motivation for doing evil deeds is because 3000 years ago Meliodas did not choose him as one of the Ten Commandments, even though he believes he'd surpassed them in power. It feels almost like a joke. The villains are terrible in this movie and most of the sins just get generic moments, Escanor one-shots one of the main six antagonists, Gowther uses illusions, King petrifies, Ban tanks bloody attacks with his immortality and Diane uses Heavy Metal to protect herself.

Man In Arms

Sad to say, however, is that from start to finish this movie is mostly awful. Everything is extremely mediocre so much so that it hurts. I've seen my fair share of animated films and this type of bad writing is what I hate the most and for some reason this type of lack of effort put into a cinematic work is the norm for shounen films. Terrible movie-only villains, really bad, generic and cliche usage of side characters and a laughable storyline that always ends the same way. So boring and bland that my head aches from thinking about it. The movie basically shined like Escanor with Cruel Sun with how bad it was. 3 out of 10 would be my rating due to Escanor getting two cool-looking scenes and Meliodas's short clash after he gets his sacred treasure sword 'Lostvayne' from Elizabeth.

While it's not a must-read or -watch, I've been following the series weekly for over four years now for my weekly dose of action. Last summer it has come to my attention that the series is actually reaching its conclusion soon, which was to be expected as the series seemingly has itself split into three main arcs between chapters 1 and 300. The manga has some inspirational moments to it when it comes to how I love an adventure shonen series to be written like - there's a time in the manga when Meliodas is in the pub and the text boxes from every random character fill up the screen. Those also contain foreshadowing about the famed King Arthur of Camelot. I think that the author Nakaba Suzuki did a really fine job setting that moment up - if the series was less battle-esque and more adventurous, it could be pretty fascinating to read, in my opinion. There was also a scene in the beginning of the story that's really beautifully presented. It's a scene in chapter 16 mentioning the enormous threat that is heading towards Britannia. You'll notice it as well immediately if you were to read the chapter. That scene is one of the most atmospheric ones I have ever seen from manga series with its beautiful art and aesthetics, as well as the differently presented dialogue that takes place during those panels.
I don't think I'll be reviewing other shounen like this on this mystery blog of mine, but right now this review exists because I want to say my respects to a dying series.

There's a lot to talk about the series, for sure, but about the movie, Nanatsu no Taizai: Prisoners of the Sky? Nothing. The movie was just a silly trashy money print that had no effort put into its storyboarding, animation, soundtrack or anything, really. Every single thing about it was awful.