Review of the Garden Of Sinners

73/100

Synopsis: warrior girl and nerd team up to solve murders

TL;DR: watch if you like beautiful murder mysteries that are a bit predictable. Dodge if you dislike pretentious anime.

The Garden of Sinners is a web novel which was adapted by the studio ufotable into 9 different movies. Ufotable sinked quite a bit of effort into these visuals, the highlight of the series. For whatever reason, this series punches heavily above its weight among reviewers, despite being a relatively unknown anime, basically every big reviewer I know has watched at least the first movie, only being outdone by Steins;Gate and Madoka Magicka.

The Garden of Sinners is about two high school students who collaborate with a woman to solve mysteries. Each of the movies is about an individual mystery or plot point, giving it a unique semi-episodic structure that I have only seen in Darker than Black. This gives it the benefit of the natural variability that arises from episodic anime while giving the series the time to flesh out the individual plots.

The movies are also not in chronological order, and worst, there seems to be no agreement within the community regarding the optimal watch order. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I lost anything from watching them in the release order. The story itself is also not told in chronological order within the actual movies, which I cannot say I appreciate.

Unfortunately, most of these movies (besides the 5th, from what I remember) suffer from predictability - you usually know what you are getting and the culprits are too obvious. Some of the movies are also kind of pretentious and try to hard to be deep. Some people are very bothered by pretentious anime, so if that applies to you, then I would suggest dodging.

In terms of the characters - the two highlights here are the high schoolers. The male high schooler is the typical bland self-insert reddit protagonist which plagues the genre. Shiki, the female one, is much better - she’s unique enough to be interesting but lacks the narcissism that is prevalent in modern female leads. In terms of big 5 personality traits, I would describe her as introverted, disagreeable, and calm — masculine but not in the grating modern sense.

I think this movie would benefit a lot from a extraverted/disagreeable/neurotic male lead - somebody like Tamaki Suoh from Ouran or Varrick from the Legend of Korra. Two introverts and two stable people don’t work together that well in a series - you need an extravert to be dominant, and a neurotic to create tension.

The movies also vary reasonably in quality - here is my assessment of each one:

Movie 1 (7/10):

This is the first one, where they investigate a series of suicides. There’s not much to comment about this one, besides the fact that most people seem to agree this is one of the weaker movies.

Movie 2 (7/10):

This one delves into how the two main characters met. Not much to comment on, either.

Movie 3 (7/10):

This one is about a multiple homicide that was associated with a gangrape. One of the better movies, in my opinion.

Movie 4 (7/10):

This movie also delves into Shiki’s past, taking place after the 2nd one.

Movie 5 (8/10):

By far the highlight of the whole series. This one is about an odd murder that doesn’t appear to have actually resulted in a killing.

Movie 6 (4/10):

Generally agreed to be the worst in the series. Hardly remember anything about it, besides the fact it was bad.

Movie 7 (5/10):

Generally agreed to be one of the better movies, but I personally don’t see the magic in it. I thought the villain was rather cartoonish and the message incoherent.

Movie 8 (5/10):

Epilogue. Basically the two main characters talk it out for like 40 minutes. Boring.

Movie 9 (8/10):

This one is about the investigation of a bomber, and contains the overall ending of the franchise.

Scoring:

Design (12/15):

• Distinguishment: (3/5) - good but generic art

• Animation: (2/2)

• Sound: (2/2) - don’t remember it, but its ufotable

• OST: (2/2)

• Character designs: (1/2) - bland

• Backgrounds: (2/2) - highlight of the series

Script (39/50):

• Character Investment: (7/10)

• Character Realism: (0/2) - realism is not a “garden of sinners thing”.

• Character Complexity: (2/3)

• Plot solidness: (5/5) - never noticed any plot holes or bad writing

• Plot complexity: (7/10) - somewhat predictable

• Ending: (4/5)

• Pacing: (4/5) - no opinion

• Stakes: (8/10)

Value (9/15):

• Thematic elements: (2/5) - it’s kind of pretentious, and tries too hard to be deep, especially in the first movies

• Skill: (4/5)

• Originality: (3/5) - magic/mystery genre is kind of oversaturated

Enjoyment (13/20):

• Did I like it: (13/20)