Anime Spotlight #67: New Saga

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Animeister.

New year, New Saga, Ticketholders!
Also, let's get the meme crap out of the way because I know some of you are thinking about it.
Yes, this is the sixty-seventh Anime Spotlight.
And yes, I chose to review today's anime for the first Monday of the year before I even watched an episode, solely because it has the word "New" in the title.
New Saga (literally translated from Japanese as Be Stronger! New Saga, or New Saga Plus) is a one-season promotional anime (so far, there are no plans for a continuation, so that's what I'm calling it, even though the print sources have also concluded) for a novel, light-novel, and manga series written by Masayuki Abe (with different artists for each medium) and published on Shōsetsuka ni Narō (who have handled so many properties I've reviewed that I'd be here listing them all day) and by AlphaPolis (Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy).
In a fantasy world where land masses can be formed into perfect diamond shapes for easy division into morally polar opposite regions, a human hero claims victory over the physically superior demons, but when he tries to also claim the spoils of war in his last breath, a powerful artifact casts his soul back in time to give him a second chance at saving those he has lost. Accompanied by his horny mercenary best friend and a harem that includes his super-strong red-headed childhood friend, his blonde future elf-wife and her elemental mascots, and a legendary sword possessed by the de-aged spirit of an ancient queen (to say nothing of the conniving princess and her all-female royal guard or the scantily clad oni-girl he encounters on his journey), the hero must use his encyclopedic memory of his past life to fast-track or prevent major events, all the while navigating the political ramifications of his actions and out-skilling enemies and former allies alike who stand in his way, sometimes indulging in homicidal edgelord revenge tactics to get what he wants.
The tropes are done-to-death predictable, the animation is average and carried by the storytelling and character context, and the music is generic and skippable. I will probably forget this series in a month or two, but if a continuation ever did come about, I wouldn't hate myself for grabbing that dragon heart and starting over from the beginning.

Stay Tuned for more AniMonday goodness, and as always, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because dungeons full of gold are hard to come by in real life, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my wonderful content, like this Wednesday's look at the Jungle Book miniseries.
125

Animeister,
Out.

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