Its the mercy of a professional killer an assassins pride. Kufa Vampir Assassins Pride was one of the anime that caught my eye for the Fall 2019 season. It had many things that appealed to me: edgylooking protagonist cute magical girls fantasy world promising action beautiful art and an interesting storyline synopsis that peaked my interested. What can I say? This anime had a HUGE amount of potential to become one of my favorite anime of 2019 but Im sad to say that my hopes didnt last very long. When the first episode had aired it presented us with art/animation that was very beautiful and unique with how they used lighting. The art style alone was enough to create a mysterious atmosphere and set the stage for the storyline. So far so good right? Well I do have to say that while the first episode was great and all I couldnt help but feel like something was off. I didnt really give it much thought afterwards since it was only the first episode. After waiting a week we got episode 2 and it became abundantly clear what we should expect from here on out: a rushed and cut product from the source material with progressively deteriorating art/animation. Unfortunately I was one of the people that stuck around in hopes that one of these episodes would mark a turning point and make the anime better but that day never came. Soon I found myself just watching for the OP and graphics because the storyline was becoming more and more unclear as time passed. By the end of the anime I was just watching it because I was almost finished anyways. What once was a highly anticipated anime for me soon turned into a chore I had to mark off my list every week. Whats the most critical way I could describe Assassins Pride now? A promising anime with beautiful art AMAZING OP and promising storyline that soon felt like a poorly executed harem with underaged girls. By the end of it I felt like all the fanservice and love interest was added in order to scrap and recycle what was left of the nonexistent and inconsistent storyline. Wondering how well this anime did on its scoring? Lets find out: Art and Animation: 5.6/10 The only things preventing me from giving this a lower score was the fact that the first episode was really good and the OP had a unique art style that made me never tired of watching it. Unfortunately that was as good as it got with this anime. The reason why I scored this anime so harshly was because its main appeal was action. There were so many mistakes and flaws that easily ruined the viewers experience while watching. At first it wasnt very apparent but normally fluid movements were soon starting to become stiff. Action scenes were becoming shorter and shorter. And the choreography of the action scenes got as generic as possible and looked like someone was just sliding a picture of someone in a pose across the screen. You could tell that they were trying to hide this fact by adding zoomed in camera angles so you couldnt see the bigger picture. There were moments where groups of enemies summoning animations or attacks LITERALLY looked cheaply copy and pasted onto the screen. The oncepromising looking mana attacks soon turned into just a useless cosmetic that marked someone as a magic user and hype moments with finishing moves were VERY underwhelming. Id tell you to take a look at Kufa and Melidas final battle with the masked boss so you could see how awful the art/animation got. Im not exaggerating or making any of this up either ALL of what Im saying and listing off can be clearly seen. Even the daytoday activities showed a drop in quality with the character models. Their faces especially took a HUGE drop in quality and I sometimes could only recognize Kufa by his outfit and black hair. Unfortunately it felt like the studio spent half their budget on the first episode because of how bad the quality got. Storyline and Character Progression: 4.9/10 This is where Assassins Pride failed the worst. I knew that the anime had felt a little bit rushed in the beginning but after doing a bit of research and a few more episodes I soon realized how bad the damage was. The studio honestly felt like it was a good idea to adapt over a DOZEN chapters of information into a single episode. While it never got this extreme again it didnt get any better either. The storyline was being cut so much that it was confusing to the viewers. Even I couldnt keep up with where the storyline was even going. There were some instances where they would skip entire fight scenes and skip to the end of it which no doubt left viewers confused and unsatisfied. In the end the storyline was almost nonexistent and seemed to be replaced by a harem with underaged girls and a brother complex. Even these elements felt out of place coming from someone who honestly enjoys a good harem anime and was a poor excuse of a harem or love interest. I dont even want to talk about character progression since the pacing of the storyline ruined any and all hopes of having a decent connection with any of the characters. Even Kufa who had a decent chance at becoming an interesting character lacked impact or depth because of how quickly the storyline was progressing. Character progression felt like more of an afterthought that they added on the side of the storyline just for filler. Character interactions especially with the villains were as runofthemill as you could get. Bad guy gives evil speech good guy gives good speech they throw hands for a bit good guy almost loses good guy turns up out of nowhere and defeats bad guy. This formula was executed in the most basic way imaginable and when you add the mediocre action art/animation it made this anime a pain to watch. Soundtrack and Audio: 7.8/10 The Saving Grace of Assassins Pride. What can I say? I really enjoyed both the OP and ED and the OP is even in my top list of favorites. Its really hard to screw up in this department and even Assassins Pride wasnt utter trash that messed this up. I didnt really have any problems with the voice actors since there werent really any emotional moments I could score them on. There wasnt really a soundtrack present throughout the anime so the musicality wasnt a huge factor. Sound effects were average quality and I didnt have any complaints here. There wasnt any satisfying sound effects you get from other action anime and those whove seen some of the Fate Series know what Im talking about. Just....why? This is one of the first anime Ive experienced an utter letdown with. They had all the right tools to make a highlight of 2019 for me and add to the exciting new year. Unfortunately they fell short miserably. Its no surprise that its one of my lowest rated anime with a score of 6.1. In the end I TRULY still want this anime to succeed. This is why I hope that this anime gets a reboot in the future so that it gets done justice. Until then were stuck with one of the most cut and rushed anime Ive seen since Tokyo Ghoul:re. Thank you so much for reading and Ill see you later Streaming Platform: Crunchyroll