Sara Talks Anime

The first anime that I watch for the season, and it just has to have a forty-five almost forty-six minute long first episode. And man, was a lot packed into this episode. And I can completely understand why this episode was so long. They needed to introduce the plot to the point where you could say “yup, this is the series I signed up to watch”. Which means I should probably lay the groundwork for what the heck is even happening in this series.

We open the episode on a child playing around, for her father to call out to her. The child, who we quickly learn is named Alicia, goes over to where her father is, with her noticing the map on the wall and asking why there are parts of the map that are black, to which her father tells her that there are dark beasts that prevent the humans from leaving the continent, and that there are four lords that lead those dark beasts. I also want to note the fact that the man has a peg leg. While it’s never defined whether the need for a peg leg was there since his birth or if it was gained from a dark beast attack, the effect that I got from it was that it was intended to highlight how powerful dark beasts are to the audience even before we see them in combat.

We have a time skip to when Alicia is an adult, and we see her riding with a group of heroes, with all of them being equipped with weapons known as Regalia. I will interrupt my current little recap to state that later on in the episode, we learn that Regalia can only be made with a specific kind of stone known as arcanacite, and that only members of the Hidenean royal family know the techniques to craft weapons from that stone.

Anyway, at a certain point, the wagons can’t go further because the road is getting too rough…and then the dark beasts attack. The heroes manage to get a good ways into the territory, but one of the lords of the dark beasts, fittingly enough called Clevatess, is there and attacks. Since he can attack from the shadows, he’s able to sneak attack a good number of the heroes. But when Alicia (and some of the others) realize that fact, they begin working to avoid the shadows, mainly by jumping. Alicia herself even manages to get in some damage on Clevatess’s horn. Of course, this doesn’t last, because Clevatess uses his tails to attack the heroes in the air, including Alicia herself, taking out the heroes.

We take a quick break to review all that information about humans being contained to one continent we learned earlier, but we also learn that the humans are split into five territories with five different races, with each race having different specialties. Some of the races also appear to have similarities to fantasy races like orcs and elves, so if you see me call a race by their general fantasy race equivalent instead of the name they’re given in the show, then please forgive me.

After that break, however, we go to the capital city for the land of the Hideneans, which ends up getting attacked by Clevatess. While the guards of the castle try their best to protect everyone (with the king even trying to defend the forge), it ends up in vain as Clevatess ends up getting to be face to face with the king, and the king tries to reason with Clevatess.

Spoiler alert: the king gets decapitated, so obviously, the whole attempt at reasoning with Clevatess failed.

As Clevatess walks off into the night, however, he hears the cry of a baby among the rubble of the castle. While he typically would’ve paid it no mind, another Hidenean with the child insists that Clevatess take the child and raise it to survive because a child can’t pick when and where they are born.

Okay, so now we have the dark beast and the baby. Two out of three of the people played up in the little mini synopsis in the Summer 2025 lineup are here. And while we have met Alicia, she has yet to be reborn yet.

But Clevatess is a good dad, protecting the baby from getting hurt by other dark beasts, and putting it in a pit of bugs that don’t eat human skin and only eat excrement to keep the cloth that the baby is in clean. …look, I never said he used conventional methods.

Unfortunately, while he can recover the baby’s strength, he can’t do much for its hunger, so he needs to find a human that can educate him on how to raise a human…so he rebirths Alicia using dark ichor.

And on the off chance that any fans of the Roblox game Dandy’s World are reading this review, this is not a reference to Dandy’s World. The word ichor actuallly pre-dates that game.

Sorry, I need to stop my side tangents. Anyway, with her life now back to her, Clevatess demands her to show her breasts. This is a command that she unfortunately has to obey, as it appears the ichor flowing through her veins makes her bound to the orders of Clevatess, so she has to undress enough to show her breasts. As it turns out, Clevatess wanted Alicia to feed the baby milk…only for Alicia to reveal that only women that have given birth can produce milk.

Now, a quick pause. I understand that this takes place in what appears to be medieval times, so they don’t have the same medical knowledge that we have, but in the modern day, it’s not only women who have given birth that can lactate. Through a process known as induced lactation, even women that haven’t been pregnant can produce milk.

…and I just said earlier that I need to stop my side tangents!

*sigh*

But seeing that he can’t use Alicia to feed the baby, Clevatess then asks her for information on how they can feed the baby. This is where Alicia provides what she knows, and even points out that the arcanaite would be enough to hire a wet nurse. So, with some of the stone in hand, Alicia, Clevatess (known in his human disguise as Klen, but I’ll just continuously refer to him as Clevatess unless directly quoting dialogue where he’s called Klen), and the baby (now known as Luna) to head out and travel to hire a wet nurse.

During a stop on their travels, Alicia finds out that Luna is a child from the Hidenean royal family, and so thinks that Clevatess kidnapped Luna. While we as the audience know more than her, it’s still interesting to see her jump the gun with an assumption.

However, once they’re all wrapped up at that spot, they head out to continue down on the path…and get stopped by a group of bandits who knock Clevatess and Alicia out. A post-credit scene reveals that the three are now in the back of a wagon that appears to be designed to transport hostages.

There’s also stuff going on with a member of the royal family looking for Luna and one of the territories neighboring the territory of the Hideneans planning to invade the territory, but I wouldn’t say that these are developed enough in this episode to warrant me going into them.

This show is rated 16+ on Crunchyroll. And for very good reason. This episode contained a lot of blood, so if you get squeamish at the sight of blood, then this isn’t a show that I think you should watch. But if you’re okay with blood, willing to swallow your nervousness about that one scene where Alicia partially undresses to get through the rest of the episode, and watching a show that seems to leave little, if any hope, then this may be the show for you.

While I had my own doubts about this series, I think I’ll stick it out for one or two more episodes before I decide whether or not I’ll keep watching this show. But for an opening episode, I think it was rather strong, and I think the extended run time helped it out a lot.

…I’m just hoping and praying that it’s only this episode that is almost 46 minutes long, and not every single episode of the series.

ADDITIONAL POSTS ABOUT CLEVATESS:

• Clevatess Episode 2 – “The Beast Lord In Captivity”