A raindrop falls from a tree and wakes up a red-haired boy who is reclining against an ancient stone. He stands up and jumps. We see fire and stars. A melancholic, evocative female voice starts singing. This is the opening, and our protagonist stands strong among villagers with spears, facing fire and destruction. We see lots of intriguing character designs, suggesting a journey with many battles. Then, the actual story begins. The villagers are fighting the invading “Macaques,” intelligent white gorillas with Stone Age weaponry. Kai, our protagonist, is counting on the more expert Manso for his survival. Suddenly, Lord Olha, the eldest son of village ruler Moloch (?!) Vecin appears and uses his spiritual energy to defeat the enemy. After the battle, the victorious humans, extract and, ahem, well, consume the hearts—sorry, the “godstones”—of their enemies, which fill them with spiritual strength. There is a catch, though: Lord Olha gets the lion’s share. The way of this world is that only the strong may become stronger. This applies to literal food, too, as we see after an unending expository scene that makes the point around twenty times. Kai, our red-haired protagonist, wanders around and trains. He wants to become strong, too, and perhaps there is a path open to him. He has scattered memories from another world. And one of them seems to involve…fire magic.

The dialogue kills it. This would have been an awesome episode (with a cool name! Teogonia, the birth of the gods. Go Hesiod!) if the subtitles had somehow disappeared. The music is on point, the character designs are above average, and the settings feel authentic. The monsters are unique and threatening, if a bit goofy. But from the moment these characters open their mouths, all we hear is terrible “as you know, Bill” dialogue where they repeat the same concept again and again, following no logic but the plot’s. It feels like the old “Marvel method” comics where the artist would draw and make speech balloons, letting the writer add the dialogue later, and so we got lots of scenes where Spiderman pointed out: “He’s jumping through the window!” In the show, a character shows us the village cemetery, then a second one for orphans and outcasts, ruined and covered in ivy. So, the other character points out that it is covered in ivy. Then, the first character adds that the graves are not taken care of. You get the idea. Add quite a lot of flashbacks to other parts of this 20-minute episode (just why?), and the thing is dead. Which is a shame, because the visuals are just so strong and evocative, and the rhythm is not bad at all. The battles are a bit slow and perhaps would also need some tweaking, but that is all. I’m counting this as a failure, but I’ll be interested in further works by this studio, Asahi Production. Come on, guys. You almost have it there.

Teogonia is available on Crunchyroll. You can deactivate the subtitles, too!