Imagine the seven deadly sins all wanted to bang you. This is that, but also good.
What They Say:
Things have been looking sunny for Arata Kasuga lately. Unfortunately, it's been the wrong sun in the sky, and the mysterious Breakdown Phenomenon that accompanied it destroyed his town and stole his beloved cousin Hiijiri, leaving Arata in a fantasy world of his own creation!
There's still a chance to save her, however, as the appearance of the Black Sun also revealed Arata's potential abilities as a mage, placing him in the powerful Demon Lord class.
But first, since Arata and his newfound magical talents are far too dangerous to leave to their own devices, he's immediately whisked off to the Royal Biblia Academy. That's where he'll meet seven beautiful female mages whose powers are intrinsically tied to the same sins that Arata has to master to put his world back together. Of course, the tricky part is that they have their own plans for him as well! The lessons in sin are about to begin as Arata takes on the Trinity Seven!
The Review:
Audio:
Let's be real for a second. No one goes into a DVD release expecting to be blown away by audio quality anymore. It's not like Dolby Digital 2.0 is dreadful or anything- I'm just so spoiled by blu-ray quality everything that DVD audio always seems lackluster after immediate jumps. This just so happens to be one of those unfortunate times where I move from blu-ray to DVD so quickly that imperfections and impurities jump out at you like a rogue camel cricket. Apart from lackluster audio, however, both dubs are viable for viewing. The staff isn't packed with huge names or anything like that- but it does have Brittney Karbowski and I will easily seize any opportunity put in front of me to rave about her. Other than that, there are no major dropouts and the majority of the series has equalized levels. Things can get kind of quiet at random intervals but it's nothing to cry over.
Video:
Much like the audio portion, the visuals on this release aren't anything to write home about. Trinity Seven was never the most aesthetically pleasing show to begin with but seeing everything dialed down really hammers in its simplistic color palate and lack of detail. Of course, 480i doesn't help at all and from a sheer visual perspective, this is on the low side even for the DVD spectrum. If you're going to buy this series, just get the blu-ray. Yes, this is something I would say for literally every DVD with a blu-ray copy available, but this time I'm highlighting it. The video quality really isn't great here.
Packaging:
The standard DVD collection of Trinity Seven leaves everyone but Lilith off its main cover. Considering that she was the poster girl for the series, this really isn't all that surprising. And even though it's clear that a more simplistic approach was taken in designing this particular graphic, its distinct lack of detail leaves something to be desired. In many cases, the rear cover will make up for this. Unfortunately, the rear of this release suffers the same issue. Lack of detail is compensated by several fanservice-heavy thumbnails and one character design that would be off-putting to the typical viewer. Trinity Seven is in no way a wholesome show, but I believe that its posterior design paints it as a lot trashier than it really is and may be slightly misleading.
Menu:
As always, the menus on this Sentai release are pretty darn boring. This section of the review is honestly getting kind of irrelevant considering no one even pays attention to menus beside me anymore...but look where we are. I get that there are better uses of money than creating interesting designs that people will just skip over immediately, but that doesn't change the fact that the menus are flat-out boring. This is no exception.
Special Features:
As has become the industry norm for standard releases, Trinity Seven's complete series comes with nothing more than textless themes and trailers for more Sentai shows. The trailers included for this release are Magical Warfare, Wizard Barristers, Blade Dance of the Elementalers, and Log Horizon 2. There is no commentary or anything cool.
Content:
Harems are a magical thing, aren't they? The beta protagonist, the girls who exist only to fall in love with said protagonist, and the giant evil sun that steals your childhood friend and tosses the world into utter ruin. Oh, also, the protagonist in Trinity Seven is totally not beta, but I felt obligated to toss that into the mixture because that's how harems are probably 99% of the time.
Trinity Seven follows the life of Arata Kasuga after, you guessed it, his childhood friend is taken from him. But just before she meets an untimely demise, she gifts him a relic that he can use to 'reshape humanity'. In this particular case, that relic happens to be a grimoire which bestows incredible magic power unto him. How his childhood friend got that grimoire? Not a big deal. What is a big deal, however, is that Arata's new world is filled with a plethora of hot girls that are essentially lining up for him the moment he gets there. Instead of acting like any other anime protagonist would in this situation (IE: Not even realizing it's happening), Arata totally accepts it and borderline seduces these girls any chance he gets. Now, before you interpret that persona in the smuttier fashion, it is important to note that the driving force of Trinity Seven is comedy rather than ecchi stuff. Sure, the ecchi stuff is probably a close second, but you can't dismiss Trinity Seven as pure smut without seeing what else it has to offer.
Each of the girls in Arata's new school represents one of the seven deadly sins. I don't think they ever come out and say who is who but it's relatively easy to surmise and theorize for the most part. In addition to being personifications, these girls are instrumental in Arata's journey to save humanity from....something (The sun, I guess?) and bring his semi-girlfriend back to life. Each of them possesses a certain skill set that, through the power of his grimoire, he is able to learn at a surprisingly quick rate. Of course, it wouldn't be any fun having just twelve episodes of training, so things start going off the rails rather quickly when it is revealed that Arata is damn close to becoming some sort of demon.
At the end of the day, friendship prevails and we're left with plenty of room for a sequel that will probably never happen. I'm not really sure how this series fared in Japan but if it's anything close to how it was treated in the US, I think it's safe to say it may have been overlooked. You see, Trinity Seven sounds pretty bad and cliche on paper but, in all actuality, it's one of the most well-rounded harems I've seen. The soundtrack is tight, the characters (Despite being very archetypical) are all fun and interesting, the story is an actual story, and the protagonist is pretty damn awesome. For an ecchi comedy, Trinity Seven somehow manages to never feel like senseless sex-pandering and, instead, comes across simply as a damn fun time.
If you're into harems, magic, or both then I definitely recommend giving this series a shot. There really isn't any part of it that's inherently bad. That being said, don't expect anything to blow you away either. It's memorable and likeable enough to purchase but I can't imagine anyone ever citing it as their absolute favorite. With that in mind, I say give it a shot. If worse comes to worst you can just go back to watching Dragonball Z or whatever it is you do.
In Summary:
Trinity Seven sports a memorable character roster and one of the more interesting and entertaining harem protagonists out there. While the story may seem overly convoluted or nonsensical at times, the series possesses a lot more substance than others of the same genre and it's important to keep that in mind when evaluating it. Based on the sheer enjoyment I was able to leech from this series, I'd go ahead and say that it's pretty darn good. And for a studio as small and new as Seven Arcs, I'd also say this is a solid glimpse into the type of product we should be expecting from them. Both this series and the studio itself has immense potential for growth and, based on Trinity Seven alone, I'm excited to see what the future may hold.
Features:
English Dolby Digital 2.0 Audio, Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 Audio, English Subtitles, Textless Opening/Ending Songs, trailers from Sentai Filmworks.
Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: C-
Video Grade: C-
Packaging Grade: C
Menu Grade: C-
Extras Grade: C+
Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: August 16, 2016
MSRP: $59.98
Running Time: 300 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i Anamorphic
Aspect Ratio: 16x9
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