This is a manga that I felt like I was reading for years and years. It just took forever to scan but the series is long with almost 100 chapters so it was a really big project. It certainly had its moments here and there but ultimately the problems were just too massive for the series to ever get past. Put it this way, the series takes place in the olden times of kingdoms and tradition. So unfortunately a lot of characters don’t make the right moves because of a sense of honor. So by the end most of the characters are just real awful and it’s hard to really try and redeem any of them. It’s actually a real shame when you look at it that way.

The story is really split into two main sagas. The first half is about Prince Sigurd as he does his best to unite the kingdom. There are tons of evil countries out there and even his own has a lot of problems. So Sigurd has to really start from the top but since he’s Prince he should be able to do a lot right? Along the way he falls in love and has to work to balance the weight of the crown with the weight of being a husband. Will he be able to unite the kingdom?

Well the second saga is about his son Seliph who has to stop the evil kingdoms so you can probably guess how that went. Seliph is a little more extreme than his father was. He is an ultra pacifist who doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Yeah Sigurd was also keen to avoid fighting but the big difference was that he would ultimately draw his sword when needed. He understood that sometimes you had to fight in order to protect what you love. Seliph takes forever and a day to learn this which is annoying.

Now the idea of two sagas is very interesting. Outside of people who played the game and knew this was coming it really comes as a shock. I was definitely not expecting a whole new 2nd act that would have brand new characters and everything. It’s really like a whole new adventure from end to end. So the idea is cool at least even if it didn’t really do much to save the series. You may be wondering, just how bad can this series get? It’s still Nintendo so what’s with the super low score? Well I hate to say it but this series broke all of the biggest cardinal rules.

First off, it pulls a Sword Art Online. The series so infamous that just using the term lets you know what’s going on. Well maybe not for everyone so basically the series decides to go grim dark by having one of the villains attack Sigurd’s wife and things get really dicey from there. The series really fell into the gutter from that point and never recovered. Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there. The series also decides to pull another Sword Art Online with a plot twist about Seliph’s wife and that reallllly gets dicey. The series really didn’t need to pull that. There are no point to the twist beyond the standard shock value that comes with it. Yeah that may have been something that happened more in the super old time this takes place in but that doesn’t mean it has to be included.

That’s my thing with a lot of these series. Just because something might be historically accurate or improves the realism, doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to include it. In fact, I would say the opposite is usually true where adding these things just weakens the story by a massive degree. The series could have done without all of this stuff. These were the two most notable moments but trust me when I say there were a whole lot of others as well. The series generally didn’t have a ton of fanservice either. Some here and there but for the most part it was avoided so I appreciated that at least.

Too bad the villains had quite a few pervs in their ranks. Unfortunately this is where the annoying honor stuff comes in again. One guy harasses one of the girls a lot but he’s a high ranking noblemen so the heroes are told to stand down. The girl even says she can take it but really? The heroes aren’t gonna do anything? Oooh yeah I’d have some problems with that. One of the quickest ways for me to lose respect for a character is when they sit back and allow villains to get away with whatever they want. That’s absolutely not something you can allow in any timeline.

The series is long and yet the ending also manages to be rushed. That’s always an impressive combination in a rather grim way. Like how do you even let that happen, it doesn’t make any sense. The main villain suddenly decides not to be super evil and basically gives up, then Seliph decides it’s time to finally have some rage and goes for the final blow. It’s really not a satisfying ending in any way and so the series couldn’t even end on a positive note.

As far as the art goes, I can’t say that it was very good. It’s extremely old and has one of those art styles that just feels really dated right now. Not like that’s a super bad thing in itself but at the same time I wouldn’t say that it goes very well. It’s not the worst art that I’ve seen but I would say that it is considerably below average. It really feels like the whole deck was stacked against this series right? Well one more main negative and then lets go onto some positives.

The power levels make no sense here. I don’t usually go into this much because most series will have some power issues as they go on. It’s pretty much impossible not to right? Well what makes this one particularly egregious is the fact that it’s so drastic. The series is mainly down to Earth. A few fighters have burning blades that increase their attack power but that’s it. That is…until some mages show up. One of the villains is a girl who can shoot meteors that can literally destroy mountains. She is shown to burn a whole town in the blink of an eye. So how do the heroes actually manage to beat a villain like this? Well, she is either told to retreat by her inept commander or she just doesn’t use her abilities until the heroes get in close to knock her out.

Eventually the heroes get mages of their own who have wind abilities and yet the heroes never really do much with him. What’s the point of having a super weapon if you’re not going to use him. I would say that the heroes absolutely did not have good tactics at the ready. There is no excuse for them to not be able to do much of anything here. They had the numbers and manpower to do better but otherwise the villains should stomp. The instant the girl with meteors was introduced, that should have been the end of the series without a doubt. You can’t really come back from that.

Okay now lets get into some positives right here. The first one is that the series does have good world building. While I may not enjoy a lot of the characters and settings, it is hard to deny that the series does a good job of going into everyone’s backstories and the various countries that are around. There are quite a few countries and they all get their big moments to shine. This is a very big world and the series makes sure to explore this as a theme. No country is left behind here, they all have a role to play.

It may be a bit convenient how they all attack one at a time in most cases but I can overlook that for now. The fight scenes are suitably dramatic when they happen and I do enjoy the climaxes for each arc. The series is at its best when it is focusing on these spectacles. There are also some characters that I actually do like quite a bit. In general the cast of part 1 is vastly superior to those in part 2. You have people who look forward to fighting and who can really hold their own.

It unfortunately goes without saying that I couldn’t get behind almost any of the romances in this series though. They tended to fall into the trap of being either risky, rushed, or just out of left field. The characters wouldn’t often have much of a reason to like each other or it felt like something out of desperation. The amount of characters who need validation from others here is rather large after all and unfortunately this always leads a villain to taking advantage of some of them from time to time.

The series’ length is something that works to its favor at least. While I didn’t care for the title in the end, there is a lot to read through if you do end up enjoying it. You can tell a lot of story in 99 chapters after all, particularly since each chapter is really long. The series definitely changes a whole lot when it ends compared to where it starts. It can be happy, sad, action based, romance focused, etc. There is a ton of variety to be found here and it feels less like a video game adaption and more like a full on epic. If it just could have avoided most of the problematic issues of the time then it would have been just fine.

Some titles can survive a few setbacks but the main problem was that these were just way too extensive. At that point the series couldn’t survive which is always a shame when you see the lost potential there. I’ve read lots of series that put in the work to be a super solid title and then they were ultimately not able to prevail. It’s just how it goes sometimes but at least there are so many other Fire Emblem titles out there that it’s not like I would ever need to even try re reading this one to get my Fire Emblem fix.

Pretty much all of the villains are just super evil to the point of it almost being comical without much other depth to them so I won’t talk about most of them here. A lot of them are your average dark mages with different spells and sorcery. Some of them do have some real ability but for the most part they tend to hide in the shadows. They have the fighters with actual skills rush into the fray and then go for the cheap shots. Usually the most notable fighters will turn good and get recruited into the army. Then rinse and repeat for the future arcs.

wo of the first fighters to show up are Lex and Azel. Azel is young but he has good magical abilities. He’s a decent fighter but gets flustered rather easily and does seem a little too young for these games of death. Granted, it’s a war so it’s not like the characters have much choice. Lex is a lot more experienced but doesn’t have the same level of ability so they have a fairly good dynamic there with a lot of contrast.

Then you have Diadora the main heroine. She has some pretty good healing spells and has a big role. Unfortunately things really don’t go very well for her at all and I wish that she would have had a better ending. She was a very nice character after all so the whole thing felt rather harsh. The cast in the series is really huge overall and there are a bunch of other heroines who seem rather similar and got to have better endings. I suppose they can’t all go out on a high note but it still felt like a bit much. I had to quickly take a look through the early chapters to remind myself on some of the different names.

One thing I will say is that the series does have that issue where a bunch of characters look really similar. For once you can say there is a bit of a lore reason for it as almost everyone is related in one way or the other but it still makes them hard to pick out in a crowd. It doesn’t help that most of the characters wear similar getups since they’re all in a war scenario.

Avra is a heroine who stood out as one of the dragon riders. I liked her combat gear and she was definitely more of a tsundere type fighter. She made sure nobody ever got the wrong idea when she would help them but of course this does lead into a romance plot. Fire Emblem is one of those series that has a ton of different romances running around but almost none of them work. It goes for more of a quantity over quality kind of thing.

Again I think part of the weakness here is in how old school everything is. All of the characters constantly talk about honor and what can or can’t be done. As a result they rarely end up seeming all that reliable to me. They will freeze up or hesitate if the big boss says anything and can also be a bit slow to help each of their heroines.

I already talked about the dancer Sylvia getting harassed and everyone was really slow to help her. Levin is a solid character as he is trying for peace and uses his wind abilities to mow down anyone in his way. It would be nice if he was more of an aggressive fighter though but there really aren’t any big characters like that. If we had more notable characters that were really bold and stood out, that would really change things. There are a bunch of other characters but again, they don’t really leap out of the page or anything like that.

Overall, Fire Emblem had a lot of potential but it didn’t live up to this. There is a ton of world building and the story goes really in depth on the kingdom setup so it probably is a must read for scholars of the franchise but I also wanted a top tier story along with that. I don’t think this would be too greedy of an ask right? In general I am still a really big fan of Fire Emblem and I look forward to seeing more stories about the franchise. I’ve generally enjoyed all of the other ones, this was really the only one that just couldn’t hold its own. I think any newer title would easily dominate this one and so I would say to definitely give this one a hard skip. Read Fire Emblem Engage instead if you want a really solid story with great art and characters.

Overall 2/10