Adapting Yuu Shimizu’s light novel series, The Demon Sword Master of Excalibur Academy is an interesting power fantasy show that takes the some of the common principles of isekai but adds a satisfying timey-wimey twist.

We’re introduced to Leonis Magnus as a skeletal demon lord, who, along with his loyal army and the Goddess of Rebellion, Roselia, remain as the last of the dark forces standing in the war against humanity. Seeing his defeat in front of him, Leonis seals himself away and casts a resurrection spell, vowing to find Roselia and restore his kingdom of the undead 1000 years in the future.

Those 1000 years pass and humanity flourishes until a new threat appears – the Voids, strange creatures that emerge from mysterious rifts and are anything but friendly! Humanity counterattacks with not only giant floating fortresses called Assault Gardens, but mysterious weapons called Holy Swords, which are the manifestations of people’s souls. After surviving the Voids’ attack on the Third Assault Garden, the young Riselia and her maid Regina are taken in by the Seventh Assault Garden and are trained at Excalibur Academy, a school set up to train the next generation of humanity’s warriors.

Several years after the loss of their home, Riselia and Regina are sent on an exploration mission looking for Void nests but inadvertently uncover the ruins of the demon lord’s castle. In a wild series of events, Riselia awakens Leonis, who has resurrected in the form of a 10-year-old boy, but loses her life as a group of Voids attack and overwhelm the girls who try to protect him. While Leonis dispatches the Voids with ease, he is still appreciative of Riselia’s actions, so he decides to resurrect her as a Vampire Queen, the strongest of all undead. However, now that he’s tied to the humans through this strange bond, Leonis must fight off the invading Voids if he wants to have any hope of reclaiming his kingdom and reuniting with Roselia.

While the series has your typical isekai sensibilities, I actually quite like this one thanks to the time travel aspect making a connection between these two disparate worlds. Normally you’d finish in one world and start over in another, but here it’s the same world, just with a massive time gap. There’s a lot of reflection on how much has changed, with not only a big technological jump going from a medieval civilisation to a modern-day setting, but also in the perception of magic – people now don’t use it directly, instead using giant mana crystals as power sources for more real-world modern technology. You get some funny reactions from Leonis on this, where he’s either baffled at humanity’s abandonment of the old ways, or impressed at what they’ve been able to do.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the Void monsters are actually corrupted versions of beings and characters from a thousand years ago, which really makes you wonder how they are ending up here.

This all plays into one of the show’s main strengths which is its world building. It puts its rich lore to good use, with the events of a thousand years ago still impacting people in the modern-day even if they don’t remember it, while there’s whispers of a mysterious god behind everything which, as a fan of anything to do with mythology, I really enjoyed the prospect of. Yet I think it tries to pack a bit too much in as it twirls you around between corrupt governments, the persecution of the demi-humans, and the plight of the impoverished working class. I think it would have been better narratively if it had chosen just one of these and stuck with it, as some plot lines (particularly the demi-human one) feel shoehorned in.

I’d say this is where an anime adaptation can feel at odds with the source light novel, as a book can go more in depth, but the anime would rather focus on the here and now and dive into the action.

That wouldn’t be so bad if the action scenes carried weight, but they do vary a lot in the series. There is spectacle and it’s good at setting up tension before each fight against the Voids, but because they’ve made Leonis all-powerful so early on, you know he’s going to win, so it takes a little out of the overall stakes. The only real challenge is the big boss Void Lord at the end of the series which is powerful enough to put him out of action and allows the rest of the cast to shine a bit more than they do through a lot of the series.

There’s a large focus on the core trio of Leonis, Riselia and Regina, but I thought the portrayal of all the characters was good and it was a lot of fun uncovering each of them. Riselia is the main heroine, so she gets a lot of screen time across the series up to the point at which she feels largely wrapped when credits roll. She still has room to grow into her vampire powers, but ultimately this entire season is her overcoming her grief at the loss of her family. Regina is more relevant to the main plot than you would think but is heavily tied in with the demi-human shenanigans, which of course don’t see a resolution here. Then you have Sakuya and Elfine, who don’t get as much development and are just lightly touched on, but are still pretty engaging and have some interesting powers. Finally, we have Shary and Blackus, who might have been intended as joke characters, but Shary in particular is a lot of fun in how she pops up out of nowhere and is the gang’s secret saviour.

This, however, is all spoiled by the series’ pervy eye on the girls, as it has them all lusting after Leonis in some fashion. Considering he’s 10 and they’re all 14/15; this comes off as really icky and gets in the way of the good parts of their characters. If they’d been aged up a bit to high school age, then this wouldn’t have been much of a problem, but as it stands, they’re far too promiscuous for their age. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen too often outside of certain scenes or when they are trying to tee up Riselia as Leonis’ love interest, but it just didn’t need to be there.

The series is animated by Passione, and while the show looks decent enough, you can tell that it didn’t have much of a budget. Action scenes contain frequent re-use of animation, with the same still frame appearing a few times each in a scene, while there’s a limited amount of background art and the places it visits quickly become familiar. The opening animation as well just uses key scenes from the show that’s not particularly edited well together and spoils some key moments of the early episodes. It’s not all bad as the compositing of scenes is fairly good, but you do wish that they had had more to work with.

The series’ music is scored by Yuuji Nomi (Whisper of the Heart, Nichijou) and, despite his pedigree, largely just sits in the background when I think you need something a bit punchier for a more action-oriented series. It has decent opening and ending themes though, with Chiai Fujikawa’s “Sen-nen Ai”, and Kaho’s “Yururi”.

The series comes to us via MVM and features all 12 episodes of the series in Japanese with English subtitles, as well as the English dub, along with clean opening and ending animations as extras. I enjoyed the Japanese cast a lot, and there’s some surprisingly good talent here, including Attack on Titan mainstays Marina Inoue (Armin) who plays Leonis, and Yui Ishikawa (Mikasa) who plays Riselia. The English dub is also decent, featuring the likes of Luci Christian as Riselia and Shannon Emerick as Leonis.

Despite its low-budget feel, The Demon Sword Master of Excalibur Academy is a decent take on a time travelling isekai where its interesting story and lore are amplified by the engaging cast of characters. There is a lot more to be told than what the series offers, and as such I think it serves as a good gateway into the source material. Yet it’s soured by trying to push sexual elements on a very young cast of characters, which is inevitably going to be a dealbreaker for some. If you can get around that it still might be worth a try but just know what you’re getting into.

Our review copy was supplied by MVM.