Knights & Magic is a manga I started last year. Originally, I was extremely impressed by the character’s extreme and charigsmaric personality, and I enjoyed reading each update. Now, the anime has come out, and I’m filled with mixed feelings. While the characters and the base story are exactly the same, the anime moved through events way to quickly, and doesnt give each indevidual event the time they deserve.

In a world of magic, giant and destructive creatures, and mechanized armor used by knights called Sillouete Knights Ernesti Echevalier, the main character, is a genious child obsessed with robots. We watch his childhood through quick snapshot transitions that seem almost random. There are too many questions that are created during the first episodes without any answers. In comparison to the manga (book form), there is far less in the way of introduction. The manga showed how Ernesti developed his skills what what people, parents and otherwise, thought of his robot obsession.

In part, I love how quickly the anime moves. After having read all of the manga, it’s a nice change of pace to fly through all of the boring information and just reach the fighting robots and moments of genius from Ernesti. However, anyone who hasn’t read the manga prior to watching the anime has no chance of being able to keep up with the constant onslaught of information and the seemingly random cuts to different scenes. There are parts where I get lost and have to check that I’m watching the correct episode.

One of the worst things to come from this limited information is that the majority of interactions between some of the characters are now meant to be for fan service. In the manga, the less important interactions would have discussions one character’s life or asking small favors from one another. Now, one of Ernesti’s best friends is merely there as a possessive love interest with a high pitched, annoying voice, who is used as comedy relief for her lack of knowledge on advanced topics.

There are even times that I felt the anime was crossing the line into sexist. There are few females in Knights & Magic in the first place, with none of them in important positions of power. There’s a focus on them being beautiful with little else. Even with three of the girls being some of the best fighters, you rarely see them fighting, and the focus is on the males.

With all of this said, I still love the story and the characters. Reading the manga before the anime is more of a necessity and essential for understanding the exposition. Keeping all factors in mind, I rank the anime 6/10 and the manga 8/10.