Fairly slow paced for a movie, yet still manages to fit into the timeline without disturbing any of the events…which is more than the DBZ movies can claim.
That said, you’ll want to have caught up on the NnT anime (including all 24 episodes of the final season) or the manga to avoid some mentioned spoilers from the movie itself.
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Story
It’s been about half a year since the Demon King was defeated, and everyone is moving on with their lives: Diane and King are preparing (and having) their wedding (with Ban, Elaine, and Gowther in attendance), Meliodas and Elizabeth are traveling around the country before Meliodas is crowned king of Liones, and Zeldris is able to be with Gelda.
However, the peace isn’t to last as a mysterious member of the fairy clan teams up with a blacksmith from the giant clan and attacks the Demon World before unleashing their minions on anyone who allied themselves with the Sins during the final Holy War.
It took far too long to get into the story, and while I’m perfectly fine with seeing the peaceful moments everyone got to have, there was way too much focus on Diane and King’s wedding. That time could have been better spent developing the climax of this movie’s plot as it feels like that went by in the blink of an eye.
There was potential, particularly in the form of the final boss, but it just took so long to get to it that the battle went by in a flash. The entire thing, except for Diane and King's wedding, felt rushed from start to finish. 4/10
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Characters
Meliodas and Zeldris take the center stage, and there are some nice focuses on their relationship (or lack there-of). Once again, if the movie hadn’t spent so much unnecessary time on Diane and King, it could have put more emotions into Meliodas’ wish to gap the chasm between him and Zeldris instead of the half-hearted one we got.
It was still nice to see their relationship develop.
And it was nice to finally get to see Meliodas and Elizabeth kiss, because we really got the short end of the stick in the main series.
In addition to them, Gelda gets to not only show up but also to help out in battle once or twice. As usual, Elizabeth doesn’t really do much; her role seems to mostly be emotional support for Meliodas, which she arguably does do well. The best we see her is giving Meliodas hope and bonding with Gelda.
Three new characters appear in the antagonists who…honestly aren’t very interesting.
Dahlia is the fairy antagonist, and is the typical headstrong and power-hungry antagonist who certainly shines in the shounen genre as being completely and absolutely stereotypical of every other villain in the genre.
Dubs (yes, that’s his actual name) is the giant antagonist who doesn’t really have much of a personality except that he’s a smithy who really has no business being on a battlefield. His crafted weapons prove to slow the heroes down, but his character is forgettable.
The final antagonist I’ll leave a mystery…but I will reiterate that old fans who trudged through new chapter after new chapter of the manga will probably be very hyped about this. On the minus side, there was zero explanation for this character's appearance.
Honestly, the focus bounces around and doesn’t really give the characters much justice. NnT is arguably character-driven, and though everyone is in-character, it would have been nice to see a little more focus on Zeldris’ feelings as well as some actual motives from the antagonists. 6/10
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Sound and Animation
No issues with the sound. The BGM was appropriate when it needed to be, and plays a familiar track when the battle is in full gear and the heroes are completely owning it. The voice actors sound to be the same as the ones who did the voices in the main series, and did a great job bringing the characters to life.
The ending song is amazing and just what one would expect from the soundtrack of NnT.
Zero complaints. The background music didn't overpower the voices, nor were there any loud bursts between action scenes and quieter scenes. 10/10
The animation...is a different story. That said, it's not the same trainwreck that the animation of the last couple seasons was, but it certainly had its own glitches. On the positive side of things, it did a great job with the battle scenes and felt more similar to how things worked in the first couple seasons.
On the minus side...CGI.
Some of the random fairies in the anime were completely CGI and had about as much animation as a 3D Visual Novel game (actually, Ace Attorney Chronicles had more animation). It was cringy whenever it happened because they had one or two poses and just swapped from one to the other.
Sadly, the final boss was more felled by bad CGI than what the protagonists dished out. Final boss had maybe two or three animations (raise left arm, raise right arm, and maybe moving lips as well) which took a lot of hype out of the final battle.
The scenes which didn't have the horrid CGI were good, but I can't fathom why the animators had to resort to CGI...especially for the final boss.
Non-CGI moments were good, and battle scenes which didn't include CGI in it looked better than the last couple seasons treated us to. However, the amount of obvious cringe-worthy CGI in it more than makes up for what the animation got right and was so distracting that I wanted to look away from the screen. 5/10
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Overall
While I absolutely dispise "mind control" being used as a plot device, it's mostly in regards to main characters being mind controlled...so, though it's still a weak way to have an army, it was more cringe than disliked to me.
The movie was fun to watch, but it just didn't invoke the same feelings I get watching the first season (or second season) of NnT. It felt half hearted, and its only saving grace appeals more to long-time fans of the series who wanted to see the final antagonist than it does to new fans.
Again, if less time was spent on things completely unrelated to the movie (such as tons of focus on Diane and King's wedding), then it would have had more time to explore the attempts to regain the brotherly relationship between Meliodas and Zeldris.
I use the term again: Half-hearted. That's what it all was.
The movie took a long time to get to where it was going, and even then it was sort of a half-hearted (maybe I should either get a thesaurus or count how many times I use that term) attempt to give proper motives and wrap things up cleanly.
It jumped around a lot at the beginning; in one moment we were waiting for Diane and King's wedding, then we were in the marketplace in Liones, then the Demon World, then a waterfall, then back to the wedding...it felt very broken up as a result of the constant jumping around and did not transition smoothly into the scenes.
Oh, yea...and Merlin and Arthur just sort of appear very briefly in one scene and do nothing for the rest of the movie. They weren't even needed in the movie, but at least not much time was wasted on them.
In any case, I want to give this movie a higher rating because of that final antagonist and the potential it had in regards to Meliodas and Zeldris fighting side by side. But the movie squandered away its potential by focusing on the characters who didn't matter as much and jumping awkwardly between them all.
If only it had done more focus on the brothers, what was really going on with the antagonists, not used the horrid CGI, and had a more involved final fight scene then perhaps it could have been saved. Sadly, it couldn't quite reach the bar and though I'm honestly happy at the final antagonist, the fight ended far too quickly (especially considering how long it took them to actually kill the Demon King once and for all).
Oh well...at least we finally got to see Meliodas and Elizabeth kiss. 5/10
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