The Seven Deadly Sins Movie: Prisoners of the Sky - Reviews

Alt title: Nanatsu no Taizai Movie: Tenkuu no Torawarebito

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mdchan's avatar
Jan 6, 2019

Available to watch via Netflix.  The more I thought about the movie, the more I realized that it had potential to be much more than it was.  I'm not saying it was bad by any means; lately anime movies have not been living up to the series from which they came.  "Prisoners of the Sky" is an interesting and amusing movie, but nothing really out of the ordinary.  The timeline is somewhere in the "Revival of the Ten Commandments" season.

Plot

A case of mistaken identity; as Meliodas (and Hawk) are looking for flying fish to prepare for Bartra's birthday (while the other Sins gather ingredients as well), they come across a lake/pond with a strange glow.  Upon looking under the "water", they see dozens of flying fish and jump right in, only to find themselves somewhere completely different where Meliodas is mistaken for a boy who looks just like him who had supposedly ran away from his duties.

As Meliodas deals with the case of mistaken identity (or lack of deals with it), the boy who escaped meets up with the other Sins and since Meliodas is involved, they decide to help him out.

Characters

The entire gang is there:  Meliodas, Elizabeth, Ban, King, Diane, Gowther, Merlin, and Escanor.  Hawk gets mistaken for a savior, and even Hawk's Mama has time to shine.  Everyone remains in-character, though they are very much overqualified to save the day in this case.

Solaad - A boy who looks near identical to Meliodas with a few key exceptions:  His eyes are blue, and he has wings.  He is also more timid and unsure of himself (the Sins knew almost straight away that he wasn't their Captain; Merlin in particular). 

Ellatte - Solaad's fiance and a Celestial who looks nearly identical to Elizabeth with only a few minor differences (which, of course, Meliodas realized immediately).  She is outgoing and has a bit of a temper, and is willing to fight against anything, even demons, which threaten her and her people.

Solaad's Father - The king of the Sky People, he hopes for Solaad to become a great warrior and be able to wield the Sacred Sword which only the "chosen" of the sky people are able to wield. 

Overall

If you've seen "How to Train Your Dragon", Solaad's father will probably remind you of Hiccup's father almost straight away, even down to one of the lines.  Just wanted to throw that out there in this more subjective section.

No complaints about the music and animation; the ending song is nice, and we get to hear "Perfect Time" again during the final battle.

Speaking of battles, that's where this movie falls short.  None of the fights were that interesting, especially compared to the high-stakes fights in the Nanatsu no Taizai series itself.  Even when "Perfect Time" kicked in as they were getting ready to thrash the final "boss", it just didn't feel as...intense.  The way that combat was ended certainly was cool, there's no doubt about that, but everything which led up to it was just sort of...too easy.

None of the Sins struggled against their opponents, and if it wasn't for Solaad's father showing up and interfering with the fight then even Meliodas wouldn't have had a problem with the boss of the bad guys.  Due to that, none of the fights felt "epic" or even very interesting.  The Sins were far too overpowered; Meliodas absolutely wrecked one of the bad guys in a split second without even going into his demon form, for example.

Getting to see Merlin fight was a treat (as we've only seen her fight once before, and it wasn't as drawn out), and I don't think anyone would expect her to struggle against an opponent after seeing what she did to one of the Commandments. 

Still, the fights left a lot to be desired.  Even the battle against the "final boss" was sort of a "what?" moment as it became a creature that those who read the manga will know more about (as the anime has yet to touch upon them).  Knowing that, it makes sense that the Sins start to struggle against the thing, but even that struggle was sort of just...not very engaging.

The movie has a lot going for it in terms of comedy (like seriously, whose idea was it to let Meliodas cook for the King's birthday?), but there were a lot of issues all around besides that (honestly, how did the father not realize that Meliodas wasn't his kid?  Meliodas even said he wasn't).  Other story issues I won't go into because they'd contain spoilers, but it brings be back to something I've always wondered even in the series itself (how some demons managed to escape the sealing of 3000 years ago, for example) as well as the wishy-washy motives of the antagonists of the movie.

The trailer makes it look much more "hyped" than it actually is.  Again, it wasn't bad, but just don't expect riviting battle scenes or clashes on a level of Meliodas vs Hendrickson.  I'd even go so far as to say that the Sins' first clash with Guila was more interesting than any of these fight scenes.

That said, it is worth watching if you're a fan of the series.  It had potential to be more, but I feel like that wasn't really grasped.  Some of the best scenes are ones where characters like Ban and Elizabeth encourage Solaad due to the boy's lack of confidence.  In terms of scenes like that and comedy, it works very well.  In terms of the antagonists and fight scenes, it could have been much better.

5/10 story
7/10 animation
10/10 sound
6/10 characters
6/10 overall
FalconX578's avatar
Jun 5, 2020

Having watched everything there was to The Seven Deadly Sins, I decided to take on the movie, and boy was it, well… it was something. To me, it was like other filler movie adaptations of a popular anime series: underwhelming. As a matter of fact, it might actually be worse than other movies of its kind, and there's a few reasons for that.

Firstly though, visually speaking, the movie is, well, fine. It looks nice. but nothing more. Nothing weird that will catch your eye since the animation does its job, but nothing remarkable will catch your eye either. Everything looks okay, and everything sounds okay too. There's also some good to be found within the story and characters, but what little good there might be is overshadowed by the many major flaws. To me, there was a lot of potential with the new characters, but that was it, just potential. In terms of story, there was no real good story for a one and a half hour-long movie.

It's pretty similar to those "alternate reality" type things where instead of creating original interesting characters, they clone our beloved demon perv and clumsy goddess main characters and swap their personalities like some AU fanfic schtick. The movie was very predictable, which got aggravating when what you know is gonna happen, takes so long to actually happen because this movie was so freaking slow.

There were some funny moments that could garner a few chuckles, but there were a lot of forced jokes that just felt annoying. The biggest gripe I found however, was how cheesed the fight scenes were, and how dull most of these new characters ending up being.

If you read around online, you'd probably hear that the main villains in the movie are still powerful even if they don't look it, it's just that these fights would happen at a point in time where canonically, our seven sins are just that much more powerful; a time where even the power of the Ten Commandments doesn't really mean much. So even though our heroes waltzed their way through these fight scenes, the fights are supposed to be a very big part of the series, but they all seem so one sided. By the time all the Seven Deadly Sins arrive to fight off our evil villains, they pretty much sweep the floor with all of them really, and instead of trying to show how cool the fights in the anime are, it just showed off everyone's signature moves. Even when someone was having a semi-hard time fighting off an enemy, the protagonists would just completely turn the table after pulling out the whole "I was only using 1% of my power!" and before anyone can even react, the fight's over and you have to move on to the next boring thing, which made the enemies themselves feel like your Level 1 Crook instead of the Level 100 Mafia Boss you want them to be.

That said, the characters themselves seemed like they had a lot of potential. Fight scenes aside, if you just took a look at the opponents that team Boar Hat had to go up against, some of them look pretty cool to some extent. Just don't expect to learn any backstory, because there is none. The other characters are alright I guess. There's not much bad, but not much good either, which is okay, but makes for a lot of the movie to feel kind of hollow. Any potential there was got completely wasted, and means nothing at the end of the day.

Now some people had issues with the new celestial race being introduced, but they're fine, and honestly I liked it for this movie. It was just that all of these celestials that we saw were pretty flat and kinda annoying.

TL;DR

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This movie is pretty bad. It's just so underwhelming and poorly executed. It had some potential to be greater, but a fair bit of things seemed forced or unnatural, and there was just too little of a challenge for the protagonists. If you like The Seven Deadly Sins, and you have nothing else to do, then you can watch it I guess. It could be a fun experience if you wanna make fun of it, or even if you wanna absorb everything there is to this wonderful universe. Just don't go into this expecting it'll be great and get your hopes down. If anything, me saying all these bad things about it might lower your expectations so much that watching it won't even be as bad as you think it'll be, who knows, but this movie is skippable. With pretty shallow new characters and a pretty cookiecutter story, this movie doesn't do much right at all.

Also -50 points since there's no Elaine… What the heck is this???

3/10 story
5/10 animation
5/10 sound
3.5/10 characters
3/10 overall
lordryu's avatar
Jan 1, 2019

I don't know where to start! ever since the trailer came out, i was damn hyped since i'm a huge fan of The Seven Deadly Sins. Today i finally got the chance to watch this movie and man it lived upto my expectations!! The storyline was amazing plus the great animation with our favorite voice actors, man i was stanning it like a little baby! The series lives upto its fight scenes! SPOILER: Meliodas and Ganggoing all out to protect the Sky temple was over the top hype and the new combo move: THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS  lord it was too much for my little heart to handle! This movie was a Cherry to the cake! Hoping to see the new season asap!!!

10/10 story
10/10 animation
10/10 sound
10/10 characters
10/10 overall
Kenneckz's avatar
Jan 5, 2019

I’m sorry but Thisbe movie is terrible, don’t get me wrong I do love the movie over all but I was very disappointed in how it was made , all 6 of the evil demon knights were absolutely terrible they were weak as heck and died in 2 seconds. I feel you were too compare the fight scenes and the 6 knights to the Ten Commandments, the Ten Commandments are shown to be on a whole different level of bad ass and the fighting is way better than the movie it’s self. It’s as if they just slapped a crappy moves together for each character and called it a day. I’m sorry but the anime itself is vastly better than the movie. Still enjoyed it tho 

7/10 story
10/10 animation
10/10 sound
4/10 characters
6/10 overall
Saral's avatar
Apr 27, 2019

WHY DIDN'T I WATCH THIS SOONER!!

I watched the two seasons and the movie in a week. Fairy Tail is my favorite Anime and when I found out that this was a similar genre I knew I would like it. I prefer season 2 over 1 but this movie was amazing! I loved the concept and I found the settings beautiful. Overall: pleased

7/10 story
10/10 animation
10/10 sound
9.5/10 characters
9.9/10 overall
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