Tentacle-Free Anime: "Noblesse: Awakening" (2016) ReviewBonus Tentacle-Free Anime! So this week you’re getting not one, but two reviews. I wanted to get to Noblesse right after reviewing RWBY because of one thing they kind of have in common. RWBY isn't an anime, but it is an “anime” from another country. Loosely tying the together is the fact that Noblesse is an official anime from Japan, which is also based on a manhwa from another country – South Korea. Also I really wanted to give my thoughts on Noblesse: Awakening and this was the only place I could put them down. So deal with it.
Alright, first things first: I haven't read Noblesse. It's been on my to-read list for a while. but I've been so caught up in reading Girls of the Wild's, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. As a non-reader however, I took that mentality with me into this special ONA episode to see if the adaptation would be any good at introducing me to the characters and getting me interested in the story enough to want to read it.
It's definitely not bad. In about 30 minutes we race trough what I can only assume is the first big arc of the series, giving us our main characters: the vampire Raizel, his servant Frankenstein and the human friends he makes at the academy he's now attending in modern day Korea. Including a whole host of bad guys, who end up with the best arcs of the time span allotted.
In a sense, it's really just one big compilation episode and we race through things quickly. I have no idea how many chapters are animated here, but if this were a manga I would take a guess that it would at the very least be the first 20 or so in a span of thirty minutes. That's a lot of information in a small amount of time. 
Title Card
I generally hate compilation stories as they often focus much more on the action while taking out the character moments almost entirely. And while the bad guys get more character moments in this short, Matsuzawa takes really nice care to give almost everyone a “moment” to show off their stuff and let us root for them. It's something I was quite impressed with. And if they could remake this entire episode into a 13 episode anime run; essentially expanding the story to a much more breathable space and with this gorgeous animation, I would watch it without a moment's notice. The story or Noblesse itself is rather interesting and, oddly enough, this episode does a really good job of conveying that, even through its speedy introductions. Sure, it's yet another modern day vampire tale complete with a bishounen pretty boy Frankenstein, and a humble cast of humans dragged into all this mess, but it tells their story in a humorous and interesting way as we get to see Reiz react to this world as if everything is a threat to him. It makes his character very fun to watch and shows him to be more than just a bleak creature of darkness. 
A grim reminder
To compare it slightly to another, better-known, vampire series, the animation quality reminded me just a bit of Hellsing Ultimate, while the tone of the story and the characters interactions reminded me more of the first adaptation of Hellsing. I like both series, so having a combination of the two finally surface really helped me to enjoy this episode as well. Because of its nature as a compilation tale, it's hard to really sing praises of this single episode because not everyone is going to like that. I feel fans of the manhwa will definitely have problems with that and I completely understand as someone who generally doesn't like them either. But, as it is a compilation tale, it definitely did a better job at telling its story than I have seen many others in the past do. This wasn't bad, and I will recommend it to those who haven't read the manhwa to check it out. At the very least it should get you interested in checking out the manhwa, which is its purpose. I would definitely like to see this anime version expanded upon, but in case it's all we get, what we got wasn't too bad at all. P.S. - I am aware there was another Noblesse anime ONA episode done by a separate animation studio late last year titled Noblesse: The Beginning of Destruction that was less advertised than Awakening, but I haven't been able to find a subbed version of it yet so I have no idea how good or bad it is. All I know is what I've seen. Final Score: 3.5 Bishounen Pretty Boys out of 5 Have you checked out "Noblesse: Awakening"? How did you like it? Let us know below! 
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