With an epic fantasy unfolding, an ensemble cast to dig into, nice art style, and an interesting, somewhat Aztec-esque motif (something you don't see very often in anime), there were a lot of reasons for me to really get sucked in by Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers. The basic premise is something we've seen before where a band of adventurers must assemble to defeat an ancient evil, but the characters had some meat on their bones and the arch of the story evolved into a very interesting "There's a traitor in our midst" sort of thing that had me steamrolling through the whole season eager to find out what would happen next.
Basically, the story is such that a powerful demon king resides on the edge of the continent in which the show takes place. Every few hundred years, it has a resurgence in power and tries to send its army of demons out to conquer the world. To counter this, one of the land's powerful goddesses selects six people to join up and fight the demon king, with each of these individuals being marked by a six-pedaled flower tattoo.
A large chunk of the story revolves around Adlet Myer, one of those selected by the goddess to fight the demon king this generation, who comes off as a bit of an overly confident moron but grows into a much more interesting character with a developed back story that makes him a lot more sympathetic. It isn't just from learning about Adlet's past, though, as his interactions with everyone else makes him all the more endearing. He's the sort that will do his best to work together with others despite constantly claiming to be the strongest man in the world. Even if people don't want to believe him, which is the case for about half of the series, Adlet will do everything he can to bring them on-side.
When it comes to the other characters, they don't get nearly as much screen time as Adlet and Flamie, so there isn't the same opportunity for them to grow. There is some basic foundation work done so that we can get a basic idea of what they're like, but we'd need another season or two in order for this to have a chance to transpire (more about this later). Some of the characters suffer from fairly traditional archetyping like Goldof being the serious, loyal soldier and Hans the assassin.
However, Chamo could turn out to be quite interesting. She's the youngest of the heroes, and still quite immature. Maura pretty much has to watch over her and make sure that she behaves. I could see her coming into her own as she has the most to learn of the heroes. Maura herself, though, I'm not sure about. She's supposedly in charge of overseeing all of the Saints of the world, individuals entrusted with the power of the gods. For having such an important responsibility, she struck me as being awfully stubborn and a poor judge of character. Her actions struck me as odd more often than not given her position. Nachetanya as alright. She seemed like a naive princess out in the world for the first time more often than not, and it wasn't until right near the end of the series that we got a good idea of the sort of person she is.
The fight scenes are quite fluid and a lot of fun to watch. There's a particularly intense one between Adlet and Hans at one point that stood out for me and is at least on par with Adlet's skirmishes with Flamie. These smaller scale battles are where the show really excels, as they feel a lot more exciting and well choreographed than the larger encounters against hordes of fiends. In that regard, Rokka does a very good job, providing some very enjoyable fights.
Some folks seem to feel that the show as a bit slow paced, but I never thought so. There was steady action and progression with each episode in my opinion. We got introduced to the characters, learned a bit more about them and their ultimate goal, and had a major arch while they tried to find a traitor in their midst. All things considered, it was a very good first season.
It's just too bad that it seems unlikely that Rokka will get a second one. From everything I've heard, the show just didn't perform all that well and when that happens studios just don't consider continuing on with it, which is a real shame because Rokka finishes on such a huge cliffhanger. There is a fan translation of much of the light novel series on which the show is based, so those that enjoyed it can actually get some closure if they want. Nonetheless, it is a bit of a drag. So, anyone going into Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers should be prepared. There's a lot to enjoy here, but as of this writing it looks highly unlikely that we'll see the anime go through the entire story. My fingers are crossed that this will change, though.
