EDITOR’S NOTE: What Are You Watching? is a feature series that dives deep into why we love the anime we love. You told us what you were watching, and now we’ll dig into why.
If you’re like me, you love a good plot twist.
Storytelling that sets you up to believe that the world is a certain way–only to turn everything on its head–is an exhilarating feeling. When these surprises are paired with a fantasy setting, something we haven’t seen much of outside the isekai genre recently, you can bet I’ll be checking it out!
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Plunderer takes its time setting up the world of Alcia. It’s a land where everyone has a number somewhere on their body. What that number corresponds to is different for everyone, but the one thing that’s the same is what happens when that number hits zero: mysterious black hands drag the person down into the Abyss, never to be seen again…
Hina, an unassuming girl from the countryside, is on a journey to fulfill her mother’s last request: find the fabled Legendary Ace, a figure said to be one of the heroes of a major war hundreds of years ago. It takes Hina five years to finally find one.
As soon as she realizes that Licht, the perverted man wearing a mask and bothering the women in town, is an Ace, he runs away. We follow the two as they go their separate ways, making a few new friends before reuniting.
Almost immediately after, a nearby town experiences a disaster beyond anyone’s comprehension. Well, almost anyone’s. A giant hole to the Abyss opens up, sucking a major part of the town down into the unknown. However, it’s not so much the hole that has people terrified, but the thing that emerges out of it.
A helicopter.
It’s the first of many shocking reveals throughout the series, exposing the hidden nature of Alcia. What once seemed like a quaint fantasy world suddenly becomes a tragic future dystopia. It’s a world created out of the hopes of giving humanity a plentiful and peaceful place to live again.
RELATED: Plunderer Voice Actors Talk About the Series’ Next Level
But as Hina and the others learn more about their world’s mysterious past, they uncover that Alcia is far from the sparkling land they thought they knew.
I don’t want to spoil too much, since the shock factor of each new reveal is an experience I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on, but the second half of Plunderer is so different from the first half that it’d leave some convinced that you’re talking about completely separate shows.
Plunderer is a series that takes a look beyond the surface, from its seemingly traditional fantasy world to its colorful characters and everything in between. It makes even the smallest, most inconsequential of details–like Commander Alexandrov’s flame-painted sunglasses–a hint at the true nature of the world.
When a series drops clues about major reveals from the very beginning, I get so excited. It’s the kind of intricate storytelling I’m personally drawn to.
If you like those kinds of series as well, Plunderer is definitely worth checking out. Just get ready for an adventure unlike any other.
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