'Sirius the Jaeger' Has a Promising Start; Disappoints as a Whole

Sirius the Jaeger is alternatively known in the longer title Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger.  However, after watching the show, I still didn’t know what “Tenrou” meant, and I couldn’t remember if it was ever explained in the show.  So I Googled it, and according to what I read, “Tenrou” is the Japanese name for Sirius, the Dog Star.  This means there’s redundancy in “Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger” since it literally translates to “Sirius: Sirius the Jaeger.”  Therefore, just Sirius the Jaeger is the more appropriate title.

Anyway, this 12-episode anime series is set in the 1930’s, and follows a group of vampire hunters called “Jaegers”, whose latest mission brings them to Tokyo.  Among them is Yuliy, the sole survivor of a tribe of Sirius, i.e. werewolves, that were decimated by vampires; thus, his hatred for them is unparalleled by the other Jaegers.  He normally has a gentle and composed personality, but due to his vendetta, he is impulsive and ruthless when it comes to hunting down vampires.

Sirius the Jaeger started out with so much potential.  With what was shown in the early episodes, I thought it was going to be a gritty horror-fantasy thriller in the same vein as Castlevania (which, by the way, will have the release of its highly anticipated second season later this month), and be jam-packed with spectacular, gorgeously-animated action sequences.  For this reason, it was initially high in my rankings for new anime series of fall 2018.

Unfortunately, as the series progressed, it went lower and lower down my list.  It never came true to its hype.

It was intriguing during its first episodes, when the plot was basically about an ongoing secret war between Jaegers and vampires, in which terrorists and the Imperial Army get entangled in.  But then, as the plot shifted more and more to finding a boring, vague MacGuffin called the “Ark of Sirius”, it became less and less interesting.  And although Yuliy’s character development was kind of strong, the overarching story around it felt bland and choppy.

However, the most disappointing thing for me is how it didn’t live up to the gripping, action-packed, gothic anime I was hoping it would be.  There are a couple of exciting and dark moments, but they were too few and far in between for me.

As a whole, Sirius the Jaeger is disappointing.  Still, I won’t exactly say that it sucks.  Most of its parts have been entertaining, actually.  In fact, it was generally doing well up to its sixth or seventh episode.  It’s just that, the home stretch of episodes was incapable of bringing home the bacon.  Quite a bummer, since this anime could clearly have been something much more than what it turned out to be.