The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - Clevatess

Alicia has aspired to be a brave hero since she was little — after the king chose her to be one of 13 heroes for a quest. Wielding legendary swords, the heroes set out to subjugate the lord of magical beasts, Clevatess. However, these very heroes might bring about the realm's deadliest catastrophe that would wipe out all humanity. The world's last remaining hope lies in a baby entrusted to the lord of magical beasts.

Clevatess is based on the Clevatess -Majū no Ō to Akago to Shikabane no Yūsha- manga series by Yuji Iwahara. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

While episode two of Clevatess is still quite good, it's also emphatically not for me. On the plus side, it at least knows that slavery and sexual assault are bad. Given how many shows coyly skirt around those truths, it's worth noting that Clevatess is not one of them. But we of course learn this because of what the female characters go through in this episode. Alicia is threatened with rape at least twice and new character Nell is a survivor of unthinkable circumstances. When she recounts her life to Klen, it's one of repeated beatings, rapes, and purported stillbirths, with the result that she lives as the bandits' wet nurse for any random child in their encampment. There's a strong implication that she was rendered intellectually disabled through repeated head trauma, although it could also simply be her coping mechanism for the horrific life she's led.

On a symbolic and thematic level, this is all in service of Klen learning about humans as he raises Luna and plans to make the baby king. He tells Alicia that he wants to study humanity, and the series is clearly throwing him in at the deep end with the absolute worst humanity has to offer. Already showing that Klen has far more humanity than actual humans, he tries to help Nell, although he might not characterize it in that way. But killing two of her abusers with his shadows and offering to take her with him as Luna's wet nurse feels at least as much about saving Nell as it is about feeding the baby. He may have brought Alicia back to life because she has breasts, but breastfeeding seems to be only part of the equation with Nell, an indication of his growth.

That's all well and good, but this episode is brutal to watch. Nell is beaten on screen, implied to have been sexually assaulted, and I can't shake the idea that her babies weren't stillborn after the first, but killed to keep her trapped as someone “useful.” (Her refusal of Klen's offer seems to indicate this as a possibility.) There's also more graphic violence, with a slave being dismembered by a monster and broken, bloody bodies at the base of a cliff. Clevatess seems to delight in its capacity for darkness, and while I can respect that it's in service of its plot rather than just for shock value, it's not what I want out of my entertainment. This is enough of Klen's adventures for me.

What you see at first is not what you ultimately get with Clevatess. While I wouldn't entirely call it a bait-and-switch situation, the fact is that the first half of this introductory episode is a much grimmer, scarier story than the second half. It also features some genuinely good worldbuilding: the eponymous Clevatess is one of the great dark beasts who keep humans confined to a small portion of the continent, and legend speaks of how a group of brave heroes will ultimately defeat him. Except that legends and stories rarely translate into reality, as Alicia, one of our protagonists, quickly finds out. Except, she's always known that, because her father was a member of the previous generation of heroes, and he was unsuccessful, to the tune of it costing him a leg. That may be part of what saves Alicia in the end – she's more cautious than her fellow heroes and also more determined, because she knows the price her father paid.

Or it could just be that she has breasts.

No, that's not a flippant remark; it is in fact her anatomy that wins her a second chance at life, because the dread murderous beast Clevatess has, to his own bemusement, rescued a baby from the ruins of a castle he destroyed, and he intends to raise him. But he also lacks the ability to feed an infant, and not really knowing any better, he figures that all women can breastfeed babies and picks Alicia to do the job.

It's emblematic of the remarkable change in tone between the two halves of this double-length episode, and also a very good reason why this is extra-long: both the worldbuilding and introduction of Clevatess as a character are important, but they aren't the real meat of the series (or so it seems). But Clevatess raising baby Luna needs that foundation to build on. We have to understand how dire and dangerous this world is in order to appreciate how bizarre it is that one of its chief monsters would take on human form and adopt a baby. Alicia certainly isn't comfortable with it, and the first half makes a very good case as to why.

Clevatess' first episode is a study in contrasts, going from gruesome deaths to discussions about poopy diapers. It's to its credit that this episode does both equally well. The danger clearly hasn't passed, since other nations are looking to invade the one Clevatess destroyed and Alicia and Co. are currently on what looks like a slaver's wagon. But this episode made me believe that this show can pull off a range of emotions and genre elements, and the English dub is solid enough, even if the decision to have Alicia's name pronounced "al-ee-see-ah" is a little awkward. I'm curious as to where it's going next.

Clevatess has toned some of its more overt dark fantasy aesthetic choices in this second episode — there's not quite as much mythic slaughter amongst the hellish crags of the demonland — but make no mistake: This is still a dark fantasy. The show doesn't pull any punches when it comes to crafting a world where violence, assault, and abuse are everyday realities of life for the people of this world. Women, especially. Thankfully, this material is not exploited like in your average isekai anime, where the suffering and immorality is simply used as a backdrop for the hero's badass adventures in kicking ass and taking names. Rather, the worldbuilding exists to create the complicated contrasts of Clevatess' story. Yes, one of our protagonists might be a literal demon dog that is capable of leveling entire kingdoms to the ground in a single night. He's not the only monster that walks these lands, though.

There are, of course, arguments to be made about whether depicting the kinds of assault and degradation that characters like Nell go through is appropriate at all in a fantasy cartoon about a monster-dog that is trying to raise an elf-baby with his zombie-helper-hostage-knight. I think Clevatess handles its darker elements with enough empathy to justify some of its more lurid sequences. When Clevatess (as Klen) sits and patiently listens to Nell as she recounts her life of hardship, we are not meant to find it titillating, humorous, or even the kind of cheap rage-bait that is usually intended to motivate the hero to exact revenge. Like Klen, we're just meant to listen and understand how someone who has lived such a terrible life can still survive and move forward.

Sure, is it gnarly as hell when Alicia gambles on her immortality and sends both herself and one of these scummy bandits plummeting to the body-mangling rocks beneath a rickety bridge? Yes. Is it satisfying to see one of these rapist jerkoffs get in such a visceral way? Absolutely. I think what makes Clevatess interesting, though, is the way we're watching a terrifying monster learn to trust in and empathize with the humans he is hellbent on ruling over. It's one thing to kill all the bad guys in a blaze of bloody glory. It's another thing to ponder how we can make a better future for the victims who get left behind.

My birthday came and went several months ago already, but I cannot help but feel like Clevatess is a gift that has been hand-picked and wrapped up all fancy-like just for me. It has pretty much everything I could ask for from a premiere: Lush, gritty artwork that fits the show's grim fantasy tone perfectly; a compelling pair of very different protagonists whose differences and clashing motivations could make for some juicy drama, indeed; visceral and excellently choreographed action that is compelling without ever feeling too gratuitous or chaotic; and did I mention that the titular Clevatess is an impossibly powerful and bloodthirsty Lord of the Dark Beasts that also happens to be an adorable, fussy, and altogether ill-equipped parent to a cute little elf baby?

Clevatess even ends up subverting one of my long-standing bugbears with recent anime by giving us a double-length premiere that actually justifies the extended runtime. The episode's excellent pacing is one of its best qualities, actually. The first half makes it seem like we're about to see our main heroine, Alicia, be introduced as the only warrior in a band of super-powerful heroes that is strong enough to defeat a monster like Clevatess, but no, she ends up proving she's the only one who is tough enough to land the tiniest of scratches on the dark god before getting sliced into pieces like everyone else. We then proceed to watch Clevatess go on a genuinely terrifying rampage through the Hidenian capital and kill nearly every person in the city, including the king. The moody background art looks ripped straight from a Frank Frazetta painting, and the dire tone establishes Clevatess as a truly formidable force of destruction. I just don't think the introduction of this character would work as well if we had to speedrun this opening act or have all the information relegated to narration.

The extended intro is also what makes the “Clevatess Tries and Desperately Fails to Figure Out How to Raise the Baby He Just Orphaned and Promised to Protect” so damned funny. There's nothing quite so charming as seeing the terrifying eldritch horror be reduced to a befuddled canine that can't understand why it takes so freaking long for humans to grow up and stop crapping their pants. It makes sense, then, that he would bring Alicia back into the story by turning her into his undead mommy-servant who will be responsible for making sure the baby Luna doesn't starve to death before he can become the new king who will be puppeted by one of the Four Dark Beasts from the shadows. It is when Alicia returns from the dead and is recruited into the world's most stressful babysitting gig that the premiere pivots into the more familiar adventure story routine.

This isn't a bad thing, though. The fact that the show can seamlessly switch between modes of dark-fantasy horror, cutesy comedy, and modern shonen fantasy-adventure is what makes Clevatess' premiere such an impressive opening volley for this summer season. Many shows struggle to get even one of these genres right, and here is Clevatess mixing them all together with style and confidence, making it look utterly effortless all the while.

With the first episode, we were introduced to the overall plot of Clevatess—both in the macro sense with the war between the humanoid nations and the demon beasts, and in the micro sense with Alicia, Clevatess, and baby Luna.

But as much as this is the story of Clevatess' attempt to raise a baby, it's also the story of Clevatess coming to understand humanity. Unfortunately, in this case, Clevatess is starting his studies with the lowest of the low—a band of cutthroat bandits who spend their days thieving, killing, and raping. While this makes Alicia panic (the last thing she wants is Clevatess to judge all of the humanoid races based on these scums), Clevatess is not one to make snap judgments. Throughout the episode, he simply observes—watching how the bandits interact with each other and the slaves they've captured.

This leads us to two of our newest major characters, Neruru. The orphan of a sex slave, she is regularly raped and beaten. But despite this, she has found a reason to go on as the wet nurse for the children who appear in the camp. She is most certainly a victim as much as Clevatess and Alicia are and through her story, we get a bit of nuance to what life in the bandit camp is like. Of course, she turns down Clevatess' offer to escape the camp—not because she doesn't want to run away but because she doesn't believe he has the power to do so. Plus, what would happen to the next infant to arrive in the camp with no one to feed it?

Meanwhile, Alicia's identity is quickly uncovered by the bandits who want to use her to get their hands on her and her companions' magic weapons. They also want to use her body, which brings us to the fact that there is a lot of rape in this episode—both implied and explicitly shown. I won't say it's unrealistic given the setting, but it's still a lot. Of course, Alicia objects to both plans the bandits have for her and instead dislocates her shoulder, kills a guy, and falls to her death—banking on Clevatess' power and her undead nature to save her. Still, looks like it hurts like hell though.

In the end, this episode has solidified to me that this is not a show I want to watch weekly. I'd rather marathon as episodes like this one would likely go down easier if I could see the comeuppance likely to be doled out in the next episode without having to wait seven days.

When viewing one of these double-length first episodes, I always ask myself one important question: Did it really need to be 44 minutes long instead of 22? For some, the answer is “yes”—you need that time to first set the status quo and then subvert it. But for most, anime that go for double-length (or even triple-length) are simply showing us the first few episodes combined, and nothing more.

With Clevatess, we're luckily getting more of the former than the latter. The first half of the premiere is designed to show us the state of the world and the threat facing all of humanity. We see the heroes, their magic weapons, and the fact that humanity is completely unprepared for the devastation that comes when Clevatess goes from defense to offense.

However, while this first half excels in the world-building department—and provides us with a sympathetic viewpoint character in the form of Alicia—what it doesn't do is properly set the tone of the series. There's only so much grimdark killing a giant monster wolf can do, after all. And even after Clevatess picks up the baby, it's unclear whether the series will keep up its super-serious veneer or add a bit of comedy into the mix.

This is why the second 22 minutes are so important in this premiere. While there is the looming threat of Clevatess' impending genocide, the comedy of an inhuman immortal monster trying to raise a baby is brought front and center. But of course, any good comedy needs a straight man, so Alicia is resurrected into that role for the simple reason that she has breasts.

The episode also ends on an expectation-subverting twist—which I very much appreciate. It seems that Clevatess, in his humanoid form, is just as weak as any normal human. Even simple bandits can overcome our motley crew. It's a good joke—and one that adds both drama and tension to the journey. After all, while Clevatess cannot be counted on for protection, if baby Luna dies, he can still turn into a country-destroying monster and wipe out every humanoid on the continent.