- Titles: 1031 Wan Sheng Jie
- Genre: Comedie, supernatural, slice of life, short
- Episodes: 3 x 12
- Studio: HMCH
Have you ever just wanted to live a quiet life. You know, just relax, enjoy the scenery and mind your own business without getting in anyone’s way. But it’s like people just won’t leave you alone for some reason. That’s exactly what it’s like for the demon king! All Niel wants to do is be a nice and productive member of human society even if his parents are way against it. Demons should stay in the demon realm after all. But Niel (ni ni to his friends) is ready to see the world and meet some humans. So why did he end up roommates with an ornery angel, a sleek vampire, an overeager werewolf, and a very discreet mummy instead? And why do so many people want to hunt him down? Just because he happens to harbor the soul of the Demon king doesn’t mean he’s not a nice guy!
I reviewed Ex-Yakuza and Stray Kitten a while ago (stay with me, it’s going to be relevant) and a reader mentioned that it sounded like All Saint’s Street because of the critter café. I love cute critter cafés in anime so that immediately picked my interest. I went over to AniList, looked it up and it sounded adorable. On top of that, I have had excellent luck with Chinese-based anime so I was 1000% on board! (This is a Japanese animation based on Chinese source material)
Production
The production is more interesting than lavish. I mean that as a compliment. The art is not super detailed, the colour palette is restrained and the animation is rather minimal. Even in the big fight scene (singular), there are a lot of tricks used to cut down on the actual animation work needed. If we go by numbers, it’s an average to below-average offering.
But anime is art and there is a whole lot of artistic value added to All Saint’s Street. Those simple, almost naive designs are very charming and a lot of effort was put into creating expressive characters even if they aren’t all that detailed. The art style is not that common in anime and on top of that, it’s rendered to look like it was drawn with crayons or pencils. And honestly, it’s not a style that would work for most shows but for this one, it was absolutely perfect. I would say the visuals are a big plus here.
Moreover, the restrained colour palette is restrained to a neutral/warm range that’s also both unusual, attractive, and perfectly suited for the mood of the show. All Saint’s Street really does the absolute best with what it has and I think we’re left with something that is often more interesting and cohesive than a lot of more obviously expensive productions. It’s an obviously talented production.
Story & Characters
All Saints Street is actually a series of very short episodes (5 minutes each) which are literally slices of Niel and his roommates’ lives as they navigate both mundane day-to-day tasks like chores and part-time jobs as well as more esoteric issues like the end of the world in a biblical sense and supernatural interspecies relations. It’s very cute!
I watched all three seasons which come up to about half a season of a regular anime.
I should warn you right now, there is no critter café. I jumped to conclusions there. Ni-ni does have a part-time job at a pet shop but we only see it for about 2 minutes in the entire 3 seasons. Also, aside from the slice-of-life stuff, there is a pretty important romantic storyline that becomes more front and center as the episodes progress. Even as an anime aromantic, I should say it was a rather adorable love story. I didn’t dislike it! That’s high praise from me.
On the whole, All Saints Street is a very easy watch. It got a lot of giggles and a lot of awwws out of me. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it as something to watch to take the stress of the day off.
This said I named my post-Crunchyroll Did No Favours to All Saints Street for a reason. As I said, Al Saints Street is originally 3 seasons of 12, 5-minute episodes each. That’s how it was formatted. Crunchyroll consolidated them into 6, 23-minute episodes. I figure once you take out most of the credits and OP/EDS, you shave off 7 minutes from those 6 episodes.
I’ve actually seen something similar before. I watched Deji Meets Girl at the Fantasia Film Festival last summer and they had grouped all the episodes together to more or less create a single episode out of them. And I mention that it doesn’t work. It breaks the pacing somehow. I’m still not entirely sure what exactly bothers me about it but I got the exact same feeling from All Saints Street. I was absolutely certain I would have enjoyed the show way more if they were individual episodes, even if I had binged them all in one go.
Only, it’s worse with All Saints Street, Because the show is longer, Like I said, it’s six more or less full-length episodes each containing 6 actual episodes strung together. This essentially forces you to watch in increments of 6 episodes. You can’t just watch two and leave it. You could but you would be leaving an episode half watched and I feel like that would drive most of us mad. And if you watched 6 and want to watch a bit more, though you need to watch 6 more or nothing.
It’s not like it’s divided up narratively either. You just get 6 episodes at a time regardless of the arcs or character development. It forces you into watching at a rhythm that isn’t necessarily optimal for you.
This won’t bother everyone. I’m sure a lot of viewers won’t really notice. Although I also think that some of the ones that don’t notice would also have enjoyed it more as separate episodes. However, I certainly had a couple of occasions where I found the artificially imposed watching pace to be detrimental to my experience. And I finished the entire show in two days.
All Saints Street was written and crafted so that the viewer could enjoy little bite-sized 5-minute episodes. That’s the ultimate experience for this show. And Crunchyroll took that away. It’s probably way more practical this way but I think something got lost in the shuffle.
This said it’s still a very enjoyable show. Don’t hesitate to give it a try if you are interested. If you are ever in a position to choose programming for a streaming service, please don’t combine short episodes into longer ones. Good shows take into account episode length and are written specifically with that length in mind. That’s my public service announcement for the day.
You might like this anime if:
You are looking for a sweet supernatural slice of life
My favourite character:
Vlad the werewolf
Suggested drink:
- Every time Ni-ni gets attacked by a small animal – take a sip
- Every time we see purple flames – get some water
- Every time Damao turns into a wolf – take a sip
- Every time Ira gets a huge belly – get some snacks
- Every time Abu shows up – take a sip
- Every time anyone plays video games – take a sip
- Every time Ira and Damao bicker – take a sip
- Every time Lynn gets mad – uh hoh
- Every time the Demon king shows up – hide
- Every time Lynn is being a protective brother – take a sip
- Every time Nick is actually a good guy – try not to spit it out
- Every time you wonder who the unicorn girl in the OP is – take a sip
- Every time Nini wags his tail – awwww
I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.
This really was such a cute series! But you’re right, it would have been better if Crunchy Roll had just left it in the 5 minute episodes that it was created in. What’s weird is, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen other short format anime episodes on Crunchy Roll, and CR didn’t glop a bunch of episodes together. The series were left as short episodes.
Oh yeah, there are tons of short series on crunchy that weren’t messed with. I’m not sure why this show got the treatment