The Seven Deadly Sins (manga)
A manga series about knights representing the seven deadly sins.
The Seven Deadly Sins is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Nakaba Suzuki, serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from October 2012 to March 2020. The story follows a group of knights representing the seven deadly sins in a European Middle Ages–style setting. The manga won the 39th Kodansha Manga Award in the shōnen category and has over 55 million copies in circulation.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Adventure, Fantasy
Facts from the source article.
Premise
The Seven Deadly Sins are a band of knights in Britannia who disbanded ten years earlier after being framed for plotting a coup against the Liones Kingdom. The Holy Knights who sequestered them took control after a rebellion. Liones' third princess, Elizabeth Liones, finds the Sins' leader, Meliodas, and they track down his comrades to clear their names and liberate Liones from the Holy Knights, who were manipulated by a demon named Fraudrin into unsealing the Demon Race.
Production
The Seven Deadly Sins began as a one-shot published in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine on November 22, 2011. Nakaba Suzuki drew more than twenty versions of the pilot chapter; one manuscript, "Chapter X", was released in English on Kodansha USA's website in 2015. Suzuki borrowed character names from tales about King Arthur but used his original ideas for personalities and story. He had wanted to write a fantasy story with King Arthur as a motif since becoming a manga artist, but his early attempts were rejected by the editorial department. After drawing modern manga to practice, he lost interest in fantasy until his editor read an earlier one-shot and suggested it. The relationship between Meliodas and Elizabeth was decided from the beginning, but Suzuki thought up everything else weekly to keep it unpredictable. He purposely made some of the titular knights' appearances very different from their wanted posters and gave others "horrible" personalities. Although the protagonist was to be a "child", Suzuki struggled with Meliodas' design because the character is an adult; he settled on "fluffy" hair like a boy from a foreign country. In the pilot, Meliodas had long, straight hair, which Suzuki felt was not as cute. Suzuki always showed subtly different relationships among the seven knights—for example, Ban is Meliodas' best friend, while King is only a teammate. He decided on ten enemies (the Ten Commandments) rather than seven so characters could fail and unpredictability could be maintained. Suzuki stated that Escanor ended up being "too strong".
Media
Nakaba Suzuki wrote and illustrated The Seven Deadly Sins, which ran in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from October 2012 to March 2020. The series was collected into 41 tankōbon volumes released between February 2013 and May 2020. Suzuki preferred physical books, so he requested that digital editions of these volumes come out one month after the print versions. In 2015, he created a three-chapter manga that was included with limited editions of the anime's first three home video sets. A book collecting The Vampire of Edinburgh, side stories, and the pilot one-shot came out on July 17, 2018. A one-shot focusing on Ban's son was published in Weekly Shōnen Magazine on August 5, 2020. Suzuki began a sequel, Four Knights of the Apocalypse, in January 2021. Kodansha USA licensed the manga for English release in North America in 2013, putting out the first volume on March 11, 2014, and the final one on January 26, 2021. Digital chapters were released simultaneously by Crunchyroll in over 170 countries. Kodansha USA published the Original Sins book on October 26, 2021, and started an omnibus re-release combining three original volumes into one on February 1, 2022. A special issue of Weekly Shōnen Magazine on October 19, 2013, featured a small crossover with Fairy Tail, where each artist drew a four-panel comic of the other's series. An actual crossover chapter appeared in the magazine's combined 4/5 issue of 2014, released on December 25, 2013. Suzuki wrote a one-shot for Nakayoshi in November 2014, a comedic one-shot for Magazine Special in October 2014, and two spin-off manga for the Manga Box app from February 24 to May 10, 2015. He also created an original 40-page manga distributed during screenings of the Prisoners of the Sky film.
Reception
The Seven Deadly Sins shared the shōnen prize at the 39th Kodansha Manga Awards with Yowamushi Pedal. On Takarajimasha's 2014 Kono Manga ga Sugoi! list, it placed fifth among manga for male readers. It was also up for the 2014 Manga Taishō award and for Best Youth Comic at the 42nd Angoulême International Comics Festival in France. Jordan Richards of AIPT Comics recommended it to anyone into medieval fantasy and classic shōnen action, highlighting its distinctive art even if some scenes were confusing. Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network gave the first volume a B, describing the art as engaging and the story as a fresh spin on knights in shining armor. She noted perspective problems and that Elizabeth lacked growth, though Richards saw her improve by volume two, where he praised the art, character designs, and action panel layouts. Reviewing volume three, Silverman observed that since the main characters are already strong, the author skips typical training arcs to focus on relationships and plot, making the superhuman cast feel more human and the human-looking villains stand out. Richards called volume nine the series' best so far, with strong character development and drama. Silverman found volume fourteen's plot darker than its anime adaptation.
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