Nothing is more disappointing than being hyped up for a show that ultimately falls flat and leaves you unsatisfied.

Crunchyroll’s fall anime season is drawing to a close, and with it, the show “Assassin’s Pride.”

The anime follows protagonists Kufa and Melida. Kufa is a trained assassin sent undercover as a tutor to dispose of Melida Angel, the daughter of a high born aristocrat, who is believed to be the product of her mother’s affair after failing to manifest the magical abilities displayed amongst aristocrats.

After witnessing the girl’s struggles to maintain her spirit through the harsh life of being a high born with no magical promise, Kufa makes the ultimate decision not to assassinate the girl, but to share with her his own magic and to take her on as an apprentice.

From the first episode, this show had real promise. The animation was beautiful, the music was unique and the characters were sympathetic. Melida was a character you gravitated toward out of sympathy, because she’s the only one at her school with no magical abilities, and was always deemed worthless and talentless. Her spirit was admirable and her frustrations were tangible despite that.

Melida never gave up. She was bullied and called worthless by others, but she was desperate to make her dream of becoming a professional magic user come true and kept fighting back and trying the best she could.

One scene that really stood out in the first episode was when Melida was cornered by monsters and fought back the best she could with a wooden sword. She knew she didn’t have much of a chance since she lacked magical abilities, but she still fought instead of giving up, the fire in her eyes burning the whole time.

The character Kufa was also an interesting character. Despite being an undercover assassin, he decided to help Melida instead of killing her. He saw her fighting spirit and decided to help her, knowing full well that his decision could end with his execution.

He’s also a refreshing protagonist in the way that he throws typical anime male protagonist tropes out the window and remains stoic and professional during his job instead of immediately getting nosebleeds whenever a female character came into his sight.

While “Assassin’s Pride” displayed good character setups and atypical tropes, it steadily went downhill as the season went on and sank the boat–waving promising sails. The show gives the audience all these vibrant characters with their own unique personalities but fails to show us much development between them. Instead, the plot merely fast forwards past the development and forces us to believe that certain characters have changed or grown closer instead of taking the time to show us.

It throws us short action sequences and frail minuscule conflicts that are meant to develop these characters and give them obstacles to overcome, but without character development and an actual explanation for what is even happening, you wind up not even caring and do more of scratching your head out of confusion if you’ve missed something.

No, you haven’t missed anything. The show is simply throwing random plot points and villains left and right without caring if you understand what is happening or how it’s important to the story and characters.

What this show lacks is a clear direction of where it is going and the meat of the story for how it is going to get there. I would recommend skipping this anime and instead, catching up with the new season of “My Hero Academia” or giving “Demon Slayer” a rewatch. “Assassin’s Pride” has no idea what it’s doing, so you won’t be able to figure it out either.