The Seven Deadly Sins (Japanese: 七つの大罪, Hepburn: Nanatsu no Taizai) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Nakaba Suzuki. It was serialized in Kodansha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine from October 2012 to March 2020, with the chapters collected into 41 tankōbon volumes. Featuring a setting similar to the European Middle Ages, the story follows a titular group of knights representing the seven deadly sins. The manga has been licensed by Kodansha USA for English publication in North America, while the chapters were released digitally by Crunchyroll in over 170 countries as they were published in Japan. A-1 Pictures adapted the series into a three-season anime television series that ran from October 2014 to June 2018, and one theatrical film: Prisoners of the Sky. Studio Deen produced two further seasons that ran from October 2019 to June 2021, and a second theatrical film: Cursed by Light. Alfred Imageworks and Marvy Jack then produced a two-part film for Netflix: Grudge of Edinburgh, released in 2022 and 2023. Funimation licensed the home video rights to the first season, while Netflix acquired the English streaming rights to the anime and films. In 2015, The Seven Deadly Sins won the 39th Kodansha Manga Award in the shōnen category. The manga has over 55 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series. In 2021, Suzuki began Four Knights of the Apocalypse as a sequel to the series.
Premise
The Seven Deadly Sins are a band of knights in the land of Britannia (ブリタニア, Buritania) who had disbanded ten years earlier after being framed for plotting a coup against the Liones Kingdom, the Holy Knights who sequestered them before taking control in the wake of a rebellion they organized. Liones' third princess, Elizabeth Liones, finds the Seven Deadly Sins' leader, Meliodas, before they track down his comrades so they can clear their names and liberate Liones from the Holy Knights, who were manipulated by a demon named Fraudrin into unsealing the Demon Race from their prison.
Production The Seven Deadly Sins began as a one-shot that was published in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine on November 22, 2011. Nakaba Suzuki drew more than twenty versions of the pilot chapter. One of these manuscripts, "Chapter X", was released in English on Kodansha USA's website in 2015. For the series, Suzuki borrowed the names of characters from tales about King Arthur, but used his original ideas for their personalities and the story itself. He explained that ever since he had become a manga artist, he had wanted to write a fantasy story with King Arthur as a motif, "but I couldn't draw the characters and it was always rejected" by the editorial department. So he started drawing modern manga stories as a way to practice, and eventually lost interest in fantasy until his editor read one of his earlier one-shots and suggested it. "In that sense, it's a very emotional thing. I think if I had drawn it when I was younger, it wouldn't have turned out like this." The relationship between Meliodas and Elizabeth was decided on from the beginning, but the author thought up everything else weekly as he went in order to keep it unpredictable. In order to surprise readers, he purposely made the appearances of some of the titular group of knights very different from their wanted posters that appear in the first chapter and had others look the same as their poster, but gave them "horrible" personalities. Although it was decided to make the protagonist of the series a "child", Suzuki struggled with designing Meliodas' profile because the character is actually an adult. He said the most difficult part was his hair; ultimately deciding on "fluffy" hair like a boy from a foreign country, which he had never done before. In the pilot chapter, the character had long, straight hair, which the author said was not as cute. Suzuki said he always made sure to show the subtly different relationships between the members of the titular group of knights. For example, he said that while Ban is Meliodas' best friend, King is only a teammate with whom he does not talk. All seven have such relationships, which the author called realistically human. Because he felt it would be too convenient to have seven enemies oppose the Seven Deadly Sins and fight them one-on-one, Suzuki decided on having ten with the Ten Commandments. This way, characters could fail and there would be another who can defeat many by themselves, making it unpredictable for readers. However, the author has stated that Escanor ended up being "too strong". Suzuki said that because the series is the story of Meliodas and Elizabeth, he planned for the manga to have a happy ending from the very beginning; "I didn't want to make it an ending that left people feeling uneasy. [...] I want to draw things that make people feel good when they read them." Suzuki draws his manuscripts with pen and paper, stating that it does not feel like drawing manga without them. Although, he noted that the tones and Copic markers that he uses are being discontinued one after another. The manga artist also refuses to use assistants due to his contrary personality. He has done this since he began his career, when an editor told him he could not do it without one, and he wanted to prove him wrong. Suzuki said that drawing by himself allows him to take breaks to play games while working, and drink alcohol.
Media
Manga
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