A Perfect Break from the World

If the art form known as anime received the attention and credit it deserves, you would already have heard of a series called “The Holy Grail of Eris,” or in romaji Japanese, Erisu no Seihai.

I watched it Tuesday night, all 12 25-minute episodes. It is a masterpiece.

It is as exquisite and intricate a mystery story as you’ll ever find, yet surprisingly easy to follow, with many surprises (most of which are satisfying), and an important touch of the supernatural. Every character has a purpose and that purpose is by the end of the series fully explained.

You end up loving all of the characters, even the villains once you realize their motivation. If you watch it closely, you might wipe away a tear here and there. Anime can be better than live-action shows when it comes to getting a grip on your heart.

I began watching anime in 2020, as COVID-19 was upon us. I quickly learned that there is no better refuge when the world is simply too much and it’s time to take a break. According to the popular fan site myanimelist.net, while watching “The Holy Grail of Eris” I crossed the line that tells me I have now watched a total of 99 “anime days” — they count it as 24-hour days — so I’ve spent 2376 hours or 297 eight-hour days watching 489 anime series and animovies. That’s a lot of time spent watching cartoons, but anime are not just cartoons.

Fans can score shows on a 1-to-10 scale. I’ve given only 33 entries a 10 rating, because an anime needs to be something special for me to give it a 10. (I also make a point of not watching anime I’m not likely to think is very good.) I try to watch entire series at once whenever I can, which means that I watch plenty of old anime (and there are a lot of great old anime). In fact, I was almost done with “The Holy Grail of Eris” before I discovered that it aired just this spring, concluding less than a month ago. Watching it all at once is far more immersive than catching 25 minutes (and when you remove the opening and closing, it’s more like 20 minutes) every week.

The world having not been a very pleasant place lately, I’ve watched a lot of anime so far in 2026. Until this year I’ve preferred dubbed voices over subtitles dialog, but that changed as it became more and more obvious that the English-language scriptwriters have increasingly messed with the translations. This is known as “localization,” and it has enraged many anime fans with its insertion of wokeness and other changes in what was originally said. Now I prefer subtitles for the newer stuff. Not that it matters with “The Holy Grail of Eris,” which is currently available only subtitled. (As I’ve watched more subtitled anime, I’ve discovered that even though I can’t understand most of the words, the acting is better, too. The voices are pleasanter and the emotions are more clearly conveyed.)

“The Holy Grail of Eris” is the rare, perhaps unique in my experience, anime that at the end I could think of nothing that I would have changed, nothing that I wished were different, no criticism at all. It even had a proper ending.

That’s something you can’t always count on in anime. Sometimes it’s as if the writers wrote themselves into a situation they can’t now write their way out of, so they invent something you’ve never heard of before. Those situations remind me of the best-seller of a few decades ago, “The World According to Garp,” where John Irving seemed to have gotten close to his contracted word count — the book was already pretty long — so he just killed off the characters. Sometimes anime end in a cliffhanger, in anticipation of a subsequent season that never gets made. (I think that this happens with television series, too, though there have increasingly been finale episodes, marketed as “events.”)

“The Holy Grail of Eris” is set in a fictional country in a Victorian-ish era. This helps it hold up when compared to standard, famous, British mysteries.

There are several main characters, but I’ll mention only two to avoid any hint of a spoiler. The lead is a cuteanimegirl named Constance Grail, She is young, sweet, and thoughtful and right off the bat she is accused of theft at a formal dance. It is only because of the character Scarlett Castiel that her accuser is exposed.

Scarlett is a ghost. Though innocent, she was publicly beheaded 10 years earlier at age 16. In her ghostly form, few can see her. She and Constance can communicate, so she helps Constance put her accusers in their place. But it doesn’t quite end there, and the viewer discovers that the series leaves no loose ends, nor does it contain anything that doesn’t advance the plot-writ-large. The plot is gorgeously constructed.

In exchange for her help, Scarlett, who when alive was wild and sharp-tongued, wants Constance to track down why she was executed and to clear her name.

That turns out to be one of several intertwined mysteries. Though it’s “a cartoon,” it is as as complex (though easy to follow if you’re paying attention) as any mystery you’ve ever seen or read. As I said, it’s a masterpiece.

I watched it on Crunchyroll, but you may well find it on other streaming services (I don’t know because I don’t subscribe to any others).

It is just the thing for those of us who are literally world-weary, and I entirely recommend it. It beats the heck out of anything else you’ll find, and it lets me off the hook a bit — there are only so many ways of saying that the president is a louse, and this week everyone beat me to it anyway.