This movie manages to insult almost the entire cast of the show. There will be no specific order to this, I will touch on the characters as I think of them and explain as best I can how they were diminished.
Meliodas: He has always been a powerhouse, that is his character. But in this movie he is like Schrödinger's cat, which is a comparison I never thought I would make talking about anime, he is both strong and weak at the same time. In one scene he gets slapped around by a being who has never been mentioned before and even after giving him a tiny backstory he is established as being a lesser fairy king, yet meliodas needs to tap into his rage power mode to try and fight back. Yet later on meliodas with no rage power, no demon king power, no purgatory power, just season 1 base level meliodas manages to beat the "supreme diety" with zero effort. It took all of the sins, including escanor using the last of the sun grace power to beat the demon king, yet meliodas smacks down a being equally as strong as the demon king with nothing more than a base level sword attack.
Zeldris: Almost identical to meliodas above. On one hand he get's knocked around by mindless puppets and frankly embarassed. Then mere moments later with no training or even rest, without even having access to the power that failed to scratch escanor he overpowers the supreme diety also with zero effort.
Supreme diety: I am sure you can see where this is going. One of the 2 omnipotent beings in the lore, a literal god who the demon king himself over thousands of years was unable to overpower, after 3 seasons a mini season, a handful of movies and 8 years of content she is finally seen on screen and she is pathetic. A season 1 red demon gave the sins more trouble than this god did, complete and utter waste of the character. It takes all the sins + zeldris + escanor sacrificing his "life energy" to face the demon king but 2 swings of a sword from depowered meliodas and poof, the supreme diety is gone.
Mael: The strongest of the goddesses, a being powerful enough to single handedly strike fear into the entire demon forces, a being powerful enough that even without the source of his power ( the sun grace) is still stronger than anything on the demon side and strong enough to stand up to the combined forces of the entire seven deadly sins. In this movie he gets a tiny amount of screen time and he spends it running away and crying like a little b. He doesn't want to fight his own kind? Ok fair, but that doesnt and shouldnt render him unable to defend himself, he is the strongest single fighter and has the single strongest source of power but suddenly he is unable to knock out/restrain a handful of unnamed, canon fodder nobodies? That's dumb.
Merlin: Merlin is in the movie, but she may as well not be. She gets just 2 scenes, 1 she is standing with arthur, the scene sets up an action sequence about to take place but we dont get to see it, the scene ends with nothing happening. Throughout the remaining 99.9% of screen time Merlin does literally nothing then in the closing few seconds she get a scene where for some reason she is floating by herself, nt helping her friends or arthur, she says one line of dialogue to herself and then leaves again. Utter waste of both the character and animation time. You as a random person reading this review play a bigger role in the movie than merlin does. An immortal, untouchable mage with knowledge of dieties and a ridiculous arsenal of magic at her disposal and she does literally nothing.
Arthur: Again, does less than nothing. He has 1 single scene, which sets the stage for an action scene but instead it cuts to a different scene and arthur is never seen or heard from again. Merlin, who betrayed everybody for the sake of babysitting Arthur leaves him on his own with no rhyme or reason, displays no concern for how he is holding up without her, says nothing about leaving him.
Humans: May as well lump these together. The humans have never been top of the power chain in this show, but they have been able to hold their own and with training throughout the seasons got stronger. At this point in the story gilthunder and griamore are high ranking senior magic knights and howzer is the commander of the entire holy knights order yet the second a weak enemy shows up they run away like they are in a looney tunes skit. Dreyfus and Hendrickson are retired, seasoned knights, dreyfus has indomitable will and retains some of fraudrins demon powers, hendrickson is both a holy knight and a druid, having knowledge of the gods and access to powerful magic, yet they do nothing. They get maybe 2 lines of dialogue and then the second enemies show up they vanish from existence, they should be able to do a lot of damage but instead are wiped from the roster with no explanation. Jericho and Guila are also useless, jericho has her speed and guila has her fire magic, yet they are intimidated and run away from a couple of fairies and the only thing they do in the entire movie is get slapped to the ground.
It is such a poor movie. Like all anime the power scaling has never been consistent in this universe, but in this movie it's outright insulting. Most of the characters are made weaker than they were in season 1 and hten proceed to do less than nothing in the movie and the only 2 characters who win any fights are zeldris and meliodas, who lose to weak enemies and then despite having access to almost none of their anime-series powers effortlessly slaughter the most powerful being in their universe. It's not just dumb, it is not just typical anime, power of friendship dumb, it is painfully and inexcusably dumb.
Meliodas: He has always been a powerhouse, that is his character. But in this movie he is like Schrödinger's cat, which is a comparison I never thought I would make talking about anime, he is both strong and weak at the same time. In one scene he gets slapped around by a being who has never been mentioned before and even after giving him a tiny backstory he is established as being a lesser fairy king, yet meliodas needs to tap into his rage power mode to try and fight back. Yet later on meliodas with no rage power, no demon king power, no purgatory power, just season 1 base level meliodas manages to beat the "supreme diety" with zero effort. It took all of the sins, including escanor using the last of the sun grace power to beat the demon king, yet meliodas smacks down a being equally as strong as the demon king with nothing more than a base level sword attack.
Zeldris: Almost identical to meliodas above. On one hand he get's knocked around by mindless puppets and frankly embarassed. Then mere moments later with no training or even rest, without even having access to the power that failed to scratch escanor he overpowers the supreme diety also with zero effort.
Supreme diety: I am sure you can see where this is going. One of the 2 omnipotent beings in the lore, a literal god who the demon king himself over thousands of years was unable to overpower, after 3 seasons a mini season, a handful of movies and 8 years of content she is finally seen on screen and she is pathetic. A season 1 red demon gave the sins more trouble than this god did, complete and utter waste of the character. It takes all the sins + zeldris + escanor sacrificing his "life energy" to face the demon king but 2 swings of a sword from depowered meliodas and poof, the supreme diety is gone.
Mael: The strongest of the goddesses, a being powerful enough to single handedly strike fear into the entire demon forces, a being powerful enough that even without the source of his power ( the sun grace) is still stronger than anything on the demon side and strong enough to stand up to the combined forces of the entire seven deadly sins. In this movie he gets a tiny amount of screen time and he spends it running away and crying like a little b. He doesn't want to fight his own kind? Ok fair, but that doesnt and shouldnt render him unable to defend himself, he is the strongest single fighter and has the single strongest source of power but suddenly he is unable to knock out/restrain a handful of unnamed, canon fodder nobodies? That's dumb.
Merlin: Merlin is in the movie, but she may as well not be. She gets just 2 scenes, 1 she is standing with arthur, the scene sets up an action sequence about to take place but we dont get to see it, the scene ends with nothing happening. Throughout the remaining 99.9% of screen time Merlin does literally nothing then in the closing few seconds she get a scene where for some reason she is floating by herself, nt helping her friends or arthur, she says one line of dialogue to herself and then leaves again. Utter waste of both the character and animation time. You as a random person reading this review play a bigger role in the movie than merlin does. An immortal, untouchable mage with knowledge of dieties and a ridiculous arsenal of magic at her disposal and she does literally nothing.
Arthur: Again, does less than nothing. He has 1 single scene, which sets the stage for an action scene but instead it cuts to a different scene and arthur is never seen or heard from again. Merlin, who betrayed everybody for the sake of babysitting Arthur leaves him on his own with no rhyme or reason, displays no concern for how he is holding up without her, says nothing about leaving him.
Humans: May as well lump these together. The humans have never been top of the power chain in this show, but they have been able to hold their own and with training throughout the seasons got stronger. At this point in the story gilthunder and griamore are high ranking senior magic knights and howzer is the commander of the entire holy knights order yet the second a weak enemy shows up they run away like they are in a looney tunes skit. Dreyfus and Hendrickson are retired, seasoned knights, dreyfus has indomitable will and retains some of fraudrins demon powers, hendrickson is both a holy knight and a druid, having knowledge of the gods and access to powerful magic, yet they do nothing. They get maybe 2 lines of dialogue and then the second enemies show up they vanish from existence, they should be able to do a lot of damage but instead are wiped from the roster with no explanation. Jericho and Guila are also useless, jericho has her speed and guila has her fire magic, yet they are intimidated and run away from a couple of fairies and the only thing they do in the entire movie is get slapped to the ground.
It is such a poor movie. Like all anime the power scaling has never been consistent in this universe, but in this movie it's outright insulting. Most of the characters are made weaker than they were in season 1 and hten proceed to do less than nothing in the movie and the only 2 characters who win any fights are zeldris and meliodas, who lose to weak enemies and then despite having access to almost none of their anime-series powers effortlessly slaughter the most powerful being in their universe. It's not just dumb, it is not just typical anime, power of friendship dumb, it is painfully and inexcusably dumb.