YMMV / Radiant

• Cliché Storm: The most common criticism of the series is its use of many of the common tropes present in many other anime fighting series, such as a generic Stock Shōnen Hero as the main character with a Dark and Troubled Past and a Superpowered Evil Side he needs to control, leading to inevitable comparisons with Naruto and Fairy Tail. The main premise, involving the search of a MacGuffin Location, also lead to comparisons with One Piece.
• Complete Monster: Konrad de Marbourg, the Captain of the Inquisitors who guards Rumble Town, is infamous for his hatred of the infected people and foreign refugees. Fifteen years before the main story, it was revealed that he abused a sorcerer child named Hameline under his care, along with her other sorcerer friends, and also manipulated Rumble Town citizens to kill said friends. During the Nemesis attack on Rumble Town, Konrad kills the previous Chief Inquisitor who treated Hameline nicely because he hindered Konrad's plans, and then has the innocent citizens evacuated to a location where he murdered them all and pinned the crime on the innocent immigrants, branding them as "terrorists". In the present, he tries to commit mass purges on immigrants by riling the citizens to fight against them. Despite his claims, Konrad proves himself to be a callous, hypocritical and a bigoted racist who represents the worst traits of the Inquisitors.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Hameline. In the grand scheme of things, she's something of a Small Role, Big Impact as she dies in the same arc that she was introduced but her impact in the story continues to be important. Rumble Town as a whole is such a well-liked arc and her tragic dynamic with Seth has led her to continue to be popular even long after her death.
• Friendly Fandoms: Radiant shares many of its fans with Black Clover. Both stories have energetic, friendly main characters with special powers who start off at the bottom as they try to achieve their dreams. The series take place in worlds of magic and have much more fleshed out female characters than many of their shonen contemporaries. It helps that both are popular in France, Radiant's country of origin.
• Growing the Beard: The introductory arc is pretty generic. However, most readers agree that the story begins to take off in the Rumble Town Arc, which does a good job of establishing the story's themes of persecution and idealism, introduces the fan-favorite Grimm and the threat of the Thaumaturges, and provides hard-hitting emotional moments involving Seth and Hameline. The following arcs further reinforce this, as Seth starts to stray away from the Stock Shōnen Hero archetype and the themes are treated with more subtlety.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Seth acknowledging to Hameline that he does understand her pain and know what it's like to feel persecution and want revenge, but that he won't succumb to it so that he won't become the monster people think he is.
  • In spite of her tragic backstory, Hameline, after being touched by Seth's words, decides to sacrifice herself in fighting off the Thaumaturges, knowing that she'll die, to buy him just a few seconds to help him escape, kissing him on the cheek before saying goodbye.
  • Seth considering Myr and Jill as family and their babies like his little siblings while he was in the Forest of Caillte.
  • Yaga comforting Myr after Jill's death.
  • Dragunov helping Seth during the Bome arc, giving him shelter in his house and reassuring him that he didn't kill Konrad.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Seth finally defeating the irredeemable Konrad after a long battle is oh so satisfying, especially as he realizes that Seth wasn't using his full strength the entire time, with Seth ending him with a thunderous Skull Burst.
  • The protagonists (Seth, Mélie, Doc and Ocoho) defeating their opponents (Santori, Liselotte, Vérone and the Merchant Barons, respectively) at the climax of the Cyfandir battle.
• Obvious Judas: Mordred being Evil All Along may count as this, considering he is named after one of the most notorious villains from the Arthurian Legend. He has, in fact, many similarities with his mythical counterpart, so his eventual betrayal comes as something totally expected.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Subtle, but seeing Mélie talk with cardboard cut outs just to ease her loneliness from people not wanting to be near her because of her uncontrollable fits of rage thanks to her infection. It's sad seeing that the nice, cheerful girl is actually pretty depressed underneath her demeanor.
  • Seth's backstory. He was persecuted all his life for being an infected, with kids trying to stab him to find his supposed demon's mark. Crying and pleading for mercy, he used his magic to defend himself and for this the parents of those kids tied him to a stake, contemplating killing Seth right in front of him. After he gets saved by Alma, poor Seth can only cry in her arms.
  • Hameline's backstory is tragic. She was taken and raised by the Inquisition to make her a weapon against the Nemesis, mistreated the whole time with being forced to live in a cell, and still discriminated against. She and the other detainees tried to escape, but were captured and punished brutally for it. Then Major Oxumare, the only source of kindness to her the entire time, was killed when Konrad "released" her to help against a Nemesis only to plan to have her die. It's really no wonder she ended up taking the Nemesis' side against the humans who treated her like a monster.
  • Hameline's death, who despite her life has been touched enough by Seth to sacrifice herself to buy him a few seconds to escape. It traumatizes Seth enough that he doesn't want any praise at the Artemis Institute, not wanting to recognize his own achievements because she had died so that he could have enough time to escape. Even after he gets a pep talk from Alma, he's still traumatized enough that he splits off from Mélie and Doc for a while.
  • Jill's death in the Cyfandir arc hits particularly hard, considering Seth spent several years in the forest out of time with her and Myr, and considered them and their soon-to-be-born children as his family at that point. It hits all the harder that the death isn't even shown − when everyone arrives, it's already too late.