Contains very minor spoilers.
I know what I said when I titled this review, but please, before you immediately scroll past it in its entirety to slam that thumbs-down button in an indignant fit of “how dare they say my loli fantasy anime isn't original?”-induced rage, hear me out for a minute.
As you can tell from the second half of rest of the title, I think this anime is good. I’m by no means writing this review just to take a big ol' shit on it, I just have a lot to say about it and I figured barfing it all out on a review would be the most productive way to get that all out. It's been a hell of a ride watching it release these past couple of months, so I hope you'll join me.
Heads-up, I’ll talk about this series both as a standalone anime and as an adaptation of a manga I like, but if you’re here because you only care about the show, I won’t bore you too much with all of that so don’t worry.
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Jahy plots to rebuild her realm with the mana crystal shards that have now been scattered across the human realm as well as seek revenge on the Magical Girl who caused her world to fall, but this is no easy feat when she’s tasked with both trying to keep her job and pay rent for her cramped apartment in this unforgiving world.
Put simply, it’s your standard isekai sob story of losing everything and being made to live in an unfamiliar world. Sounds depressing, doesn’t it?
I think now would be a good time to mention that it's a comedy.
Despite having a premise that you’d usually expect to find in a 100k words slowburn hurt/comfort isekai AU fanfiction, it’s far, far more light-hearted than it sounds on paper. Each episode is essentially a set of skits that sometimes end in happiness and sometimes in frustration, but all in Jahy making her way towards the reconstruction of her realm with the help of the friends she quickly makes in the human realm. It’s really wholesome and quite motivating, actually, and is basically just a story of this stuck-up loli girl learning to open up to others and managing to work towards her goals, even if only a little at a time.
It deals with usually pretty tiring issues like work and rent, but thanks to its slapstick theme it never makes them seem as depressing as we all know far too well that they are in real life. It’s refreshing in this sense, and although the idea of making stuff that’s a pain in the ass in real life into a comedic gag isn’t exactly new, it still seems fresh when said stuff is experienced by a chuuni Dark Realm lord.
Its comedy doesn’t mean it’s devoid of genuine emotion though, and it has its moments of sadness and regret. We all know that feeling of having a goal we just have to complete but becoming intimidated by the mountain of work ahead of us that we’ll have to climb over to achieve this goal, and the one thing The Great Jahy is somewhat realistic about is this. It’s heartfelt and down-to-earth in this regard, but it also doesn’t linger on it long enough for it to actually get us down and break the fluffiness that the rest of the show creates, whether that be for the best or otherwise.
In terms of how it adapted the manga, aside from reordering a few chapters and skipping one or two where they weren’t needed, I’d say the anime was almost entirely faithful. It adapted around 70 chapters and even added relevant filler in some places, but it was paced well and never felt like it was trying to speedrun to the end thanks to its two cour run. The way it mixed actual plot progression with simpler skits was also wonderful, and it wasn’t ruined by its ending either like some other comedy and/or isekai shows.
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To describe them in one word, they’re colourful. From Jahy, the kusogaki pain-in-the-ass who isn’t actually quite as unfeeling as she thinks she is, to the seemingly evil but honestly just misunderstood Magical Girl Kyoko, each character has their own very unique personality and gimmick that never really seems to get old. Almost every interaction is absolutely hilarious, and the characters bounce off of each other wonderfully.
What’s most genius to me is that, thanks to the series’ more episodic format, characters are never overused. Aside from, obviously, the main character, and to an extent the Boss and Landlord as the secondary protagonists, each character will dip in and out of the story at different intervals, meaning that enough time will have passed since their previous appearance for them to feel fresh once they come back in. It’s this that really makes this show work as well as it does, and what keeps it watchable for the entire 20 episode run.
Additionally, despite this anime’s simple and light-hearted premise of “what kinda funny and slightly unfortunate demon bullshit can we pull next?”, characters aren’t at all devoid of development. Jahy in particular really changes for the better over the course of the series, and even colder characters like the Landlord soften up a bit as her bonds with her new friends start to strengthen. The Great Jahy is ultimately a story about making the best of bad experiences, and it doesn’t fail to deliver those teetee wholesome moments of reflection alongside its slapstick comedy.
Design-wise, the characters are just as eye-catching as you’d guess from their vibrant personalities. Jahy’s two forms are both great in different ways, and I really have to take my hat off to Konbu-sensei for managing to have her switch between being a loli and an absolute milf without ever carrying over the horniness of her latter design to the former. It’s a comedic gag that works without feeling weird and I honestly really like it for that.
The other characters are definitely worth mentioning as well, as they’re plain enough to avoid being Mary Sue-ish, but they’re not so plain that they just look like background characters. I like the demons’ designs in particular, specifically Saurva’s, as she looks demonic enough to fit in at an anime con but isn’t stupidly over-the-top about it like many other anime girl demons are.
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Honestly, considering how much I adore the manga’s art, I was thinking I was really gonna love the anime’s as well provided it was a decently-accurate adaptation.
I was wrong.
While not offensively bad, the show’s animation is lackluster to say the least. It’s honestly disappointingly amateurish, and while studio SILVER LINK. isn’t exactly up there with KyoAni and ufotable in terms of reputation, it’s still produced shows with far better animation than can be seen in The Great Jahy. It’s just utterly devoid of any care it could’ve been given had more time been spent on it.
Character movement often feels stiff and wonky even during repeated scenes such as the openings, and backgrounds sometimes even look like they’ve been created from photobashed free use pngs some tired animator found on Google dot com after their third coffee of the evening, making it frighteningly obvious how low-budget the show is and what little was done to rectify that.
Look at the foreground. This is an actual unedited screenshot.
That being said, it’s not absolutely unwatchable, and it tells the story well enough to leave one satisfied after an episode. As I mentioned earlier, the character designs for one are nice, and I also liked how closely the art style sticks to the source material’s, as that’s definitely one of the manga’s strong points for me. It’s faithful and I guess that’s what ultimately matters, but that won’t stop me from wanting to punch a wall every time I see that one specific shot of Jahy flinging her arms up at the end of Fightin★Pose.
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I don’t have a lot to say about this anime’s voice acting, and that’s because it can be summed up pretty quickly: it was really, really good.
The anime has a lineup of fan-favourite VAs, and they’re casted absolutely perfectly. Each character sounds pretty much exactly how you’d picture them sounding if you glanced over their design sheets–aside from Kyoko, but that’s only because I literally had no idea what I expected her to sound like, and, honestly, I dig deeper voices anyway so this is a win for me.
My singular complaint? Small Jahy’s voice can kind of grate on you after a while. This isn’t at all because of Ozora’s performance though, it’s simply because small Jahy is really that annoying sometimes and her VA brings it to life far too perfectly.
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As a perfect point to lead off from the previous section on, all but one of the anime’s openings and endings were actually sung by the voice actors, and they’re honestly really good as far as VA songs go.
While none of them are particularly memorable and all failed to make it onto my Top 10 2021 Anime Songs I’d Get Drunk In My Girlfriend’s Basement To list, they’re still catchy enough to not be immediate skip material. None were stand-out enough for me to feel the need to do an individual review of them all, but they all fit the anime’s tone perfectly, especially the second opening: Life is Hard DAME DINERO, which is basically “I’m poor give me money” in genki anime song form, and what is The Great Jahy if not that?
In terms of op/ed animation, however, I wasn’t really feeling it as much. The animation sticks to one specific aesthetic across both openings, and while it isn’t ugly by any means, it kind of feels like a mental breakdown of bright colours and repeated animation loops that exist to look nice while eating as little of the budget as possible, which didn’t do either song justice. The endings I liked more, honestly, as while they’re equally as low-effort, I really dug the chibi style and all the cute little storylines they tell throughout the songs. But I realise I’m just going back to my animation bashing, so let’s move on.
The OST wasn’t anything to write home about, in all honesty. It hit at all the right points, but not one song was memorable enough for me to recognise it, and I’d be hard-pressed to answer if you asked me how many times each one had played throughout the series’ run. That’s less of a complaint and more of an observation though, because only very few anime OST composers have ever managed to impress me to the point at which I actually recognised different songs in different episodes.
All in all, good, maybe even great, but too average to ever be something I’d recommend this anime to someone on the basis of unless they were a Hololive fan.
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Is this anime perfect? No. Is it still worth watching anyway? Yes.
I’ll be the first to say as a manga fan that I was disappointed by this adaptation, but it wasn’t so devastatingly awful that I started to resent it as a result. It’s a fun show and I loved watching it be brought to life by the wonderful team that worked on it, despite all my complaints about certain aspects of it.
The Great Jahy is essentially just a prime example of why you shouldn’t sleep too hard on the slapstick surreal comedy genre. It’s not the best anime ever and it’s definitely not for everyone, that much is obvious, but it’s worth at least trying a couple episodes of if it’s something that piques your interest. Or, hey, embrace your inner manga reader and give its superior source material a shot.
I’d recommend this to, of course, fellow chad enjoyers of reverse isekai and fun characters with slightly horny designs, but also to anyone who just needs a low-braincell show to senselessly switch off to and enjoy. The Great Jahy is by no means the most revolutionary anime to drop this year–I mean, it’s not even in my top 5 for this season in that regard–but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good watch for anyone who needs a bit of dumb comedy to make them smile in these trying times.
Thank you for taking the time to read my review, and I hope you got at least something out of it. I appreciate it!