If you hop into your timemachine (your computer), hit a bunch of buttons (go on AnilList), and go back a couple years, the Isekai genre was an infrequent treat that we all didn’t get tired of every season. 2015 didn’t have like 6 Isekais coming out every season to oversaturate the market. They were fresh and inventive (most of the time). No Game No Life, Log Horizon, Sword Art Online; all of these shows, even years later, are ones that every anime fan knows about. At most, you remember everything about these shows, and even if you don’t like these shows, you at least know their names and are likely to have heard the characters' names. In 2023, we still know who Kirito is, even though Sword Art Online has aged like milk. The Isekai genre meant something. It wasn’t a time where everyone groans at the mention of Isekai or immediately becomes disinterested in a show. And when you warp back to the present, you’re reminded how little the Isekai genre means now. They’re such a mass produced medium that comes and goes without a second thought. They’ve become the McDonalds of anime; mass produced and forgotten in seconds after consumption.

J.C. Staff have a pretty great reputation of creating nothing good ever, accompanied with visuals that always look dated given the time they’re released. If you take away the subtitles for a little bit, you get a good look at how little things are happening at any given time. Stills hang for a couple seconds past its expiration date, leading to scenes where a character’s boring, goofy face just sits dead center of the screen, creating an awkward period of time where you have to look somewhere else. But obviously that’s not supposed to be the focal point of these types of shows. If the animation studio can kick it into high gear for scenes that have impact and weight to them, these little moments in between can be forgiven. So how are the action and fighting animations? Still terrible. This show does not know how to either animate or pace an action scene, the two things that people really care about in these moments. Lemme give you an example. At some point in the show, the elf warrior girl gets into this sword fight with THE LEADER OF THE AIR FORCE who is a DRAGON! This is supposed to be a big moment in the show, so how long do you think it lasts? 10 minutes? 20 minutes? This shit lasts for 2 agonizing minutes with pointless dialogue, and the bare minimum of animation for a fight scene. It’s barely a step up from a slideshow. And not 2 minutes later, Souma is riding to who cares(?) to do whatever. The tonal shift and pacing is truly abysmal.

The biggest insult about this show, though, are these stupid characters that no one gives two shits about. Everything about these characters are dull and forgettable. We’re dumped with like 20 cookie-cutter characters by like episode 3, and expected to care about like half of them. Souma recruits 5 nobodies to help him run the country, from big-boobed singer to fat guy. You would expect that these characters would be crucial characters in this show, given as THE KING recruited them. The fat guy appeared in like 2 of the most boring episodes in Isekai history to talk about food, then fucks off for the entire season. The little fox girl that told Souma that there was like a demon or something lurking around (which sounds way scarier than it actually is) hangs around for like half an episode, to which she is shoved aside to play with the horses or whatever. Weren’t these 5 characters picked out from an entire nation to represent and help with running a country? So why are the only 2 that ever get any meaningful screentime are the basic waifu-bait girls that really don’t do anything? This has to be done on purpose for the exact reason I just stated before.

There are no consequences to anything in this show. Anything good that can happen will happen in a flash, leading to a lazy show that puts the characters in a zero-stakes situation. Souma snaps his magic fingers for some stupid problem in this terribly constructed world and produces the best result possible like he’s some sort of political wiz kid. Are we to believe that this world is currently struggling with a food shortage? What evidence in this world would lead us to believe it? Is the old king an idiot? Probably. This doesn’t look like a world that has mounting issues caused by a food shortage. It looks like a generic fantasy world on a typical day.

Throughout the entire review, I’ve referred to all the characters except for Souma as things like “fat guy” and “little fox girl.” This is because, as of writing this review literally a day after I finished watching the show, I cannot recall a single goddamn person’s name aside from Souma, and that’s only because the show constantly likes to remind us how much of a humble and great person Souma is by not having him be referred to as “Your Highness” or “Your Majesty.” These supposed “Important Characters” have no presence and leave no impression on the viewer. No one is important. Not even the “important characters” are important.

I always imagine that there are two types of viewers that are watching these types of shows: those that watch Isekai just to turn their brain off and those that watch Isekai to hope that this one will actually be good. If you fall into the former category, you’ll probably love this show, it’s designed for that purpose. But if you fall into the latter, you’re gonna want to toss this one to the side and keep looking. I know I am.

(please god someone recommend me a good Isekai).