Here is a show that stands out in the ocean of isekai we seem to have been drowning in for the last 10 or so years now; why? Did it break some new ground? Have great production value? Maybe it's an impressively good story? No, nothing so positive; it sticks out to me for one reason and one reason alone: from my personal experience in discussion with other isekai fans, it seems to be the single most hated anime the genre has ever seen.

Is such hatred deserved? No. Is it any good? Well.... also no. Here's my opinion on everyone's least favourite Norse-flavored isekai. (spoilers ahead)

[Story: 8/20]

The story (that we see in the anime) begins with protag-kun leading a fight against a rival clan in an attempt at a bronze age setting; he has his cheat power in the form of a smartphone, allowing him, in this ancient setting to have access to a wealth of modern information through the internet. Naturally, he uses that information to lead his clan to victory against their rivals and that's about it for our opening,

Yes, that's the opening; they skip the whole actually being transported to another world (back in time?) part, along with a substantial amount of time; in which, our generic, self-insert protagonist climbs his way from a random dude summoned to this world, all the way up to the Patriarch (leader) of his clan (the wolf clan). After our opening battle, we don't get a lot of time to rest and develop anything about the story or characters; we're simply moved swiftly on to the next story beat: threatening to massacre a whole clan of 10,000+ if their patriarch (who happens to be a pink haired loli) doesn't agree to become the sworn little sister of protag-kun in the most blatant "I can't believe it's not incest" system ever seen in anime. Let's elaborate: every female character in Jeff's (use which ever name you want for the MC, he's not a real character anyway) inner-circle/pseudo-harem is sworn to be either his little sister or daughter. I'm not going to unpack that, but needless to say, this blatant and often disruptive (I'm no ecchi hater, but come on) fetishization goes in the debit, rather than the credit column of this show & is one of the main things pointed to when people rip on it for being bottom of the barrel trash.

Moving on from the incest, loli-bait and threats of genocide, let's get into the main problem of the story: "and then this happened". Jesus Christ do they pull this one a lot, we go straight from threatening the loli, into a battle with another, previously unmentioned clan (Hoof), then straight after that, a battle with another, also previously unmentioned clan (lightning) & then, I swear you won't believe this, another previously unmentioned clan (Panther). In between this, the initial harem of blonde one, wolf girl, blacksmith girl and the pink haired loli grows with the addition of twin lolis & slave loli; yes, that's right, 4 lolis total... Oh yeah, I forgot to mention (not unlike the anime) that a dude who is both blonde girl's actual brother and Jeremy's sworn brother betrayed them before the anime began and is now leading the Panther clan. Yes, they really do just pull that one out of nowhere when introducing the Panther clan.

There's also a subplot going on back in Joshua's world (or time, I guess?) where his girlfriend, but not really girlfriend, is able to call him every night on that previously mentioned smartphone; this plot is actually the reason why I rated the story so high for what it is. Childhood friend/somewhat girlfriend girl is trying to find information on how to get James back from the bronze age; along the way, she talks to the older sister of her best friend and starts to see that Jeremiah is actually taking part in the events of Norse mythology; this is surprisingly done rather cleverly and were the rest of this story written competently (and with about 90% less incest and lolis), it may actually have been a compelling setup for further story telling.

[Production value: 6/20]

I have seen worse production value, but this is also nowhere near good; the use of CGI, though not handled particularly well, also isn't too terrible, it's mostly used on faceless background soldiers for the large-scale battle scenes & doesn't stand out too much. Do you know what also doesn't stand out? The fight scenes; They'll set up a fight like wolf girl vs the leader of the lightning clan and then just handle it with animation that has all the quality of a bowl of lukewarm piss and all the intensity of 2 elderly men trying to pass each other in a narrow walkway. It's slow, stiff and the over-abundance of still frames makes it feel like a horny Microsoft PowerPoint presentation at times.

The art style is also cited as a reason as to why the creators should be flogged by many of Ragnarök's haters, but it's nothing stand out; true, it's uninspired and dull, but not being particularly good doesn't automatically make it bad & that about sums up my feelings about it.

The soundtrack is also there.

[Characters: 4/20]

So, we'll just skip Justin (as I said, he's a spot for you to self-insert and as such isn't actually a character in his own right) & move on to the others: Wolf girl has about as interesting of a design as you can get with the mediocre art style, so that's a plus I guess; blonde girl is a character that exists; pink-haired loli and blacksmith girl both strip for Jerome on multiple occasions and that's about all they get for character development; slave girl is also there; childhood friend girl is in love with Joseph & the twins are actually kind of interesting in comparison, but that's not saying a lot given the competition here.

[Enjoyment: 5/10]

For all of it's issues, Ragnarök made for adequate background noise & that's about as strong of a complement as it will likely ever get; in the opening of this review, I said that the hate the show gets is undeserved & here is as good a place as any to state plainly: it's not good, but it's not awful; I enjoyed it to the point that dropping it never really crossed my mind.

[Success: 14/30]

This show knew what it wanted to be: self-insert, somewhat ecchi, brain dead fun - it achieved that to an extent and though I wouldn't say it was mostly successful, it was almost there. Maybe a prequel would have fixed the main issues and elevated it to average, but as it stands, it was inoffensively bad & that's really about all the effort I want to put into rating this show (lest I put in more effort than the animators seemingly did).

[Overall: 3.7/10]

All-in-all, I think that there's little to like about this anime, but there's also almost equally little to dislike; it's bad, sure, but to name this as the worst isekai of all time would simply be a statement that I can't agree with. I won't out and out say that I recommend this, even to a seasoned isekai fan with nothing to do, but if you want something to put on in the background or to kill a few hours, there is worse out there.