Akuyaku Reijou Level 99: Watashi wa Ura Boss desu ga Maou de wa Arimasen
Disclaimer: spoilers ahead
--- Before the show was even announced, I was an avid follower of manga, always staying up to date as it's frankly done pretty well as a deadpan comedy manga. Because of this, I had high hopes that this adaption would be promising as the jokes would land so much better in animation rather than reading it in the manga.
Note: I have not read any of the LN yet, so my takes are going off of the manga/anime
Episode 1: A misguided trick
Already from the very first episode we see an ambitious choice of starting the show with a bait and switch of the main character, where the show follows Alicia instead of Yumiella, even committing with an entirely fake OP.
While I do not mind these types of jokes/openings, I feel like they went too far with this. Devoting half the episode to this switch and bait was too much and honestly the bait introductions were too boring and honestly didn't even add that much. I would've been happier if they either took the time to shorten the fluff of the bait down or even just get rid of it entirely.
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The Plot:
Now, why would I spend an entire section dedicated to the first half of the first episode? That's because the entire series plot is honestly, not that unique. However, I believe the series makes up for this completely with it's funny deadpan comedy.
The first few episodes were pretty decent, however, things began to take a shift in the worse as the episodes went on. The episodes started focusing more on the plot aspect of the series and skipped out on jokes such as Spoiler, click to viewSpin to the cat in episode 4 and Spoiler, click to viewThe princess carry running around the school which would've happened in episode 8
While I can see how these jokes may not be necessary at all in terms of the plot, when you remove these jokes the show ends up just turning into a generic overpowered MC fantasy anime. Another egregious example of this is Spoiler, click to viewThe missing offal soup joke at the start of episode 9 What is the point of putting this entire soup ordering sequence if you don't even bother to put the punchline in? This is just cutting out the joke - which is that the spy thought that offal soup was an odd choice and thought "don't girls normally prefer cake?" - for the sake of cutting the joke out. It wouldn't have even taken any extra animation unlike the previous examples
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In summary: the adaption of this series is misguided in what makes the series fun to read. Instead of focusing on the getting the jokes right, which would be the main attraction of this series, it instead cuts jokes out in order to make time for the plot. Because of this, we are left with a choppy feeling generic anime which makes me feel disappointed every time a funny joke gets skipped and replaced with uninteresting dialogue.
While there is nothing too wrong about this anime, it leaves much to be desired with how the show anime played out. Personally, I'd recommend just picking the manga up instead of watching the show as it executes the jokes much better than the anime.
