From the same author as DanMachi, another story arrives about a teenage boy who uses unconventional means to fight, in a world full of magic that has a dungeon with several floors and monsters. Sound familiar? Wistoria is a combination of various clichés that have been used a thousand and one times before. It's like the unofficial son between Black Clover and DanMachi, which in itself isn't a bad thing, since the most important part is it's execution. Unfortunately, it didn't manage to distinguish itself enough from these two.

Directed by Tatsuya Yoshihara, director of Black Clover (they can't even hide the similarities in the staff) and action director of Chainsaw Man, the first couple episodes deliver incredible animation power, paying particular attention to the climax of episode 1, which demonstrates Yoshihara's raw animation talent as both director and storyboarder, from the frenetic and exciting actions scenes, to the incredible character acting. From the second episode onwards, the whole production starts to fall apart little by little, even in the more static scenes or those with little action, with the characters slightly off-model or with more stiff movements.
Fortunately, they managed to deliver some good action scenes during the "tournament" arc, around episodes 6 and 7, which although they didn't reach the same level as before, the sheer emotion of the often generic but effective soundtrack during these more intense moments, coupled with good storyboards and direction, made up for the stiff movement of the characters and the disappointing fire effects. In the following arc, the production in general remained consistent at most until the penultimate episode, even though the art direction took a slight step down (I wasn't too fond of the textures on the dungeon walls). The climax of the season exceeded the low expectations I had, but not even Hironori Tanaka's storyboards managed to deliver a consistent episode, with very good action cuts at one point and incredible flaws in all visual aspects in the next, particurlarly in the last strike between Will and the Duke. In short, a highly inconsistent and overly ambitious production.

So surely the story and characters are way better than the visuals, right? Well, very generic most of the time, stereotypical characters that seem to have been created just to fill the missing slot: character who is in love with the MC, check; character who “hates” the MC, check; character who is initially extremely proud of himself but gets better throughout the story, etc. On paper, the combination of generic story plus generic characters would be boring to say the least. Fortunately, the execution is so good that it's hard to dislike the journey our MC goes through in order to achieve what he so desires. Even so, I can't help but notice the similarities between this story and the same path that both Bell from DanMachi and Asta from Black Clover had and are taking. The similarity between Wistoria and these other two anime is uncanny, even down to the fact that there are characters with the same name and appearance between DanMachi and Wistoria (I'm looking at you Finn). I'm not saying they're the exact same, since they each have certain details in their stories that distinguish them apart (not much, but yes), although the author of the original work could have been more original in his second attempt at creating a fantasy world. I hope that in the next season, which was confirmed immediately after the end of the last episode, the story will be more surprising and separate itself more from it's "parents", expanding it's world in unexpected directions and turning Will into a more interesting MC (it wasn't particularly distinctive, but he had his good moments).

Overall, Wistoria is incredibly inconsistent, with a generic story that is executed well enough, and an equally confusing production. With some high and low moments, I came out of these 12 episodes pondering whether I really liked it or not, but as soon as the credits rolled for the last time and the announcement of Season 2 came in, I felt excited about the future of this story and how it would unfold.