Promise of Wizard has fascinating, compelling character ideas and dynamics I've never seen presented so openly and in such volume before. The characters within this story are each worth a book on their own— a sheltered boy who grew up worshipped by a cult, a set of twin brothers where one died long ago, a man who ripped out another person's eye and replaced it with his own... I can't go more into it without spoilers, but the conceptual power is exceptional.

There's just one issue: there's twenty-two of them.

Also, the execution is pretty trash.

Plot & Worldbuilding

The story is set in a fantasy universe and follows a group of twenty-one wizards tasked with fighting the moon, A.K.A the Great Calamity, every year. The protagonist is a human girl named Akira, who is from modern Japan, but refreshingly, enters the world directly rather than being reincarnated into it.

The story feels like a harem setup, but it's actually not. There's only one flirtatious moment within 12 episodes, and in the game, I've heard that you can set Akira's gender to male or female. (Personally, I like that she's a girl here.)

Unfortunately, the plot meanders. I would consider the activities carried out by the characters secondary to the wordy exposition dumps we get each episode. While a lot happens, not much of it is resolved, making the events forgettable. The show also isn't done in the style where each episode lets us get to know a different character through a subplot about them. While that's a fairly basic structure and not one that's strong on its own, it could at least make for a better way to deliver information.

As for the setting, it has some interest to it, but ultimately feels like a simple Western-fantasy isekai. It's undeniable— a world where wizards have to fight the moon every year is cool. The wizards each have unique "bizarre wounds", are born with their powers, eventually stop aging, specifically aren't human, and turn to stone that can be used for power by humans— these are all cool concepts. However, the presentation of the actual society nerfs some of the effect.

Have you guys seen soldiers like this in an isekai before?

If not, how about these civilians?

Okay, these civilians are actually fairly cute, but they've got generic-fantasy vibes.

The Art & Animation

In a show focused on emotions and character dynamics, the characters look flat. The emotional body language of a character is animated out about once, and not especially well. Since there's so much dialogue, it should be presented in more than lip flaps... but it isn't. I've seen great drama animation. This ain't it. As for the fight scenes, they're pretty much bottom-of-the-barrel isekai. The artstyle isn't bad, but it doesn't stand out.

Monologues were given interesting montages to go with them occasionally, the most interesting of those shown above. However, that's pretty much the most basic directoral decision to go with. A better one would be to cut down all but the more important ones (such as above) and use camera angles, the setting and context, and the body language of characters to convey the mood in those now shorter pieces of dialogue.

The Exposition Problem

I don't think any anime has ever screamed "this is adapted from a visual novel" more than this one since Ensemble Stars. Actually, I just went to check the Ensemble Stars anime by watching a short clip from it, and that show is more energetic than this one. Promise of Wizard takes the twenty-two character overload and makes it worse by packing long exposition and dialogue into every scene. Scenes that are supposed to be energetic or action scenes are few and far between, as the series mostly focuses on long conversations. During action scenes, characters will take breaks to have long intermissions of dialogue where you wonder "how are they not getting killed?", or they'll describe their actions out loud, visual-novel style.

Information about the world and the characters is continually given to the viewer. It doesn't feel like they're reiterating, but what it does feel like is way too much information. There's not much time for exposition to be processed before new information comes our way, and it's almost entirely telling-not-showing.

The anime's most glaring issue is in some ways a microcosm of that. Akira's thoughts are presented to us, not by internal monologue, not by, y'know, seeing what she does and having her be an active participant in the story, and not by seeing her emote: they're shown by walls of text that flash on the screen. This is the most baffling directoral decision I've ever seen an anime take. The text is pretty much impossible to read in English or in Japanese, and it hardly adds anything, since Akira is so passive. She has the potential to be a strong character, but she never acts on the thoughts she has. They're simply given to us, and in an unreadable way.

The rest of the show's exposition may not be literal walls of text, but it sure is that in all but the literal sense.

The Character Problem (?)

I don't know much about the original, but I know the game has a lot of fans— hence my disclaimer in the introduction. I also know that it's by the writer of the game my favorite anime, IDOLiSH7, is based on, which is why I gave this a try in the first place. I've heard some exposition was conveyed in a different way, but cut for time. However, the setup and plot presented makes me dubious to whether the exposition could be handled well. There are twenty-two main characters, twenty-one if you don't count Akira (who's the PC in the game); half of them are introduced at the beginning and half are introduced about three episodes later. That's almost an impossible setup, and it's for sure why— or at least a big reason why— this show is so burdened with dialogue, exposition, and a wayward plot. It doesn't help that in addition to antagonistic wizards, there are also generic isekai villains and side characters to handle.

A good story would introduce characters slowly; to compare with other shows with a large cast, Gintama introduces its main characters over the course of about 22 episodes, sometimes having episodes in that beginning section where no one new is introduced. IDOLiSH7 takes three seasons to introduce its full cast of sixteen. The twelve-episode show with the largest main cast I know besides this is Astra Lost In Space, which keeps it to 9— an amount where there can be a character focus episode for everyone, plus three that can further the overall meta-plot.

However, there are some ways to alleviate a character to episode imbalance, and Promise of Wizard does make use of them. One way is to collect characters into groups. In Promise of Wizard, the wizards are divided into Northern wizards, Southern wizards, Eastern wizards, Western wizards, and Central wizards. To crudely summarize, the Northern wizards are badasses and kind of evil, the Southern wizards are nice and kind of weak, the Western wizards are weirdos, the Central wizards know the government, the Eastern wizards are kind of tsundere and distant... except Riquet from Central doesn't know the government at all, Oz from Central is basically a Northern wizard, one of the Southern wizards is super strong, one of the Eastern wizards wears his heart on his sleeve—— it's a decent attempt, but the categories are hard to keep in mind.

Another way is to make the characters have unique relationships to each other, and a third way is to make them all memorable and interesting— in design and in concept.

The Characters

You can judge the designs for yourself.

The anime restricts itself to having a team of prettyboys, and even within that, doesn't have the same diversity in face and build that can be found in prettyboy-centric anime Blue Lock or even in even-prettyboyer IDOLiSH7 or classic prettyboy anime like Ouran High School Host Club. However, I think it's indisputable that these designs are fairly fun and can be told apart at a glance.

As for concept and relationships, the anime excelled there, which is why I can list off all of the characters from memory, though don't trust my spelling: Akira, Oz, (and right, Oz knows—) Arthur, Rutile, (And his brother—) Mitile, (And his [redacted for spoilers]) Mithra, Riquet, Murr (and that guy he has a hell of a dynamic with—), Shylock , Heathcliff (And his childhood friend—), Shino, Figaro, Chloe (And his partner—), Rustica, Faust, Bradley (and the guy from the North too—), Owen (And that guy he has even more of a hell of a dynamic with—), Cain, Snow, White, (Bradley's connection—) Nero... and so forth.

Since a lot of the anime is dedicated to revealing these details, I don't want to go too into detail here; I've already given a few spoilers. I will say that the character concepts and relationships actually managed to keep me not-bored through what would have been a snoozefest of an anime. While considering it bad artistically, I actually enjoyed a fair amount of it because I got to know these characters with crazy concepts.

My favorite one is probably whatever's going on with these two.

And with that, I end my review with a score of 60. For me, a 49 is one that is just below the threshold of "I liked it". Every point above 50 is a redeeming quality; 75 is my baseline for an anime I'd describe as "good", which this one doesn't meet. I wouldn't recommend this anime to people generally, but if the idea of it intrigues you, don't write it off.