I wish there was more to write about this show, but it really is just a below average isekai that does nothing new. That could be the entire review and honestly, a show this bland and forgettable doesn't deserve the sheer word count this review may reach. The score I gave is 50/100. If this is all you needed to read, then cool, but to anyone who wants a more thorough dissection of this show, thanks for reading.
I am no stranger to generic fantasy or trashy mediocre isekais. I have a guilty pleasure of consuming these types of shows. Its because I have seen the absolute worst and the absolute best, that I can recognize was truly is just average.
There is an aesthetic to mediocrity and this show is a perfect example of it. The animation is fine when it needs to be, but takes a ton of shortcuts everywhere else and never gets beyond just being fine. They animated the show just well enough to fulfil the purpose of animation, but never went above and beyond. The character designs themselves are uninspired. There are two types of generic isekai protagonist, the short black or brown hair with the anime bangs or a more western looking type with colored hair. Liam, the MC of this anime, is the latter.
He is that type of MC, the one where his biggest flaw is being kinda awkward and being too obsessed with magic. He is too good at everything and every character fawns over him. He has no actual struggles, if he struggled, then the power fantasy doesn't give instant gratification. Its the mark of a mediocre writer to have no faith in your characters or world to carry the narrative when good things aren't happening.
We never get Liam being introspective or showing a nuanced take on an issue. Liam chooses the best option every time, he is always right, whenever conflict occurs, it was out of his power, and he stops it almost as soon as it starts. Nothing truly bad happening isn't why the writing is so painfully average though. There are isekai that are super edgy where bad things happen all the time and they are as average or worse than this show. Its mediocre because none of it serves any purpose. Nothing meaningfully happens.
This show has no identity. It does nothing special. Everything is derivative of something else. It wants so badly to be like Tensura. It wants the payoffs and narrative beats of Tensura, but doesn't want to do all the hard things like nuance, dialog, build-up, character arcs, adding depth, worldbuilding, etc. The hard parts of writing. Characters only exist when the MC is interacting with them, the world is almost entirely static until the MC interacts with it.
The sheer amount of ideas it takes directly from Tensura is insane. The magic system does nothing differently aside from using prime numbers to limit spell casts, but even then, multicasting as an op ability has been done dozens of times before. Essentially every single aspect of this show has been done before and done better.
Its the Harry Potterification of Isekais. Wide and vapid worlds where everything is derivative, nothing is truly original, and everything bends and breaks to maintain the escapist fantasy. And this show never gets away from that, it never tries to either.
Everything mentioned is by design. The writing is lazy, because its a light novel adaptation. Nothing happens because bad things having lasting impact doesn't fit the power fantasy. The MC lacks any actual character because he is a self-insert. There are so many girls because its a harem fantasy, but none of them have any real characters because it would risk alienating audience members. Each character gets one trait, one quirk, and one purpose in the narrative. None of the characters ever really change outside of liking the MC more because the LN has to sell these characters.
The mediocrity is designed. It didn't have to be, it could have been good, but the writer chose to make slop. Why spend dozens or even 100s of hours making a map, flushing out the world, creating cultures, characters, history, lore, and putting care into the worldbuilding when you can draw a few rivers and some mountains and draw 3 random borders? Why be creative and come up with a distinct power system or a creative twist on an existing system? Why spend time writing character arcs or making characters deeper through complex motivations when you can just design a dozen generic girls to be attractive and fawn over the mc?
I could have made an identical review to almost any other trashy 5/10 isekai I've seen. I have done a similar review before, but this one is more personal. Tensura is one of my favorite anime ever. Seeing a show try to be it, but do literally everything so much worse inspired me to really look at why it was worse. It also made me appreciate the wackier isekais that are just as trashy, but at least try something different even if its stupid or trivial. This review will hopefully be forgotten about just this show will be.
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