I saw a latent irresistible vitality lurking in the murky depths of this show. This potential enchanted me as I drew breath of it’s oh-so familiar aroma.
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A racket of criticism surrounds this show swamped primarily with remarks about bad CG or bad animation. That’s mostly incorrect and lacks context. There’s a rampant "CGphobia" amongst anime fans in general. What’s hypocritical is that Unfortunately there’s a great deal of people who will take any garbage drawings over even decent CG, it’s practically a mental illness. When you’ve watched decent CG you will understand the power if it when done right. The show however, suffers from what I call “Still-shot syndrome”. I watched the show in the absolute best definition possible and the drawn art looks stunning, the CG on the other hand is decent enough that’s if you just capture it in a moment. When it’s all stitched together I do understand why many were not impressed, it just doesn’t look great in motion. It doesn’t help that the opportunity to create stunning chains of animation is somewhat stifled by the nature of the main character’s arsenal of spells.
I cannot recommend enough Chinese CG like “Ling Long Incarnation” or “Immortality” which are overall brilliant shows but what shines even brighter in them is the choreography of monsters and villains.
The type of shows where you put them on and it feels like a few minutes go by and you think “where’s the rest of it?” and you’ve watched the whole episode. The immersion is criminally-underrated you cannot take your eyes of the screen, you simply don’t have time to look away, you cant even focus on any imperfections because they’re so damn interesting. These monsters are out for blood, they eagerly will crush you in a heartbeat, they don’t stop when the director says “CUT” like they’re on a set. This show is whilst not the worst offender but it surely embodies some if this nonsense. These monsters are just dumb and it sucks, because the lower IQ individuals will call it bad CG instead of realizing the greatest problem lies in the “Space-Invader” like intelligence of the monsters. They only exist to die, there’s barely any nuance here. Thankfully there’s a faithful few out of the thousands of them actually are sentient and are interesting to the plot, despite such uninspired choreography.
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You will see it in several other reviews but the cliché Isekai villain is back it again and oh boy is it strong in this one. Yup you’ve guessed it every villain also wants to rape or enslave the world’s second greatest god, ‘The Woman’. Nothing wrong with one or maximum 2 of these nefarious crooks but I can’t be walking into a random bar and everyone’s on that kind of business. Oh and here’s my personal favourite, the villain that is 100% sure that they will kill you. We must have caught them in an awkward moment, they’re so sick of bottling it all up. This villain then spends 5-10 minutes lecturing you, on their entire plan spewing important information for no reason and laughing whilst they do it. Nowadays I’m a D1 MC hater, I want to root for villains, I want to like them but we’re not working with much here sadly.
About the characters, yeah all the negative reviews are right it’s just a mess.
Touka, honestly he should be a decent MC, but it’s complicated. I’m sure this is a problem of the direction of the Anime. The directors have left out critical information and internal monologues and planning before MC makes certain decisions. This is probably to ensure it fit within 12 episodes, this is quite obvious as the first and last episodes are continuous with no OP. This anime MC is just confusing one moment he’s cold calculated and shrewd next moment he’s just a massive softie. They try to parallel experiences with his troubled past but, he’s just too young to make the whole concept of it believable. The MC's dialogue is just in juxtaposition constantly, he’s reminding us things we and the characters already know. He’s supposed to be secretive but just spews practically his entire life at times, whilst saying nothing in others. Perhaps it’s intentional to cultivate the idea of some sort of childish social immaturity. His general disposition being far more advanced in age just betrays it. The dialogue isn’t all bad it has it’s strengths, but tends to leave you in a cloud of melancholy periodically. MC’s powers are refreshingly simple but it’s just impossible to call his spells “weak spells” from the get go you already realize how much of an oxymoron this is.
The main girl is just awful. She has a single reason to be there FAN-SERVICE! Of course a man would be functionally a far better companion for the plot, but no it’s worse for sales and editors need the big breasted mascot. Her entire existence is just to prevent you from getting captivated, you cannot get immersed at ALL! I cannot remember the amount of times I paused the video when she was on the screen and that was for all the reasons you can think of. I’ll give some examples of the nonsense, She’s on the run but wears a crown/tiara, bright distinctive clothing and refuses to change her hairstyle. She’s supposed to be a hardened warrior but is anatomically shaped like a housewife. She’s the knight captain but doesn’t wear armour and is only barely leaving her teens! whilst being of a long-lived race. She’s wears the most functionally bankrupt travellers hood ever made, because she needs you to see her massive gazongas and part-the-red sea cleavage and let’s not forget that utterly violent midriff. As you would expect, the one time she looked great was when the MC gave her a coat for half an episode. It becomes such an asinine experience because her portrayed character is completely antithetical to a harlot, who would fit this dressed character design. Funnily enough she gets caught every time because obviously she sticks out like black sheep. Maybe this is clever humour but it doesn’t allow me to truly delve deep into the show. Dammit she just can’t stop telling people who she is, she genuinely doesn’t believe she can die and she’s not alone, I don’t believe it either. Finally I must say her excuse for tagging along with MC is just buffoonery, she rarely partakes in what she was “hired” for and instead does what a woman should do, mind you this isn’t particularly a bad thing. Why must we usher in these prestigious titles and saddle her with all this fighting power in vain. In reality she's something even better, the main love-interest/wife and that's about it. It just ruins the authenticity of the titles and professions, it’s all worthless conjecture. The problem with women in such a close proximity as well as taking so much of the screen time is that women just lead to more women and the main plot gets diluted and we’re just spamming "abuse", rape plot-lines and lest we forget the stop the-perfectly-good-marriage so you can travel the world with MC nonsense(thankfully not here).
Some of you are thinking? But why can’t the buxom, voluptuously built female companion not be strong knight captain of the sword in her teenage years in this fantasy setting? Well can a man be one in the same scenario? Of course not. Fantasy cannot rewrite every aspect of reality at that point we are engaging in child’s play and that’s wholly unintuitive and jarring from a narrative standpoint.
The MC’s classmates are just ridiculous. The character change of some of these simple last-year high-schoolers is some preposterous writing. The author’s/directors were inspired by the magic of other isekai openings but just lacked the actual talent or experience to pull it off. It makes no sense why they hate him. The sudden acquisition of power doesn’t change people that abruptly people also will instinctively side with the people they know over strangers. Maybe it’s another anime direction issue, perhaps the manga portrays it better. After the openings they settle stubbornly into their niches and archetypes and since we have only 12 episodes their time and development are relegated to the lesser of the 2 abstracts, consequently, developments are paltry at best. I will say certain characters are allowed out of their characterization shells and unsurprisingly it’s just the women.
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I will say that I enjoyed how every episode just flows after another there isn’t this episodic progression.
These shows need 24 episodes debuts, it cuts off so abruptly where it needed to keep going, and due to the time constraints they end up leaving out useful exposition and scenes.
If you’re as hopeless with these Isekai as I am. Read the Manga up to Chapter 44, then watch this. This entire first season is basically the beginning of the Light Novel so you might as well start from the beginning if you intend to go further and read it.
Conclusion? Watch better shows sharing a similar premise like:
