World Trigger

This is it boys and girls, I'm bringing you another anime review that you all been waiting for (No one did).

What is it with this anime, at some points it impresses me and makes me think that I found something good, but then you turn around the corner and you get punched in the face.
How creators were able to balance garbage and awesome in a same anime amazes me. Even if I gave this one 5, I know easy fix how to make it to at least 7. I leave it somewhere at the end of review.
Not because I want you to read all ... review or anything B-Ba-Baka! This review may contain some minor spoilers, so please consult with your doctor before reading this, everything is done by professionals with supervision, please do not try this at home.

So this anime has a plot, and it's not bad really. Building fantasy world little by little, and oh boys when I say little by little I mean it. It's SLOW man! Before it get to some good parts another anime could already ended. But when it gets to those points it's pretty good, I like systems where you get your characters ranked by how awesome they are. And massive wars
that involves a lot of characters. There are a lot of strategy involved in battles, and I love that. I think that is the best part of this anime.
If you like battles, you should check this one out. But that only happens when humans are fighting against humans, surroundings get so alive, everything happening for a reason and at the same time, really great stuff.

Now let's have some fun, lets talk about stuff that makes you hate your self for wasting time watching this anime. Characters... oh boy... Who was the smart one to make main character guy with glasses I have nothing against people who wear gasses, but come one, this is anime. Every time I watch character with glasses, its most boring, useless person on that anime, whats up with that. Some guy though that it would be fun to put his little son Timmie in to the anime. Because everybody loves to watch average person living average life in f***ing fantasy worlds. He's weak, cant do anything alone, and will try to save everybody even if it cost his life. Sometimes looks like he is trying to kill him self, because he knows how boring he is. If I want to see something like that, I would go outside, and there is no fantasy involved there.
Then we have Chika, what is wrong with her head? Cmon people, look at it, LOOK AT IT! I would want to know her back story of her head more, that main story. As a character she's horrible, feels like she should have glasses
but there can only be one useless character with glasses. Thank god, that other characters are decent or even good. Like Jin or Kuga. And there are so many characters, that they run out of ideas how to make them difference
so few of them I could not even tell apart.

But you want to know what really killed this anime? Do you? Are you sure? Okay then...
Fugitive arc. WTF was that? It look like different anime with same characters. Well Chika's head got smaller, so that's good, still looked retarded.. (I swear I could draw her face better)
World trigger meeting:
Boss:-okay guys, we have build pretty good world with a lot of possibilities, everything is stable, interesting and makes you want to see what happens next. What should we do next?
Weebmaster3000:-I know just a thing. So you know all that world? Lets trow everything away, introduce few new boring characters and focus anime only on them. Lets put filler episodes in a filler arc. Do some beach, shopping
and random episodes where gag relief side character gets trips with no purpose. And don't try to make any sense with plot, just make it random, it's fun. Trust me on this.
Boss:- well okay then, lets do this! LEEROY JENKINS!!!!
This arc was an abomination, it gives NOTHING to main plot and makes no sense at all, so stupid, so random, so useless.
I bet weebmaster3000 was that smarta**, to place every opening in the middle of episode.It's like:
Oh I see you are enjoying this episode, just let me stop that for you and show you our opening, because maybe you forgot what you are watching, don't worry no need to thank me.

So in the end what to do with this anime? You can make it good on your on. You have the POWER! Skip fugitive arc. Episode 48-63. Believe me, it got NOTHING worth watching. And if you skip it, you will improve this anime dramatically.
Just need to find a way how to kill Osamu and Chika then it would be perfect.

In short: Got nothing to watch? Looking for something new in anime? Watch it, but skip fugitive arc.
Hate boring characters and slow pace? Have something better to do? Don't watch it.

So found out that world trigger was completed then i started to watch it and frankly for someone who likes these types of anime this anime both triggered and dissapointed me big time. Why almost everyone think this is great praising it like the next coming well no its not.

The story is the same as most anime there you have scifi combined with superlike human weapons or abilities. Good guys fight back while bad guys keep invading. This is fine i kinda expected it and its not something i would rate an anime bad for. The only problem is that type of story ... makes it easy to guess different plots in it. When i see something happening and think to myself ah so it was going to happen like that, then i know something just normal will be with this anime. The triggers is what make this anime what it is it gives the anime the only thing to make it unique. What type of triggers does he use what is the difference between each things like that is of interest because thats what this anime is about combined with the alien attack. But this anime pisses me of because i feel like they just say hey lets make this happen while another part says hey lets stop this doesnt feel good lets make something else happen instead. And when they finally get to explain things they create a big event and its basically and now after the invation break. I can watch slow animes i even love those but thats when they actually try to get some sort of picture through or explain not when you just throw a bunch of fights there you just get more and more distraught.

I will give this anime that it has openings that you can enjoy eventhough they try to make the anime unique by plopping the openings in the middle of the episode. The openings are interesting there is that.

Never have i found myself hate as many characters as i did in this anime never. I was at the 10 episode when i thought should i just toss it aside but no my anime sence told me that there was something i would enjoy. The characters was not any of this. The main character is piss poor weak he cant fight for shit he cant even do dmg whats so great about this. He gets helped almost always and it feels like the only thing he can do is acting like a meat shield or run away as a distraction. The main supporting girl Chika basically gave alot of the story away when i heard about her more clearly which is why i wont spoil it but its obvious. The supporting guy Yuma is your typical op supporting character who helps the main character Osuma a bunch of times hes likable enough but has his weird yet kind side. There are a few other characters i could like but too many gave me that feeling of annoyance and wanted to throw off a cliff

I started to enjoy this anime when i got to about episode 40 surprise ? well you shouldnt be. I had to fight my way through episodes there i wonder is there any point in this anime having a Mc. My advice for whoever reads this is to not care about main character and just view everything as a story of its own and never think of any character as a main just think of them as part of a divition or similar to that or you will run the risk of being burned.

Overall there is nothing special about this anime that i could say i enjoyed all the way through i can only say that it had its good moment but thats it. The story and the consept of the triggers was great but in the end i could find an anime like this and find a better one easly. If i ever watch this one again it will be from around episode 40 or so maybe 38 but not much back than that.

73 episodes of getting almost nowhere. Forget about the mediocre art for a moment, the real problem is that behind it is a story stretched so thin it makes a slice of cheese feel like a brick wall in comparison. Everything about World Trigger screams "cheap filler".

Do you have even the slightest capacity to reach logical conclusions? I've got bad news for you, this entire show will tick you off by tripping itself up every few minutes. The best example would be how they somehow pretend that the most basic of combat training that you can learn in 60 seconds by even having a brain ... and changes you from being instantly defeated to having a fighting chance... wouldn't be taught to ANY student for the first YEAR of their combat training, because that's the "advanced" stuff for year two. Had this happened once I would have been forgiving but it happened all the time because there is almost nothing being taught to any of the students at all, the stuff they pretend to learn in 3 years even your average real life student could learn in 3 weeks.

The next issue is that not only do they drag out every single insignificant little thing for as long as they possibly can, the "recaps" are so excessive in length that they take up a big chunk of the actual episodes and by the end you've watched 60 episodes worth of what barely qualifies as content and 13 worth of recaps. I wish this was a lie, it's not.

The few saving points are occasional laughs, the characters staying consistent (even if some are utterly useless and have such severe learning disabilities they wouldn't last a week in elementary school) and there actually is a decent plot in the background, even if it only shows up every few hours and it would have been fine to shorten the entire show to 20 episodes.

World Trigger starts pretty strong if you can get past the first couple episodes. It has good world building and all the invasion stuff is very entertaining. It does... have issues, however. And they become very apparent in seasons 2 and 3. Season 1 also has a large pointless filler arc that didn't even get dubbed that you can just skip completely: episodes 49-63.

The biggest issues are pacing and one dimensional characters. Characters also get very little progression and often end up repeating the same progression arcs over and over ad nauseam. Even when they finally seem to get over it and you're like "oh ... thank god, finally!" they're soon just thrust right back into it all over again for no apparent reason.

Once you get to the mock rank battles with completely forgettable characters I hope you like it (though I don't know how you could) because that's the rest of the entire show. Just that. Over and over and over and over. And over and over and over some more. And not just this season, seasons 2 and 3 as well. Season 1 and 2 you're like "yeah okay whatever, I get it, let's move along already" but by season 3 it just serves to waste your time and piss you off.

It's like the author ran out of ideas and just started spinning their wheels. And with only 1 chapter a month with two 2 year breaks in the past 5 years it's not made much progress even on the manga side.

If Naruto had some cool war stuff very early on then immediately went into the Chūnin Exams except all the characters are replaced with Character A, Character B, nameless forgettable uninteresting one dimensional characters and they finally complete it after a dozen episodes then just have to keep redoing it for the remainder of all of Naruto repeating the same progression arcs over and over, that's pretty much World Trigger. Though that's not even a great comparison because the Chūnin Exams of Naruto were actually good and its characters weren't one dimensional and were actually interesting.

It was promising but basically squandered.

okay so, before watching this anime i always said i wanted to see a mc who doesnt have some secret god-like powers or even if he's not strong at all to not have a crazy enough personality to be able to match or fit in with everybody but oh boy... after i watched this anime i understood why every mc is like that, the mc and that little girl makes this anime painful to watch, mc is literally so boring in every season and he doesnt get stronger at all, the only character development he had was his personality but even after that he stayed ... as the most boring character in the anime, all the side characters had a lot of potential to be mcs and outshined the mc in every way... and now that lil girl... just looking at her face made me so annoyed, i can not even explain it, but her character wasnt THAT bad. now for the anime as a whole... it was actually entertaining to watch until a point where the story (at least in my opinion) was getting nowhere, more boring characters were introduced and did absolutely nothing to the plot so i dont rly recomment it but i wouldnt say the anime is trash, so if u are extremely bored and want to experiment go ahead and watch it but if u have smth better to do with ur life or have a better anime to watch then dont waste ur time

I'll keep it short, the show has a very interesting world, its a blast to follow the main characters and all the frequent side characters, and you have to adore Raijinmaru.

But...

Out of the 70+ episodes, maybe a solid 30 full episodes could be filled with the recaps, and unnecessary prolonged scenes that only give off the feeling of being put in to delay time. The most striking example of this is in the early episodes when you have a individual prolonged zoom on all the directors of Border with stern faces.

The show gets better with time though.

Why Toei!?! Why do you have to ruin good things!?!

I liked the story of World Trigger. I liked the characters of World Trigger. I like the concept of World Trigger. I do NOT like the execution of World Trigger.

The story and characters aren't really anything special, but when I first watched this show, I found it overall enjoyable and a fun use of my time. My major problems with it come from how its anime adaption was handled, much like most of Toei's shows.

When one delves deeper into the series, they may notice the small detail that the last episode recaps take up half ... the run-time of the actual episode. The opening theme song sometimes doesn't even play till a normal show would go on a commercial break, aka the middle of the episode. In general, the whole show is slower than molasses and does not go nearly as well with my potatoes. The animation isn't... awful, but its nothing spectacular either. Most of it is limited and slow, and does not take nearly as much advantage of its story and context as it should.

These pacing and general technical issues are also stacked on the fact that the story of World Trigger is pretty mediocre at best. Its not awful, and I've even said that I liked it, but once you go deeper into the world of Anime, this story feels a little too familiar. the soundtrack is more or less forgettable, except for a couple decent OPs.

I never finished World Trigger, but I feel like it has remained in a solid constant state of quality, and I've heard enough about the last 20 episodes that I can make an informed opinion about it. So, with the piling up of issues from a mediocre Anime adaption of a slightly above average base, we have ourselves...

Story: 6/10

Characters: 6/10

Art and Animation: 5/10

Pacing and Direction: 3/10

Overall: 5/10

Originally was 5/10 and wouldn't recommend, but this has A LOT of nice aspects and world builds nice kind of like One Piece. I overall recommend just finding summaries/highlights, then going to S2 (made 5+ years later).

Content: extremely triggering as contains unwarranted extreme xenophobia that just wants to commit genocide and doesn't actually care about people. This was my #1 Trigger and made zero sense though EVENTUALLY stopped hampering on it.
There are lots of characters, styles, combat tactics. Lots of recaps and such. There is only 1 fairly long filler arc to my knowledge.

Style: it actually seemed pretty damn unique to me, I'm failing to ... think of an anime that recreated it. The art can be a little redundant/annoying even if kind of fun/cute.

Personal Enjoyment: early on, hated it and wanted to drop. I didn't hate the MC like a lot of people did, I thought he was pretty good, other than this positive qualities just keep on failing me. I started LOVING the anime somewhere in the middle when they had combat competitions.

If you like stuff like Naruto, Boruto, One Piece, Fairy Tail, et cetera that can be a bit drawn out, I think you will like this too.
If you hate that type of stuff, I recommend steering clear, but maybe getting summaries/highlights so understand S2 better as those 12 episodes are entirely clean.

Guessing the target audience is children or people in their early teens.

TL;DR: Terrible exposition, but probably worth watching if you can stand that.

+ Has some entertainment value.

- The characters mostly follow tropes; Everything from the edgy, angry guy who doesn't listen to reason to the frustratingly naïve person who tries to help their enemy and gets taken hostage instantly.

-- The writer seems highly inexperienced at incorporating explanations in a natural way, I've never seen this much forced exposition in a show rated above 7 on MAL before.
I rarely write reviews, but this particular aspect of the show was so bad that I felt ... compelled to write this.
Most of the time this exposition is for things that don't even require explanations, which makes it even worse.
Additionally, they repeat scenes and dialogues in the extreme.
They could probably shave off around 30% of the entire show without losing out on any of the actual story.

Summary: This show is really good for just having something on the TV while you work or when you can't stay awake because you're 32 and one benadryl takes you out for half a day now.

The show strikes a weird mix, it's like Gintama but not as funny, Dai Guard but not as charming, and idk what other shonen I'm thinking of to compare the action to. It's pretty corny in the exact way that tokusatsu shows are.

Simply put, its main strength is that Osamu is almost completely incompetent and doesn't magically become stronger through cursory training like in similar shows.

The animation is pretty ... bad so the action isn't very fun to watch. It's mostly serious so it's not a straight up comedy. The plot doesn't move forward very much in this season so it's not particularly story-driven.

But, Osamu is very relatable to us as people who aren't an alien child soldiers with science magic bodies or murdered parents, so it's easy to stay interested in what happens to him. The other characters are mostly well-developed and have clear and consistent motivations and behavior. Many of them are even likeable.

If you're looking for something that's really good, you can skip this one. But if you're looking for something to watch casually, or if you really like tokusatsu-like kaiju battle shows, you can probably get into this.

And I do love when the announcer guy says "turiga, on!" at the end of the episode.

The series started off great, but after the Large-Scale Invasion Arc, it went downhill. The world(s) building was great and had potential, but after the Invasion arc they focused on some pool and beach episodes, and Ranking Wars. During the Ranking Wars, there was explanations on strategies from each team before, during, and after the matches with use a small amount of focus on the actual fights. Also, filler or not, after the Invasion arc, the Border agents fought off against a horde of enemies, with some top level enemies mixed in. Most of the high ranking agents did well against ... the large scale invasion, but during a filler arc, some of the same rankers had problems with only one not so OP enemy.
Not sure why Osamu was the MC, he would fit better as a side character. I liked his courage, but he was weak and the only reason why he survives is because of others. Yet, he wants to go behind enemy lines. He only gets slightly stronger, and they want to make him out to be some kind of genius, but he is just an above average strategist. Then there is the freaky big headed Chika, some of her decisions make me wonder what is the point of that big head of hers, especially during the filler arc. The rest of the characters are pretty decent, Jin and Kuga should be the main characters of the show.

World Trigger seems like one of those anime that requires you to be a fan of the manga in order to appreciate it. When I first heard of this anime, it was getting terrible reviews for its languid pacing and mediocre artistry. Mind you, this was 10 episodes in. About around episode 50 – when I checked back in – users were giving this 10s, saying it drastically improved. That piqued my interest, and I thought, hell, if I could power through Hitman Reborn, which took roughly 25 episodes JUST to get mildly interesting (still a better anime overall), I could ... give this a shot. Cut to episode 50, and I was more or less ambivalent on the series, but there were some aspects of it I liked. However, once I finally finished the series, I was left unfilled, as if the anime failed to reach its potential.

World Trigger has the foundation of a good action-sci-fi shonen. The main character, Osamu Mikumo, is someone we the viewers can identify with. He’s part of a multi-tiered organization called Border, whose main function is the protect citizens from ”neighbors”, or extraterrestrials. Border agents are divided into four ranks: C, B, A, and S. Mikumo begins as a C-rank agent, which is no different than being a civilian employee in a police department.

Mikumo is not particularly skilled in any one area, but he has a lot of heart and courage. Ideally, we’d take pleasure in seeing him hone his skills and become someone who can hold his own in battles. Yet, in 73 episodes, combat-wise, he’s at the same place he was in the beginning of the series. He literally doesn’t figure out his most corrigible skill until the final episode. And that’s his ability to strategize.

Eventually Mikumo, a.k.a. Megane-Kun, breaks his C-Rank shackles with the help of Yuuma Kuga, the transfer student who befriends him. It’s revealed early on that he is a neighbor and possesses a black trigger. Agents and humanoid neighbors use weapons called triggers, and black triggers are the most effective triggers in the world, capable of tremendous power. In other words, Yuuma has his ultimate weapon at the beginning of the series. Unlike Mikumo, Yuuma is overpowered and constantly has to handicap himself, especially when sparring against fellow Border agents.

Rounding out the trio is Chika Amatori, the milquetoast childhood friend of Mikumo who’s secretly one of the most powerful characters. Then there are other notable characters like Jin, the Border poster boy, who has a predictive side effect (sixth sense), and Replica, Yuuma’s trion companion. The anime focuses on Mikumo, Yuuma, and Chika as they join Border and train to become strong enough to go on away missions. And really by the end, none of them show any character growth. Yes, we do learn their motivations for joining Border, but I didn’t notice any significant change in their personality. Mikumo remains a martyr, forever putting others’ well-being above his own, Chika never steps out of her comfort zone to be remotely interesting, and while Yuuma shows flashes of depression, he can’t stop making that dumb-ass face long enough for you to care!

Despite having so many episodes, World Trigger fails drastically in terms of characterization. It doesn’t help that every episode you’re introduced to, conservatively, three new characters! Seriously, there are so many characters in World Trigger. Sooooo many. A few of them are actually memorable, but memorable only as a character type. You don’t remember their actual names, but you remember: “oh, there’s the edge lord,” or, “there’s the compulsive liar and the girl who always believes him,” and of course, “there’s the tsundere”. The anime itself doesn’t even try to hide the fact that there’s a metric-ton of characters, because every time you see a character, you see their name, their age, and the ranking. And this continues until the final episodes, as you’re always introduced to new, underdeveloped characters.

As mentioned in the beginning, World Trigger caught a lot of flak for its lackluster animation. For the most part, those criticisms are accurate. The character design ranges from average to flat-out lazy. A lot of the characters look the same, with no distinguishing features other than hairstyle and weird irises. Then there are some characters that have black dots as eyes. And Yuuma - 75% of the time he’s making an annoying face that seems to be a catch-all for reacting to everything. The only time the animation reaches an acceptable level is during the battles.

Honestly, the rank battles are the best part of World Trigger. They utilize the most fascinating part of shonen anime (IMO), which is battle strategy - overcoming an opponent’s trump card by analyzing it and determining how it works. Yuuma, because of his skillset, makes every battle he’s in worthwhile. Mikumo, on the other hand, makes them exhausting, as he barely improves and ends up being a liability. He has some brilliant strategic moments though; too bad he waited until the end of the anime to make that his primary focus.

The only thing that sucks about the battles in general is that the stakes are extremely low. Border agents fight using a body made out of trion, which is like some form of energy. So when someone loses all of their trion, they “bail out” and return to their fleshly bodies. There are a few times when characters such as Mikumo fight without a trion body, and you know what? Those were the most suspenseful battles in the entire anime! The battles against the neighbors are mostly good (until you realize no one can die) and the rank battles provide the most fun (until you realize Mikumo’s team, excluding Yuuma, sucks).

Based on the review thus far, you might think that this anime is trash, but it’s not. It’s okay, but “okay” is not good enough for an anime of this length. There were times when I truly thought the anime was reaching its stride, and then it spends the next few episodes with one-dimension Border executives, or Chika and her dull sniper trainee group. Or it might take a huge detour to explore some “fugitive” characters when instead it could be concentrating on having the main characters reach the point where they’re able to explore the neighborhood. With better pacing and less characters, World Trigger could actually be good, but in 73 episodes, like its main character, it doesn’t even begin to reach its potential.

I love World Trigger. I really do. But sadly it's far away from being perfect in any way really. It's sad becuase while I had a blast watching it most of the time, there are still so many things that are just wrong and bad about World Trigger so that you end up watching it for pretty much one thing only: The combat system and the fights.

Pretty much everything else about this anime and especially this first season is just mediocre at best. The story is very generic and combined with some terrible pacing you barely get anywhere after 73 epsiodes. Like honestly, if World ... Trigger had some normal pacing with the story you could have cut down all the content to a normal 24 episode season (for sure if you count out the filler arc that has been extremely boring towards the end of the season). Also the Artstyle and animation are pretty bland and the anime has some certified Toei "Animation" moments. I am pretty sure you can imagine what I mean with that.

The characters are pretty basic, however the big cast of characters is making up for it. Despite there being dozens of characters, they all give off a different vibe and it's really refreshing to have an anime with such a great cast of characters without the anime really forgetting it's many characters. You'll see most of them throughout the season again and again.

The soundtrack is one of the best I have heard recently and is really iconic. When you just get hyped from hearing the soundtrack you know they've done a good job. Especially when at least I even listen to it sometimes just for fun outside of watching the series.

Now getting to the last and strongest point of World Trigger: Its fights and its combat system. Many people have been praising it and I can only agree and say the same. It's similar to a combat system in a video game. Everyone has access to the same weapons and can customize their class with different abilities and other weapons. This combat systems makes all the fights in World Trigger really tactical and dependant on teamwork. That's why the later seasons of World Trigger have some of the best and suspense fights I've ever seen in anime.

Overall I can recommend you watching World Trigger. If you skip the filler arc I bet you'll have a lot of fun with it, even if it starts off slow and generic.

Be warned: EXTREMELY sluggish editing / pacing. Be prepared for long unnatural-feeling silence between lines, even during charged scenes. Characters stand around and stare at each other way too much. Probably the new poster child for what bad editing looks like. The first two episodes could have been easily combined into one if they had just cut out all the dead space.

Beyond that, the story is interesting, the setup is intriguing, the characters are charming (except Ai, the writers seemed like they were hellbent on making her *aggressively* unlikeable), their motivations are believable, and even their observations of each other are unusually perceptive. Writing ... is very clearly not the weak point of this property, but it's a shame that it's wrapped up in a poorly-directed anime.

Might be better to read than to watch.

The show itself is not particularly good, but it isn't horrible either. But one thing I cannot forgive is how little it respects the viewer's time. There are many episodes where 4 minutes are just recaps of the previous episodes. Add to that the opening song and the ending song, and you don't get as much content per episode as you should. A bigger issue is that this disrespect for your time also happens within the unskippable parts of the show. In one of the episodes there was a 1.5 minute scene where no one says anything. The camera just dramatically zooms into everyone's ... face. This show is 73 episodes long, but I believe it could have been cut down to ~50 episodes and you would lose absolutely nothing.