Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou

Have you ever been excited to watch a dumpster fire? You know, that special kind of train wreck that reaches so bad it’s good territory, or the legendary "schlock" status”? It’s rare to find such titles in the current anime market, as Big Order and Inuyashiki are some of the last ones out there at the time of writing. Most bad anime are just frustrating or boring, especially when it comes to the prevalence of bad isekai anime. With episode 1 at least, Arifureta seemed to have done the impossible. It had become something so legendarily awful that it would be remembered as the best ... so bad it’s good anime of the year. Imagine my shock, my awe when we were told that isekai finally had a Big Order to call its own.

Imagine my grief when Arifureta quickly went from the most gloriously awful anime of the year to the worst I’ve seen all year. Barring a few tolerable moments, the more the show went on, the more dreadful the experience became. Even when I thought I grew numb to whatever the show threw at me, it would always find a new way to make the viewing experience worse. I felt betrayed, as did fans when the premiere dropped. Now that this anime has ended, it’s time I get a little payback.

Let’s start with the least awful aspect of the anime, that being the music. The background OST, whenever it's actually present, is either fairly decent or downright awful. A lot of these tracks (inserts included, of which there are four and only one of them works) don’t even fit the scenes they’re put in half the time. Let that put into perspective how low a bar I’ve set for this anime. As for the OP, it’s trash with an obnoxious saxophone and weird autotune, as well as an awful trap beats section right before the chorus. The worst part is that the moody piano and violin combo at the beginning makes the track inviting, like a siren or a succubus luring you into your untimely demise. Barring an admittedly decent insert song in episode 5, my only other compliment to the music is that the ED, “Hajime no Uta” by DracoVirgo is actually pretty good. One could call it a generic sort of soothing ending theme meant to give the viewers a breather after whatever whirlwind any given episode puts them through. On the other hand, with vocals and instrumentals this inviting, I don’t care. It invokes something sweet, almost nostalgic at points. That said, one can only be so positive here given that we are talking about one of the worst anime anyone cares about this year.

Speaking of worst things I’ve seen all year, the visuals in this anime are some of the worst to come out of 2019. The character designs (the better ones, at least) are inoffensive enough but that should not be my highest genuine compliment beyond some of the girls being attractive. Even then, the MC’s design is so ridiculous that it’s almost endearing. Sadly, the insanely bold and bright colors damage even that, especially when you consider that the show has to swap from these characters being barely visible in a cave so dark you can barely see a thing, to bright daylight. The contrast with all this in mind is downright eye-searing, so much so that I often needed to squint to the point of closing my eyes in order for my eyes to stop hurting. When you couple this with how poorly drawn, borderline melted their faces are at times, and how comically the show likes to distort the main character’s face, it all just becomes an aesthetic nightmare. It takes 5 episodes for us to reach a setting where the color palette works to the point where the characters aren’t too dark or bright to look at. Even then it sometimes crosses over into squint territory whenever the lighting remotely increases, and the colors are so much brighter in the side characters that they almost feel too bright in the dark labyrinth. To finally get away from the color and brightness complaints, we have the monster designs. They’re ugly as sin both in 2D and 3D. The 2D animation itself is...there. Don’t expect to see it too much and even then, it feels stilted whenever it is there a lot of the time. There are moments where it’s unbelievable like when Hajime unveils his giant rifle in episode 4 and you can see the wrappings linger and only move once every half second. I am not exaggerating. There are two factors that influence the awkward feel of the 2D animation, and they’re the three most noticeably awful aspects of the production: editing, direction, and CGI.

The CGI is child’s play for any anime fan to pick at. The models and are so bad and jarring that any scene with them automatically looks like shit. Their movements are practically nonexistent as well, just being thrown and dragged around wherever the anime pleases. The worst part is that this Berserk 2016 and Overlord-tier CGI is almost as abundant as the 2D visuals of the show, and if both are done terribly, imagine how horribly they blend together. Actually, by the time we get to the hydra in episode 4, it’s safe to say the CG in this anime is Skelter Heaven tier. The abysmal directing exacerbates the problem, as entire shots and camera movements make absolutely no sense, especially in the OP, which is such a monumental train wreck of horrendous visuals and transitions it’s impossible for me to do it justice. Whenever the show isn’t forcing head-scratchingly bizarre shots, everything is just lifeless. The action has no choreography whatsoever and for some reason, the shots have absolutely no flow to them, especially in the first episode. This is where the editing comes in. Characters are constantly teleporting for no reason and while yes, the MC learns a quick step teleportation power, that’s entirely different from the characters randomly and abruptly being in a completely different location or part of a scene for no particular reason. Characters look one way and other characters, monsters, or objects are moving from somewhere other than where the characters are looking at, causing whiplash as we scramble to piece together what’s going on. Entire scene transitions amount to nothing but a fake-out before the same scene abruptly cuts to flashback or to present day. I don’t even wanna tell you how the show fucks up visual gags with shitty zooms and cheap “animation”. These problems are a constant with the show, and while they do enough damage to the visuals as is, they’re also inherently an issue with presentation. Bad presentation can really damage one’s narrative, as this show proudly demonstrates.

The writing in this so bad on so many levels that we have to tackle it in three different ways. First is how the presentation turns the first episode into an incomprehensible shitshow. Then we have how the presentation turns the entire narrative into a jumbled mess. Lastly, there’s how the writing is generic at best and frankly pathetic at worst. I won’t even come close to hitting everything but there’s more than enough for you to get the gist of these issues several times over. I hope you enjoy my extensive coverage and journey of this hellspawn.

For starters, the main character just assumes someone sabotaged him because one of the magic laser blasts in a volley of magic collided and ended up hitting him cuz it was misfired, and because we (barely) see a guy smirking for a brief second. First off, how in God’s name did the MC even see the guy while being assaulted by bright lights, one of which basically hit him? He couldn’t. On top of that, since he could have only seen the volleys of light, and the visuals communicate that one of them just ran into another and hit him due to that collision making it go off course, how did he not see it as anything other than an accident? Sure, he was on death’s door before becoming the white-haired, gunslinging edgelord we know now so of course he feels resent for his situation and would like to blame someone, but the anime presents it as if he knows exactly what happened. WE barely know what’s going on, which is a problem in and of itself! This is a common problem throughout the show, even when it temporarily stops being borderline impossible to follow...at least until the penultimate episode tries its valiant hand at in medias res storytelling one last time and making time and events impossible to follow. There’s almost no context or connective tissue between scenes in this first arc, and entire episodes throughout.

My condolences to anyone who thought they could get into the franchise with this anime because context is not a concept this show understands. Sure, it presents a ton of flashbacks that technically explain on some level how the MC got to where he is, but we have no context for why he and those who teleported with him are doing what they’re doing, or how many of them got there. We barely even know jack or shit about the most basic aspects of the world or character relationships because the anime doesn’t bother explaining any of that and we’re just hit with contextless, incohesive montages, and sequences of characters fighting in dungeons. The sheer lack of personality beyond the most basic of caricature characterization only worsens the issue. Even worse is the fact that the flashbacks are erratically placed, sometimes appearing after a scene that necessitated the flashback beforehand makes a transition, sometimes without any transitions to speak of and without the scene prior even requiring the flashback in any capacity. Vital pieces of information are either relegated to throwaway lines or downright nonexistent, so it’s not like rewatching a second time or thinking about it more will suddenly illuminate everything for you. Doing so somehow leads to more questions. That, in turn, forces you to assume things and go out of your way to try to figure out where anything is in relation to its environment, which kills any semblance of joy you could have just laughing at how jumbled everything is. This is the premiere of your anime for God’s sake! If you want to start in medias res, you have to do it in a way where things make enough sense by the end of it that it isn’t a disorienting, incoherent mess. Otherwise, you end up with this glorious train wreck, one I wish lasted longer than a single episode.

Immediately after episode 1, the show just becomes this obnoxious, tiresome mess as it swaps between perspectives no one gives a shit about, not even going far to make the action sequences with our now mental protagonist exciting in the least. Hell, he loses all of the hilariously crazy edge he had to him, just becoming a no-nonsense tsundere character who points out predictable tropes in this cliche fantasy land while purposely going in the opposite direction of where he needs to in order to even begin getting home. He fell to the 65th floor and instead of going back up he goes down 50 floors in a 100-floor labyrinth. Soon after you start to question that, he reaches what seems like the 100th floor in order to fight a boss and free a vampire loli caricature before they head down even more floors to the actual 100th floor. If that doesn’t make any sense, don’t worry, none of this does! Hell, even when they answer why he’s going down with him wanting to get stronger, we have to ask...why is he even bothering when all he has/wants to do is leave and have nothing to do with anything? There are other easy contradictions and logic problems to pick at within this whole excursion, but you get the point. Also, the way they cut between this and the scenes of the other characters coming back is dreadful as there’s no cohesion, and again, they barely expand on the important context we need to understand what is going on and why, just dumping more and more lore on us and presenting more abilities that are sometimes inconsistent cuz we need the MC to do something cool, or otherwise seemingly irrelevant to what he should be learning.

Speaking of inconsistent, it takes until episode 3 before the show settles on establishing a concrete personality for our MC-kun, or Hajime, if you will. It didn’t even set one up to be broken in the first place because that would require competent writing. We’ll touch back on that real soon. Episode 4 has an insufferable number of death fake-outs which include a contrived scenario where the main character gets blasted nearly to death and only after the monster trying to kill them fires again several seconds later does his partner put up a force field. Said force field is also inconsistent about attacks getting through it and then the rest of the fight sequence is told out of order for no reason. The pair also arbitrarily kiss multiple times because we need nonsensical faux emotional beats, as if there aren’t enough in this episode. I could go on about the asspulls, inconsistencies, and forced drama for the sake of emotional manipulation, but you get the point.

Pacing is another gigantic issue with this anime. Apart from how badly episode 1 utilizes flashbacks, the show has a dismal time deciding what to show and when. It often skips or montages relevant progression, like Hajime’s journey towards being an “edgelord badass”, or the offscreen training his classmates did after their collective failure in the first episode. We don’t even see how or when Hajime gets everything he needs to complete his character design, as we’re instead forced to assume what happened. The two month time skip in episode 5, the fight the classmates have with the enemies they had trouble with in episode 1, and the aforementioned incoherent ordering of events in the second half of episode 4’s big emotional action sequence serve as further examples of how bad the pacing and storytelling is past the first episode. Nothing feels earned from any emotional standpoint due to both these storytelling reasons and the general lack of decent writing, whether that be the classmates in episode 5 overcoming the CGI monsters that gave everyone hell in episode 1, or any of the big moments in episode 4.

All of this sounds bad enough, but it gets even worse when you understand what this anime is trying to be. It’s a light novel adaptation with intents on providing wish-fulfillment via presenting a dark, brooding, angsty yet (selectively) compassionate main character for angsty teenagers to relate to, all while surrounding him with character archetypes, including tons of waifus. They somehow managed to fuck this up so spectacularly that it actually fails at being just generic and trite and becomes an absolute disaster. I’ve complained about shows that fail to even be generic like The Asterisk War, but that was solely on the writing being so broken that it manages to fuck up the easiest of things and make no-effort plots feel convoluted and nonsensical. Arifureta is so horrendously constructed and presented that it’s actually incomprehensible at times. At best, I can say that this show technically did succeed at creating a bunch of archetypes like the classmates and harem girls our main character, Hajime has to deal with. They still didn’t even succeed at properly establishing, breaking, then revamping our main character. Also, no one is even remotely likable, and their interactions are obnoxious, which seems like a given. The only interesting thing about Hajime and the first girl he gets with is that both of them suffer some kind of abandonment and betrayal issues, but again, both characters are hollow, and nothing is told well so it’s difficult to care. Their lack of chemistry makes the emotional character and relationship moments of episode 4 particularly jarring and laughable. By the time we get the gag of Hajime accidentally clenching Yue's butt in bed, I knew that if they told this story properly, it would still be a disaster. It wouldn’t be as corrosive as it is now, but it would still be a tiresome, badly produced, practically broken mess of a show I’d want nothing to do with. If they stuck to making a hilariously jumbled mess that goes all-in on that “edge factor”, then it would be at least amusing. No one wins when the show fails at going both ways, as if the second arc didn’t make it clear that no one involved is coming out of this ok.

Once the first arc concludes after 5 episodes, the series doesn't exactly get better. While the remainder of the show isn’t as broken as the first half (including this sixth episode), it basically stops trying to set itself apart in any way, shape, or form from its contemporaries minus the one small plot thread that lingers throughout, that thread being Hajime’s bitterness towards those who betrayed him. From here on out, the main duo shuffles between absolute pieces of shit and begrudgingly compliant assholes that do things because they’re strung along by the slowly emerging pieces of Hajime’s harem. Obviously, asshole characters forced to lay off the edge and do something worthwhile don’t have to be intolerable but given how annoying the rest of the harem is and given how broken the existing caricatures are, the experience becomes significantly more corrosive than ever before. The conflict the second harem member introduces at the start of episode 6 gets resolved, and the rest of the episode is just montages and dicking around before the main characters have to leave. Said second member, Shea, is her own level of destructive at first. She’s not only annoying on her own, but she brings out a new level of dickishness within the main duo that makes their early interactions some of the worst I’ve seen in any harem or anime period. The interactions do get better rather quickly given that the very next episode gives Shea a time to shine, so at least that’s one bit of positivity in the midst of this sea of bile. To quickly leave that reprieve, I’ll mention that backstory is also pointlessly shoehorned in as it has no connection to anything. It might be one of the most insufferable backstories I’ve seen since it only exists to hamfistedly reinforce the idea of “the outcasts coming together and not being so alone in this world” and tell us Shea’s goddamn name. It’s almost as soul-crushing as the episode itself whose only purpose is to introduce a new, big-tittied waifu, and to set up a point which our main characters will have to return to before completing four more labyrinths which the previous episode established. This is our end goal for the show, and where even many fans of the source material feel the show has gone to shit. Need I say more?

Actually, I do, so I’ll just go through the second half of the show in a more rapid-fire fashion. This review is overly long as it is, and that’s without devolving into a ton of nitpicks like how Shea arbitrarily has a change of clothes somehow between two scenes early in episode 7. Said episode is probably the best episode, as we actually get to see Shea beating people six ways to Sunday and prove her worth to the team after all the shit everyone and their mother gives her. It actually reminds me that sometimes these characters have the potential to be compelling, even if the blatant fanservice gags feel shoehorned in at times even considering her appearance and purpose. On top of that, the way they get jettisoned out of the second labyrinth (yes they got there already because pacing is not something this anime cares about) is actually pretty amusing. From then onwards, it’s back to getting the Steph treatment for her, as if using the absolute worst character dynamic from No Game No Life but with a character who is actually obnoxious this time makes it better than when the aforementioned 2014 anime did it. Episode 8 is a tedious reunion episode with some of Hajime's peers, albeit not the ones he has any beef with. Outside of the arbitrary bit of moment a tertiary character has with Shea, the only bit of note is Hajime's equally arbitrary lore dump he gives as a reason to why he won't come back with everyone. He doesn't even care about this, stating to the person offering him a guaranteed way home that he just wants to find some maverick keys so he can leave. It would have been more interesting and in character for him to just say that he wants nothing to do with some of his classmates.

Episode 9 has a moment meant to make Hajime give an angry pep talk to someone about life, which is meant to be an emotionally resonant and inspiring moment, except dismal pacing, a lack of time, and a lack of exploration of this side of Hajime renders this scene moot. Tio Klarus (ok, why do the subs not match the MAL or AL names again?) makes her appearance this episode to round out the “I love Mr. Edgelord Man” party. She’s the masochist of the group, which we learn firsthand in the most embarrassing sequence I have dealt with all year. Apart from all the masochism nonsense, her nice design, and the fact that the anime can’t keep her nail size consistent within the first scene she’s in her human form, she’s boring and obnoxious. I’m done with the episodic play by play. You get the point and I refuse to cover any more of this now that we have all of the relevant characters out now, 2/3 into the anime’s runtime. You can already deduce that there’s nothing left to talk about and that it’s yet more obnoxious LN cliche gauntlets and insufferable character interactions from the diet version of the Konosuba cast and friends. There’s a bad guy and then another evil lord to be stopped, and we’re gonna meet Kaori and her female swordsman friend from early in the series again because they love Hajime as well and we need to fully assemble the harem by the end of the series all while getting sidetracked with more side quests and lolis! This review is long enough as it is, and I’ve wasted enough of both your time and mine! Fuck everything and everyone! Time for final thoughts!

The saddest part isn’t even that this is one of the biggest anime of its season. It’s that this show was delayed by a whopping 15 months. Imagine how much worse it could have been if we got to see it in its original state! The fact that the original author stated "Every time I was sent scripts and storyboards for the anime over these past few months, I writhed in pain in my room” back in January of 2018 makes that bizarre, alternate reality all the more tantalizing. Perhaps it could have been less incompetent given how there was a different director and team before the shift. Perhaps it could have been even worse given how bland the art style of the original plans looked. Still, it’s hard not to feel bad for everyone involved, fans included. At the same time, it’s hard not to point and laugh at what a dumpster fire this show is before later hating what it became. What it became is a bland, fugly, shitty isekai with nothing to offer but shock value from seeing blood and gore and a crazy turned boring tsun jerkass with a heart of gold. I’d actually recommend watching Re:Zero at that point, disregarding my disdain towards that show. You might even have a better time with Shield Hero, I dunno. Just don’t watch this, not even for the occasional bright spot it may have. Obviously, the manga and LN readers aren’t happy, and people like me who wanted that ironic entertainment are left just as disappointed. Barring those with Digibro’s specific tastes, it pleases no one but the most accepting of anime fans who just wanna see a gunslinging underdog get a harem. The only remaining exceptions are those who are willing to trudge through anything that has the theme of defying a world that hates them, and those who adore the art of baffling, broken direction. If that doesn’t meet the criteria for “so bad it’s horrible”, I don’t know what will.

I wish this was just a single episode OVA instead so we could have ourselves a modern-day Mars of Destruction. It would probably have even worse reception, but it wouldn’t be this pathetic or worthless, and I wouldn’t feel like a donkey after watching it. Now I’m left angrier at myself for being duped than I am at this piece of shit for promising ironic entertainment in a fantasy subgenre devoid of any kind of entertainment value, and then spitting in my face. I’m angrier about that than I am about the show frequently throwing away or otherwise undercutting the potential it constantly brings up for itself, as unbelievable as the phrase “this show has potential” might seem to many here. The review you’re reading right now is the only reason I finished this humiliating train wreck which has been mildly amusing (dare I say endearing) at best and unbearable at worst. Perhaps this show wanted to make it clear that I’m not allowed to have fun with these types of shows anymore, and that any bright spots like the occasionally decent character moment, are just flukes.

Eh, what can you do? Even Big Order stopped being funny bad at some point.

Written and Edited by: CodeBlazeFate
Proofread by: Peregrine

The disappointment of the season. Worst anime of the year. An anime that should never have existed. No matter how many insults I throw at Arifureta, I'm afraid it will never be enough to convey just how loathsome I consider this atrocity.

There are several levels of bad isekai anime. You've got the disappointing kind like How Not to Summon a Demon Lord. Then comes the horrible kind like Kenja no Mago and Isekai Cheat Magician. And then you have Arifureta in a league of its own with not a single competitor in sight. It's so bad that I watched it every week just to ... make myself feel better. I assured myself by saying that anime watching can't get worse so the only way is up. And yet, every week, Arifureta hit new lows that I didn't imagine were possible.

Arifureta literally means "common" or "mundane". But in the anime community, this word is now going to be referred to something which is terrible beyond measure. I think I've watched a decent amount of anime, and in all of those, only a couple of shows even come close to Arifureta in terms of the dreadful watching experience I've had. Arifureta has set the standard as high as possible for a show to be absolutely and unreservedly appalling. This is the kind of show that the rating of 1 on MyAnimeList exists for. An anime series that has no saving grace; something that might make you question why you watch anime at all.

Even after having suffered through 13 episodes of this tragically forsaken show, I can't quite point out what it was or what it wanted to be. I doubt the creators or the studio had any idea either. It's an isekai but what did the author really want this to be? A harem? Yeah, because all the new girls want to fuck Kazuma as soon as they meet him.

The premise of the show has Hajime and his class transported into a fantasy world in order to save it from some sort of disaster that's about to occur. In one of their expeditions, he's betrayed by one of his friends, falls into the abyss of the dungeon and that's where his changes start. He's a weak little boy before falling and then by eating monster's shit and meat, he obtains their powers.

When I was watching the first episode and all of this happened, I honestly thought that the second guy that I was watching wasn't even Hajime. By just eating and drinking some crap, his entire body changed shape, his hair color changed and even his voice wasn't recognizable. Damn, what a transformation. He goes from a weak little guy, who wants to look after his friends, to a strong, monster eating maniac who only thinks about getting stronger. His transformation also boosted the shitty level of his character. He was a normal shit guy before he changed and became a stupidly powerful but even shittier guy afterward.

Suddenly, we've got this overpowered, invincible "protagonist" (if you can even call Hajime that) who's going around the abyss, killing monsters with his guns and snipers, eating them and stealing their abilities for himself. You've gotta be kidding me! How did he even learn to create guns?! He was nothing but a support-type before, and now he's suddenly this all-knowing, omnipotent genius. Terrible, absolutely terrible and irredeemable writing.

So, what was the author thinking when he wrote Hajime? That's a question I'd like answered. His personality changed more times than there are episodes in the season. It's not unpredictable in a good way, no. It's embarrassingly predictable, but it just fluctuates between a guy who wants to save his friends, to one who cares about no one but himself, to caring about a vampire girl he'd just met, to having a dream of going home while caring about no one, to not caring about his former teacher, to caring about his former teacher, to not caring about the friends before his "transformation", to caring about them. It's kind of a cycle that repeats itself in every arc. His attitude towards the people who help him (except towards vampire loli of course) is stupidly obnoxious, and this doesn't change.

Since the second episode of this abomination, the characters that are introduced are nothing but objects to praise and aid our amazingly charismatic Hajime. Let's begin by talking about the naked girl tied to, and hanging from the chains in the opening: Yue. After being saved by Hajime (how surprising), the only reason for her existence is to suck up to him. She doesn't have a single personality trait worth mentioning. She really doesn't. All she's done is help Hajime defeat monsters and get jealous when other girls get close to him. I honestly don't have a clue what else I could write about her.

Moving on to the other characters in Hajime's "party"; first, we've got Shea, a bunny girl whose sole goal in life is to fuck Hajime. Yeah, not much else to her character either. Then, we've got a masochistic dragon girl who'd like to fuck Hajime. Great. And did I mention that Yue wants to fuck him too?

The only character who was even barely relatable, or bearable for that matter, was Kaori Shirasaki, one of Hajime's classmates who'd been transported into another world. She's the character whom Hajime tried to save when he fell and for that, she's shown to bear great responsibility. The emotions she goes through are interesting to watch as she goes from blaming herself to firming her resolve in finding Hajime. Alas, she didn't get too much screentime after those initial few episodes. And even if she did, I doubt it would've made much difference to the overall experience of watching Arifureta.

The full name of this piece of shit show is "Arifureta: from commonplace to the world's strongest". What it fails to mention is that this change happens in the span of one episode. Since episode 2, no enemy's even posed a challenge to Hajime. He and his party members are the only characters on the good side who're not totally useless. Everyone else who's not introduced as the enemy is shown to be weak; pathetically weak. Then, Hajime will appear, act as if helping them isn't his problem and eventually be convinced by one of the girls to help them. And then, we'll see our great hero pull out his guns and shoot down the bad guys with little to no effort. All while the animation hurts your eyes and makes you wonder if you're really in 2019 and not in 1969.

The other characters are so pitifully useless that it made me wonder how the world wasn't overtaken by demons and monsters before Hajime had his little demonshit-eating transformation. I know I've made this point a few times already but I just can't stress enough how stupid and weak anyone else that's not in Hajime's party is.

If there was one anime where the studios deserved shit for their terrible, lazy and disgraceful commitment, this would be it. I don't like to shit on writers or production studios, but for once, I can't say that the deplorable plot or storytelling is the only major reason for an anime to be the crappiest of crap. White Fox and Asread are both massive production studios, especially White Fox. Believe it or not, this is the studio that has produced shows of the ilk of Steins;Gate, Katanagari, Akame ga Kill, Hatarakou Maou-sama and Re;Zero. I'm not a fan of Re;Zero. In fact, I hated it. But that wasn't due to the fault of the studio. The production was top-notch in each of the anime series I've mentioned above. However, for Arifureta, both of these studios share the blame. Big time. I'm not kidding when I say that even Maou-sama Retry! which was produced by a no-name studio had better animation than Arifureta at times. And there's no excuse for this. Absolutely none. The opening was decent as far as the sound goes, however, nothing is noteworthy in the audio aspect either.

If you don't already know, Arifureta was scheduled to air in Spring 2018. Apparently, the production was already underway but because the author of the light novels didn't like what he saw, everything was scrapped and the anime postponed till Summer 2019. The utter lack of responsibility by the producers is mindboggling. They scrapped a series because they didn't like what they saw and the final product of what they "liked" is this abomination. I don't even want to imagine what the thing they scrapped must have been.

Some of the action scenes were so pitifully animated that it hurt my head just watching it. Imagine playing an action game at 10 FPS. That's how awful these action sequences were. This was a result of terrible visuals and sound combined with horrendous direction and a lack of planning. The worst part of the animation is the CGI of monsters, dragons, skeletons, etc. Basically, any enemy that wasn't human had CGI which would make the games from the 90s and early 2000s look great in comparison. Everything from their movements to their appearance was a pain to watch.

Do you want to see a female dragon having a massive rod inserted into her ass? Do you want to see a bunny girl kissing the main character fervently when he was trying to give the girl a mouth-to-mouth CPR? Or CGI so bad that it looks worse than a 1990s game (Heck, even those games had better CGI than the monster battles in Arifureta)? Do you want something to vent your frustration on? Do you want to see what your beloved medium of entertainment looks like at its worst?

Even if the answer to all of the above questions is yes, I'd still not recommend this. It's easily the worst isekai I've watched overall. I may have watched some with just as bad story-telling and characters as Arifureta, but they at least had okay animation. Arifureta doesn't tick the box for being decent in any department, be it characters, story, or animation.

I feel like I'm watching someone grind in an MMO.

This is garbage and I say this as a person that likes the isekai genre.
The thing is, they kinda forgot about the "isekai" part. There's no transportation to another world in this anime because for some reason they skipped it. The pacing is terrible, instead of things playing out as they should they put everything into flashbacks, confusing everyone. And honestly that might have been their goal considering that if you haven't read the source material, nothing in this adaptation is going to make sense. I'm 4 episodes in and if I hadn't read the ... explanations by ln readers, I would be completely lost.

This anime has two major flaws. The first one, is obviously the animation. CG that makes Overlord 3 look good is the norm here. The opening doesn't even have any animation with barely any art, just quickly finished pictures of characters without their faces.

Second, the pacing / story. Sitting through episode 4 was torture. The whole episode was just 1 fight against an unnamed enemy creatures. And that's how it has always been for the most part. The MC just killing random mobs and looting them, sometimes I feel like I'm watching someone grind in an MMO. Because they're monster npc they have no personality and it's just not fun. I'm not saying that fighting against monsters has to always be boring, it COULD have been fun, had the animation been good. But 20 minutes of 1 fight with animation straight from a PS1 game.. oh god kill me.


The whole anime just moves too slowly and that it's number 1 problem. At this point I doubt we will even see him finish the dungeon before the season ends.

How should I say this…my first impression of this abomination is: Did studio Asread go creatively bankrupt of anime projects? Is that why they keep producing garbage after garbage all these years? Watching Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou feels like injecting yourself with a lethal dose of poison but you won’t die. Instead, you’re lying there in a pain of agony trying to move on to the next life.

To be honest, I had low expectations before the anime began airing. Red flags were already raised when they made an announcement that the show would be delayed to this year. Normally, people would assume that it’s ... due to production issues and management. However, I don’t buy it. It sounded more like the show didn’t have a well-planned roadmap to begin with and serves more as a mission for cash grab.

Onto the show itself, it follows a similar trend with most isekai in recent years. You know, the protagonist gets transported to another world, taking on the role of a hero, and is given the task of saving the world. The seventeen year old Hajime Nagumo is a type of protagonist you can literally find in just about any isekai anime these days. The plot involves him getting weak stats in a world of danger. To make matters worse, he almost dies after falling into an abyss. After meeting a vampire girl named Yue, he begins to take on this world with her in this dark fantasy adventure. Does this sound exciting? Absolutely not and there’s plenty of reasons why.

First and foremost, there’s absolutely no way we can ignore the atrocious CGI quality of battle scenes and monster designs. There’s some anime that managed to make it work but this show is a fallout of the most hideous models I’ve ever seen in recent years. Every fiber of my being dislikes how the battles look and feel. It’s like one of those early access games you find on Steam where the developers completely abandoned their project after being bombarded with negative reviews. Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou shapes up to be some of the worst looking character designs this season. The fourth episode is a clear example of this. It reminds me of watching one of those Sharktopus trailers on Youtube where everything becomes a meme. Even the author of the series expressed his dislike about the show. To quote what he said, “I writhed in pain every time I was sent scripts/storyboards”. When you have the author disliking their own adapted work, then we have a problem.

Yet, the problem doesn’t stop there.

The scripts and storyboard itself doesn’t make a great impression either. It’s quite the opposite. Hajime’s transformation from a weakling to an anti-hero serves almost no purpose except to make him more badass. His character development is so fast that there’s pretty much no room to improve his character. It’s easy to assume he changes after meeting certain girls in his life but the writing there is meek at best. There’s forced romance between him and Yue that shows the two trying to survive in this apocalyptic world. Not to mention, Yue herself has almost no personality and goes through a similar quick change after meeting Hajime. There’s even one episode where she literally jumps into Hajime to show her affection. What happens after that? You can let your imaginations decide. The storytelling itself also has a lack of direction as I never felt it served much purpose.

The character cast itself is just a cluster of poorly made adventurers. Besides our main leads, we have Shea Haulia, the girl who dresses like a slut with rabbit ears and a bubbly personality. No one can take her seriously especially when she acts like a 4 year old crybaby. The anime doesn’t focus on her development but instead inserts her character as a harem groupie. On the other hand, Kaori Shirasaki is introduced early in the show as somewhat of a normal character. Unfortunately, she has perhaps the dullest personality in the series. Again, the show doesn’t commit on developing her character and by the end of the show, I almost forgot she even existed. Later in the series, we also meet Tio who apparently gets turned on like a masochist. When you have such a poorly written main cast roster, you can forget about the supporting cast such as their annoying teacher Hatayama Aiko. What a disaster. To top it off, this is a 13-episode series based on a novel that ran for hundreds of chapters. Anyone with a functional brain would instantly tell you that there’s no way we can get an acceptable adaptation. Even the episode themselves suffers from pacing issues and there’s no emotional attachment you can feel about the characters, story, art style, or anything.

Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou is an amalgamation of every trashy idea wrapped up into one little package. To recap a few, there’s the atrocious animation quality, faulty character development, the ineffective storytelling, and overall lackluster writing. Character relationship seems like a wish filling fantasy rather than anything realistic or tolerable. People tends to call this type of show generic or cliché but this anime is worse than that. It’s the fact that you feel absolutely nothing once you’re finished with the show besides hoping to get your time back. Sadly, you won’t.

Tl;dr This series is a disaster. If you really want to give Arifureta a try read the Manga or the Novel.

May contain spoilers;


Oh boy, where do I begin with this mess. When I saw this was in production by White Fox 2 or 3 seasons ago I was reasonably hyped for it to come out. White Fox has done reasonably good to great work on other series that I have been reading long before an Anime adaptation happened and with only minor nitpicks at some plot rearrangement with my full understanding that Manga and Anime are essentially marketed to separate(but still overlapping) ... audiences. So I tempered my anticipation with a fare amount of reasonable change but than I watched the first episode... and now I'm past the 4th episode and I'm dropping this series there. This is a total betrayal of the series as well as burning some reputation White Fox had(at least with me) over it.

The good;
Sound design is excellent and clear, all the voices sound appropriate for the characters so far and the opening song Flare by Void_Chords is now a permanent resident on my playlist for just how kickin it is.

The bad;
Hajime's character is completely different from his manga persona, being changed from a traumatized(symbolized by his Marie antoinette Syndrome after eating his first monster), angry, ready for bloodshed at any moment attitude that made him such an antihero of the manga to a mostly neutered re-humanized tragic protagonist. He has, for what I've seen so far, been completely defanged.
Yue has been altered from the much more capable if slightly bratty counter balance to Hajime's ever encroaching psychotic break. She's now a much more meek and soft spoken loli character who seems to be present more for the shows marketing than for the actual story, which is a blatant betrayal of her character when you learn that her roll in the manga is being the primary force that keep Hajime from murder on reflex.
And if these 2 are any indication of character design for the show I have no positive outlook on how Shia or Tio will be played, both most likely will be shoehorned into more marketing rolls as their characters barely resemble who they are in the written works.

The Ugly;
Most of the show. That's not a joke. For a pseudo-RPG Isekai style series the biggest draw for me was the dark and hard art style that really accented what was happening in the story. But Hajime looks flaccid and weak, Yue is still sporting a fur towel(probably because Waring Hajime's trench coat wouldn't be TV appropriate, even though its a staple part of her character design after she gains her own set of clothes), and the monsters being in CG being the biggest design mistake. They look nothing like their manga counterparts and look either ridiculous our outright pathetic(in the case of the Gale Bear and the Hydra).

If you where coming into this series completely blind, with your only knowledge of it being its MAL score and synopsis, you would probably passively enjoy it and give it a 5 or a 6. If you started this series because you read the Novel or the Manga and where hoping for just another way to enjoy the series from a studio that HAS done good work in the past, than like me; you have been betrayed. Read the Manga or the Novel and hard pass on this Anime.

Production horror, disagreements between newbie novelists and production staff, and horribly bad animation. That's all I have to say about this trash of a shitshow that if handled correctly, it could really turn out to be a decent show, honest to God.

When this show was greenlit for an anime adaptation in 2017, the Isekai trend was just taking off, and seeing the massive successes and failures of shows we've seen up until this point, it seemed like all was destined for good. Alas, novelist Ryo Shirakome, being a newbie in the anime industry, you could say that it was part of his fault when the ... production staff at White Fox didn't had the prowess to showcase his work properly. Remember, Goblin Slayer was White Fox's upcoming work in Fall 2018, so in light of multiple shows made by the same studio, to understand how shitty this situation was, he scrapped it all and went under Asread's direction and the production staff was refurbished and the deadline to finish this show's production in less than a year. That's how we've known this show by its interior and shoddy work these past 3 months.

But before that, stating another case, the whole story plot was also butchered to the max, for most LN/manga fans of this series to cry foul at skipping content, which for context, is essential to understanding the world-building within the fantasy elements of the show's overall feel and look, that gives it a good setting. Instead, the production staff cut too many corners and just went for gold rather than work their way progressively. The notion of "act first, think later" doesn't work AT ALL well with such mediums.

However, with that being said, the characterization is what suffers from the same plague of the show. Even for both the MC, his shenanigan of a group, plus the other worthless classmates who got transported to another world for no reason other than to dispel the evil forces within that world. This is made even more compelling that the MC, 17-year-old Hajime Nagumo, is the "cursed" one, the powerless one with no skills to boot, whilst all the other classmates are blessed with powers. Being abandoned for the support role, his unfortunate destiny from being commonplace and beating his way up to becoming the world's strongest is in progress

And meeting him is the (seemingly) "harem" of girls he's come to team up with, range from seemingly strong to being irritating to the point I would want to compare this to KonoSuba (you know, Kazuma and Co.). Yue, the sealed vampire of the labyrinth, once touted as a threat to the entire dungeon and the people of the world, Hajime never saw her as one that he could exploit (after his days of fighting monsters alone for time millenia), but rather one that is meek and be a worthy teammate and a great (love) support alongside one another. Bunny Girl Shea on the other hand, she is literally a dickhead version of Darkness with the mix of Megumin, both in prowess and capability. Even though she, like Hajime, is unfortunate that her anthropomorphic species got plummeted by monsters too, and is left to fend for her own with the rest of the suriving bunny demihumans. And whaddya know, joining Hajime is the only way to ensure that she can come out as strong as both him and Yue. To add another insanity to the mix, Tio, the anthropomorphic dragon with an ass SO BIG it's completely visible to Hajime for sticking his rod in. I mean, WTH. To add more claims to her, she is just as I thought: a much more raunchy version of Darkness being attached to Kazuma...er I mean Hajime. Despite her OP powers similar to how Yue wields it, as much as she is a bastardised version of Darkness, her clicheness doesnt really "hole" up all that well.

And don't get me started on the classmates. Bastards in their own way, only looking out for themselves at the beginning, to forgo without Hajime, and then reaping the intense karma that is his OP self being more capable than them all combined.

Studio Asread, which primarily does ugly and bastardized 3DCG work these days, this show harkens me back to the previous work they did, which was Lord of Vermilion (and look how that show tanked and bombed hard, just read my review about it). It seems that the people there didn't know the baseline of a decent production, even though they had less than a year to refine this show to the novelist's standards, plus TV production also. And before you ask, White Fox's involvement is just with the scraps of the done animation, all else is Asread. So I'm really hoping not to see their name in the production space again.

The only praise i can give this show to, is the OST. Especially the OP, Void_Chords once again deliver with a powerful song, and plus that, a fully English song I've come to expect since the days of Princess Principal, and it's just as great as I thought. The ED is average, only fine though. The battle scenes (or the BGM rather) is one of folly, another area of forgettable production.

Even though a sequel has been announced, I'd really like to give ANOTHER chance to this series if it was remade, reworked and redone by a different studio and production staff, because that would have made ALL THE DIFFERENCE. For now, I can only say that I've wanked my time with this show hard, and hoping that Season 2 will make it justice once again. PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, make Arifureta great again.

This show doesn't know what kind of show it wants to be so it left it so that it could be any kind of show. You find out that it is an isekai and that the entire class was transported, but you dont see the actual isekai event. It is like playing an rpg where someone else has played the first few levels for you and you are just continuing from there.

Story is horribly done including the attempts at comedy and fanservice.
The art is below average.
The characters don't feel unique. Especially the main characters.

The best way that I can describe this anime is ... that someone is trying to take their favorite parts of all the anime they have watched and put it all together, but they also missed several details

This is an isekai that is so poorly done that I created an account to leave this review so that others don't waste their time.

(no spoilers)

Alot of other reviews already mention how badly this story is explained,
It's isekai but you don't even know because they skipped it, character development is insanely rushed, it takes only one episode for the entire character development to shift which is unrealistic and pulls you out of the story to say the least...

Anyhow lackluster story aside;

Imagine the worst CG you've ever seen, and then this anime does it worse, fight scenes feel like you are watching a plastic doll on a screen.

Just when I thought this anime could not possibly get any worse, episode 6 is a recape episode. Yeah, because I totally forgot ... what happened 4 episodes ago? This anime is a good contender in my worst anime of all time ranking.

Our main character is transported from another world to one of fantasy with his class. In this world he gets a somewhat useless magic skill and has to fight in a labyrinth. He gets betrayed by one of his classmates, falls down a deep hole causing everyone to think he is dead and this is where our main story starts. Im rushing through all of this because the show does too.
In this hole he is forced to eat monsters to survive, he learns that eating monsters gives him more and useful powers so he goes on a killing spree to get more powers and we ... follow him from there.

The story is hard to follow because it is as if they are trying to get through 5 chapters of the source material every episode. On top of that according to manga readers they are cutting a lot out. At this point people watch it more to make fun than anything else.
That and it has a 300 year old loli.

What also doesn't help the show is it's cgi. It is as if they does not even try to blend in with the 2d characters and background including the characters weapons. It is very uncanny, if you thought you saw bad cgi before you didn't know how low the bar could be.

Overall, keep your expectations low if you watch this and treat it more like a weird comedy. That or read the manga because that was popular before this anime.

This show is actually trash. I am someone who actually went out of my way to write a review on this show just to display how bad it is. The first episode starts out skipping a ton of details so you actually have no idea what is happening.

The story is rushed on how he becomes "the best" with a really pathetic gimmick to gain power. I just finished episode 5.5 (yes 5.5, a recap episode and the most recent as of writing this) where it told us exactly what we just watched like it's been running for over 100 episodes. Why? The manga is ... rated highly, so why mess up badly on this?

The show (so far) has shown next to nothing of the side characters all the while the main and the loli (very epic) traverse the cave with horrible CGI enemies that they defeat very easily giving ZERO satisfaction. This show would much rather give me two scene of the main dude and the loli kissing, the dude and the loli bathing together, and a fucking recap episode instead of actual (interesting) story or side character back story. 0/10. Do not watch

Arifureta is one of those anime that remind you why we can’t have good things. It’s very badly made, the plot is terrible, the themes are horrible, yet the general audience loved it just because it’s an edgy isekai. It began as the replacement of The Rise of the Shield Hero, (both are isekai with a strong vibe of edge and justiceporn). It proceeded to make an ass out of itself by being awfully directed and animated (holy smokes, the CGI was on par with the modern Berserk). And then it managed to win most of the audience back (because they were isekai trash fans ... with very low expectations). Isn’t it wonderful to know that such a thing manages to get a second season because it was popular, while other shows with better plot and animation get squat?

Most of the audience was complaining at first about the bad CGI, but as a whole it would still be awful even if the animation was great. The plot is yet another isekai, about another bunch of high schoolers getting sucked into another videogame-like world, where learning new things is the same thing as eating. Remember when the Slime isekai was a thing for a season? And fuck training and studying, all you need to do is eat. Makes you wonder why shonen protagonists are not geniuses when they are all eating so much.

Anyways, the show tries to pull a not-twist by having the protagonist being the weakest of all the summoned heroes. See guys? It’s different from all other isekai because he is weak and there is a whole class of summoned students this time around. It has a lot of characters, each one with a different personality and personal quest! It subverts the clichés! Remember when the Shield Hero did the exact same subversion and turned out to be a dud? Well, what a surprise, the same thing happens here. The protagonist starts as pathetic and becomes stronger than all the rest put together almost immediately, for coming off as super cool in the eyes of the immature audience that loves that sort of empowerment fantasy. As for the rest of his classmates, they turn out to be completely useless and no more than background decoration. They are so useless they can’t even find him. He has to go find them and tell them how worthless they are. Their only purpose is to be constantly amazed with how the protagonist is super strong.

It’s laughable when the show tries to make you care about them, and fails because they are completely worthless. There is a scene where some bimbos are sad for losing the generic harem lead which they love without any reason. They try to make it sound like it’s a big deal and the viewer is supposed to feel sorry for them, but without spending any time on getting to know these bimbos, it’s impossible to care. The only thing we know about them is that they like the main character. We have no insight to who they are, therefore this drama comes off as forced and tasteless.

The entire plot focuses on the protagonist going around, killing monsters and hoarding chicks into his harem. He was also supposed to take revenge on those who constantly bullied him and then left him to die, but that plot point is quickly dropped for no real reason. There goes the justiceporn! He just forgets all the bullying and the horrible things they did to him. So why was it there to begin with? Oh, just for garnering sympathy from the audience in the first episodes. Extra lame points for how he wasn’t even bullied for being a dork. He was bullied because the boys in the class were jealous of him for sexually attracting girls despite being completely average. That’s right; he was a self insert harem lead that makes women fall in love with him despite not being special in any way. And he gets bullied for it so he will have the moral high ground for something he didn’t deserve. I mean, wouldn’t anyone be skeptical of a guy hoarding all the chicks without doing something to deserve it? Oh, but wait, he was being bullied, so let’s side with him and stop thinking about how this doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like it matters in the long run, since the show eventually turns into a harem.

But before it becomes a harem, we have to suffer through a very edgy arc where the protagonist is in constant angst and pain, as he tries to survive in the dungeon he was thrown in. He survives only through ridiculous amounts of plot armor by conveniently finding super materials, by constantly gaining more abilities, and by constantly healing his body with magic water. Something no other character could do for some convenient reason. Also, his supposed very weak and useless ability of transmutation (according to the people of this world) allows his to instantly create anything he likes out of rocks. With one hand. While being surrounded by powerful monsters. And I am not talking about simple stuff like swords and maces. I am talking about guns, and riffles, and grenades, and even motorbikes and jeeps! How is this supposed to be a weak ability?

I asked around a bit about this bullshit, and some readers of the novels justified it by saying transmutation is a weak ability only when you don’t know about the things you want to create. The protagonist knew about guns and jeeps, and that is why he was able to create them. Out of rocks, with one hand, while being surrounded by powerful monsters! Wanna know how come he knows so much about guns and jeeps to the point he can create them so easily? Because he was making a videogame and he studied guns so they will be more realistic when you play with them in the game. Fantastic reasoning. If you know how to make an omelet, you can create eggs out of rocks when you play videogames.

At least it doesn’t last too long because the adaptation is rushing through the novels. You thought Sword Art Online was rushed because Kirito cleared 100 floors in 14 episodes? You’ve seen nothing. This protagonist clears 50 floors in 10 minutes. There is no way to care about the number of floors or the difficulty of each one, for the same reason we can’t care about the harem bimbos being sad. Because everything is skipped. And it’s extra funny when you see how on one hand they rush through the source material and on the other they have to stall the plot with filler recap episodes because they couldn’t reach the deadline in time. What a disaster.

Once the edgelord finds his first girl, the show becomes far more palatable, because the plot repeats in the exact same way, in every single arc. Find bimbo, help her with her issues, add her to your harem, sex jokes, onwards to the next arc, rinse and repeat. It’s stuff we have been getting since the 80s. Here is a rundown:

-Cold eternal loli vampire: Boo hoo hoo, they imprisoned me because I was too powerful. It’s impossible to care about her when she is butt naked and begs the protagonist to give her a name, as if she is a pet. She is all over him despite having just met. Plus, she was imprisoned for centuries after being betrayed, she should normally be distrustful of others.

-Aloof sexy bunny: Boo hoo hoo, they hate me because I can use magic. She just exists to make sex jokes and to be constantly humiliated in ways that will remind you of deviant hentai.

-Masochist dragon slut: Boo hoo hoo, they brainwashed me to attack innocents. The protagonist tames her by sticking a metallic pipe in her ass. I am not joking, he shoved a huge pipe in her ass and she begs him to become his cum bucket. After that she exists just to make sex jokes, like an uncontrollable nympho. Also she never gets punished for all the murders she committed, despite constantly saying she is ready to accept punishment for them. I guess being added to the harem of a main character is a free out of jail card.

-Pure mermaid loli: Boo hoo hoo, they kidnapped me and tortured me and want to sell me as a slave. She is pure fan service for pedos who love grooming plots and just there to be moe and innocent towards everything that is going on around her.

-Healer schoolgirl: Boo hoo hoo, I like the bland main character for no reason, I wish he can save me so I can be added to his harem. She exists as the straight man, and constantly points out how everything the edgelord is doing is straight out of a bad hentai game.

The show pretends to have a plot, but it’s more of an afterthought and it doesn’t even make any sense. The edgelord has to complete several dungeons so he can open a portal to return home. But it doesn’t seem to be hard at all, since he can defeat thousands of monsters in a few minutes and in a single episode (because he is THAT overpowered). There is a scene where half an episode is spent on preparing for a monster attack, and giving courage to the population of the city under attack, and pointing out how everyone is important in the upcoming battle. And then the battle happens and none of them get to do the slightest thing, as the edgelord and his sluts easily destroy the army before it even gets to the city. So what was the point of wasting half an episode in making you think they matter? Also, isn’t it hypocritical that they kill all the monsters when they were probably brainwashed, just like the dragon they sparred earlier? We are talking about 60.000 potential waifus down the drain.

Also, are we supposed to believe the edgelord does all these missions because wants to go back to his world? The very world where he is a loser nobody who gets constantly bullied, and give up on this world where he is a cool edgelord with superpowers and his own harem?

I have heard people defending this abomination as a comedy and not as a story that wants you to take it seriously. See guys, there are sex jokes about his bimbos begging the edgelord to impregnate them! And another one where the straight man asks how many women he knocked up! It’s a comedy! Yes, a comedy full of misery, gore, terror, and a misanthrope protagonist. It’s just a comedy! … or it’s a light novel for people with no social skills who want to imagine themselves as victimized and who wish they could justify with edge the murder of everyone who gets in their way and the screwing of every girl they come across.

Oh well, at least now it’s finally over and we can move on with our lives… not! The second season has already been announced because it was proven to be highly popular. People loved this shit and want more of it. In the meantime Vinland Saga was slept on by most. Your average anime fan would rather watch a horribly animated isekai, than an actually good show. And that ladies and gentlemen is what modern anime are all about.

The anime is quite an interesting one I have seen in a long time.

Plot: The whole plot line I must say is just there, no weight, no impact, no risk and no nothing. The plot technically a scarecrow. No motivation. It’s just not even enough for anyone to care if anyone in the story die.

Animation: Fan-service is there (of course), but not too overwhelming - maybe because I skip that part. The were using 3D animation with 2D, the result was not good. 3D models are extremely clunky and roughly designed. The worst thing is the 3D is not blend in well with the ... 2D, makes it worse.

Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou was like Itai no wa Iya nano de Bougyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu, but while Maple was all cute and all, Hajime was a edgy.
He gets strong way to fast. He is way to edgy. He goes from o look im a weak baby to I wear black because it's the color of my soul. Everyone betrayed me I can't trust noone(fake deep voice) He looks like Najenda from Akame ga Kill, but at least Najenda not edgy but still cool.
The CGI was cheap. Mixing normal animation with CGI should not be allowed. ... Story is cheap, humanity is in danger bla bla bla summoned from different world thats cute get to the back of the line you bankrupt studio. Character are unlikeable or unrememberable.
Hajime goes from being a weak baby to crap strong in one ep. Shows like
Akame ga Kill, TenSura, DanMachi, ect are good because the main character is not just a random
person that is thrown at us and is expected to be likable just because hes bat poo strong. You can't just throw a overpowered character
at me and expect me to like him. You can't throw cute anime girls at me wihout cat ears and expect me to like them.
Your going to tell me that humans are in danger while everyone is living in a fancy mansion.
ALsO wtf is this fanservice. Like chill. If it looks under 18 its under 18 idc.

Arifureta is isekai trash that seems to have taken the trash part a bit too literally. Overall it's a bad anime with a main character edgy enough to change hair colour, tokyo ghoul style, in the first episode. If you don't mind edgy characters you could try the first episode but if you don't like that, it doesn't get much better.

The story isn't great. Ironically enough there do seem to be some truly interesting concepts in the world but they aren't adequately explored. The story seems to be driven less by the main character but moreso by random things happening around him that he ... has "no interest in" but ends up taking part in anyway.

The characters are the main problem in this anime. The main character is simply really edgy, makes stupid choices and is a pain to watch. The supporting characters don't feel very special either and the minor characters are cardboard cutouts. A part that may appeal to people is the humor in the anime since that is quite prevalent but for me it constantly failed because of the edgy main character and the absence of character depth.

The animation is okay. Sadly though the enemies are bad CG which is painful to watch. The voice acting isn't always great and the music in the background does not always suit the things that are happening on screen.

Overall Arifureta isn't a good anime. Though there are interesting things in the world, the story doesn't explore them enough. The anime has humor but the characters fail to convey it properly. The CG is bad and the sound isn't great either. Only bother watching this if you like isekai trash, don't mind edge and want comedy.

Arifureta is just one of the many isekai this season that met the genre's expectations.

Of being absolute garbage.

What sets Arifureta apart, though, is my personal disappointment in a well-written source novel that turned into a garbage can.

This anime was a production disaster. The CGI was a rushed job, the cringe moments were absolutely horrible, the pacing was wild, and to top it off, the general feel of the story and development that existed in the source material (Light Novel) was completely destroyed. I don't have the time (or the motivation) to point out the countless amount of times this adaptation decided to leave things out, ... or messed things up, or changed things. The original story definitely flowed much better, and didn't leave out the massive amount of explanation that this anime is in desperate need of.

If you even had a SLIGHT interest in the story and worldbuilding of Arifureta I STRONGLY suggest the Light Novel/Web Novel instead. And if you don't like reading text, the manga is up to about episode 10-11 of the anime (at time of writing), and is still by far a better option. (I still strongly recommend the LN/WN over the manga though)

Arifureta, our wonderful seasonal isekai trash of Summer 2019. It is an experiment by the novelist, wondering what would occur if he culminates many different elements of manga and novels to create this narrative, hoping to find success in extracting the most praised aspects in order to replicate said acclaim.

The story follows our optimistic and kind protagonist Nagumo Hajime, as he is ridiculed for his supposedly useless skill by his peer who possesses far superior skills (hmmm... kinda reminds me of a series... *cough* SHIELD HERO *cough* ), he is later betrayed by one of his peers and undergoes extraordinary emotional trauma that damages ... his psyche, he experiences Marie Antoniette Syndrome whitening his hair and becomes more ruthless (huh... wonder where that originated... Tokyo... guru?). Later on, after traversing the many trials in his way that is easily dispatched thanks to the power of [ Overpowered Protagonist ] skill, he encounters a 300-year-old blonde loli vampire (wow, didn't know Oshino Shinobu can traverse across different shows with her abilities) who exists for the sake of fan-service and deus ex machina.

The art is lacklustre, you can immediately tell the show was created as an immediate cash grab by the producers. Many action scenes are laughable, characters are in still-frames as they dodge and weave across the battlefield, like paper cut-outs dragged across the wall. And oh god the abundance of CGI in the action scenes is nauseating, it is to be expected that CGI is used for gigantic creatures and monsters, but even his weapon is animated in CGI, not evening noting how the lack of recoil and reaction from the user whenever he fires is off-putting. The art can look at most decent in calm scenarios and some scenes can look pretty smoothly drawn, but those are seldom.

I commend the voice actor for their great performance, they do express emotions in scenes, but due to the pacing and direction of the show, it had little effect on me. The soundtrack during fight scenes is... everything? Literally, I hear jazz, heavy metal and orchestral in different fight scenes. Very disconcerting, as if the composer does not even know how to compose fitting music and so experiments with very single genre of music, mashing them into every scene. There's no motif connecting any of these soundtrack, so they just feel like a mish-mash of different music. Disappointingly, they are definitely nothing noteworthy, too bland. Have to admit, the opening isn't bad (not the visual, it's piss poor). However, the ending is as dull as the soundtrack. Also, the sounds they used for the monster are the same exact ones you can get from a soundboard... talk about effort.

Our main character is basically if Ken Kaneki and Iwatani Naofumi performed a fusion. A carbon copy of them both, which is so accurate that it bothers me, the author must have been really lazy. His classmates are stereotypical characters such as the kind and caring childhood friend, the hateful and brash bully etc. Extremely forgettable. The loli vampire's personality is created to be extremely clingy and slightly tsundere. Not of the character's backstory, motivation, personality or design is anything to write home about, the protag is made to look as badass as possible because why not?

All in all, the show is your seasonal, typical isekai anime. If you are a fan of the genre, sure go ahead it might temporarily satisfy your cravings. As for everyone else, it is best to avoid this show for something even remotely more enjoyable and memorable than this. As for me, well I will just keep watching till I hit that one episode where I will drop this show enitrely.

If I'm giving an objective review of this anime, it's a 3 as such I shall spoil the shit out of it without mercy.

It has exactly 2 good ideas and has a alright soundtrack. Those two ideas are.

1: The dragon people being samurai or at least eastern inspired. I just always enjoy this so this is a personal thing.

2: Hajime adopting Myu is unironically wholesome and is the best character interaction in the entire anime. I am a sucker for hardass/edgelords becoming doting dads, so of course this is my favorite legitimate aspect of the show.

Now you may have noticed that I scored this ... anime a 3 and that is me scoring it objectively. That is because if I rated how much I enjoyed this colorful dumpster explosion it would be a 9.

This anime fails abysmally in almost every facet consistently. It's to the point that I will recommend this anime as a comedy. Let me break it down step by step.

Story: 2

Its an isekai anime that fails to explain its an isekai in the actual story until some point past episode 3. While other similar isekai have done this (Grimgar just kinda ignores the fact its an isekai) Here it is really only shown in the OP and is an important part of the non-existant plot about chosen heroes probably fighting a god or demon or something. This is honestly the only bad part of the anime that isn't hilarious but it is ultimately something you can ignore, cuz it sure as hell ignores its own plot.

Art: 2

Aight so. I like some of the character designs, I like the aesthetic decision to give each character an outline that matches their colors which makes them pop out in this drab world. But you see, everything else is awful. The action is hilariously bad, the animation is only sometimes okay but mostly just bad. However the greatest gift this anime gives is the CG monsters. The CG monsters are by far the best and worst part about this anime in all the right ways. You combine the shitty CG monsters with the weirdly slow combat and things just comically fly around or fall over in slow motion that was made by a child playing with their action figures. The best part about the CG monsters is somehow they progressively get worse in all the right ways. Just watch the dragon "fight" and you'll understand.

Sound: 5

Soundtrack is pretty okay. I might go relisten to some tracks to get a better opinion but this isn't actually bad.

Characters: 3

This one is hard to rate because I like the characters. They're all so one note and shallow but their so weirdly endearing. Its really difficult to explain how I feel about them. Like I cant even tell you if I enjoy Hajime because he's a shitty edgelord or if I enjoy him because he's genuinely a fun character. All I know is that the extra members of Hajime's party are either boring (Yue) a shitty Aqua clone (Shea) and a shitty Darkness clone with the worst character introduction I have ever seen in any anime ever. Myu's an actual fun addition to the party I legitimately like so she's saves the score from being a 2.

If your still reading this then, go watch Arifureta. I will guarantee that you will at least get a good laugh during the first 3 episodes and if you enjoy what you see I highly suggest finishing it. This anime never has a dull moment.

Adapting a manga or a light novel into animation is an understandably difficult task; it is hard to truly convey the author’s vision for what their story would look like in this medium. It is understandable then, that the author of Arifureta’s light novel series, Ryou Shirakome, was unsatisfied with the original version of this anime. However, in a disastrous attempt to re-do the adaptation, what we got instead was something way worse than anyone could ever have imagined.

The first issue with this adaptation is the baffling mess of a pilot episode. The first episode of Arifureta begins in media res, without any explanation of ... who our main character is or how he got here until a couple of minutes in, with what would have been the most impactful moment of the entire series already butchered, due to our lack of investment in Hajime (our main character) and our lack of understanding of the lighter tone of the series up to that point. Then, through a poorly-handled set of flashbacks in episode 1 and exposition in episode 2, we are told this information, but it is too little, too late as far as our ability to care about anything going on during the first episode goes.

This isn’t even the most glaring flaw in this adaptation, however: the big monsters that serve as the spectacle for major fight scenes are rendered in some of the most hideous CGI to ever curse your eyes. The monsters that should be presented as threatening instead just look really, really derpy. This actually works in the show’s favour, however, as this unintentional comedy is one of the few sources of entertainment that this anime has to offer.

This source of entertainment is actually really important, as without it, the fight scenes are pretty damn uninteresting, with the entirety of episode 4 (which is one long fight against an incredibly goofy-looking CGI hydra) being the most egregious example of this.

It’s not just the fight scenes though, the plot is just as boring. Episode 1’s butchering of what would’ve been the only shocking, impactful moment just leaves this story feeling like a bog-standard isekai – nothing you haven’t seen before (except that the CGI is worse than any other). Sure, while they are still in the labyrinth there are some fairly unique and interesting things going on, as Hajime (who, as you can tell by the title of the show, becomes very overpowered) hasn’t quite become unstoppable yet (though he is approaching it very rapidly), and his dynamic with Yue (the vampire he meets in episode two) is relatively endearing. Once this story arc concludes, however, the series becomes an utterly generic harem power-fantasy, losing the edge it had when Hajime was struggling, as well as losing most of his nice moments with Yue (as other harem members prevent them from getting any alone time, and the group chemistry is a lot worse than when it was just the two of them).

Hajime is a very edgy character. And I mean VERY edgy. You thought that Naofumi from The Rising of the Shield Hero was edgy? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! This edginess, combined with his desire to return home, makes up basically the entirety of his character. Being edgy isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself (hell, my favourite Pokemon is Darkrai), but it really rubs me the wrong way when it makes up almost the entirety of a character’s personality. It makes him really unlikeable, and further decreases my investment in the story. Despite this, he can be relatable at times; more specifically, he is relatable when he is annoyed with Shea and Tio (who I will talk about soon), though this comes across more as him putting up an edgy act then the genuine loathing for these characters that the viewer is likely to feel.

Yue, on the other hand, is perhaps the best part of the show (apart from the soundtrack). She doesn’t have a particularly complex or interesting character, but she is fairly likeable, and her solid chemistry with Hajime makes him more likeable as well. They also have realistic reasons for developing a romantic connection, as Hajime was the one to save Yue, and Yue acted as a companion he could trust in his lowest moments. All of this could have been great for setting up a power couple who develop into better people as a result of each other.

Then the series says “Screw that!” when they leave the labyrinth by introducing us to Shea: the bunny girl. When she is initially asking for Hajime and Yue’s help, they are reluctant to help her, because she is hella annoying, and they are absolutely right. But, when they finally give in, she ends up travelling with them. From that point on, her entire role in the story is to be jealous of Yue because she worships Hajime’s dick. There’s no compelling or realistic reason for her to like Hajime so suddenly, despite the show’s best efforts to convince you otherwise, and, well, I think you know the kind of anime this becomes from here, because it’s literally the same concept as almost every other isekai (except Shea is way more annoying than any character from the vast majority of these series); we get more and more harem members, and Hajime gets more and more overpowered.

The next harem member is Tio, the dragonborn. If you’ve seen KonoSuba, she may seem familiar to you, seeing as she is basically just Darkness, except a lot less funny. Oh, and she can turn into a CGI dragon with the power to make your eyes bleed. She still is incredibly tolerable compared to Shea, but, well… that isn’t really saying anything.

And then we have Myu, who essentially becomes their adopted daughter. There isn’t really much to say about her; if you can invest yourself in a character purely on the basis of them being cute, then you’ll like her, but I wouldn’t exactly call her well-written. I guess she doesn’t actively make the series worse like Tio and Shea do though.

Finally, we have Kaori, who doesn’t join the party until the end of this season, but is still relevant, as this series has somehow been confirmed to be getting a second season. She was one of his classmates, and has had feelings for him for a long time, so when she sees him again, she decides to join his party, with at least some intention of getting him and Yue to break up. The fact that he has completely changed doesn’t seem to phase her in the slightest, making one wonder what it is she likes about him in the first place, since his new edgelord state is absolutely nothing like the guy she originally liked.

Arifureta decided to eat its cake and have it too with its approach to romantic/sexual wish-fulfilment; I’m personally not a fan of the harem genre, so I obviously would have preferred the show to ditch its harem in favour of actually focusing on the romance with Yue, but if Shirakome wanted to write a harem, it would’ve been better to ditch the romance with Yue, at least until near the end of the series, as it turns the show from being about a group of girls each trying to win his heart into a group of girls who are constantly jealous of Yue and want to steal Hajime from her.

As mentioned earlier, the best part of this show is its soundtrack. During long, boring fight-scenes, the OST usually helps to keep me at least slightly entertained (in addition to the derpy CGI). It’s pretty darn good, and certainly a hell of a lot better than any other unintentional appeal of this show. The OP and ED are also decent songs, though the visuals of the OP are rather awful, and they only get worse in its second iteration (once they get out of the labyrinth, the one part of the OP that didn’t already look like complete ass gets replaced by some hideous CGI).

Overall, Arifureta does have a little bit of a so-bad-it’s-good appeal, but, for the most part, it is a boring slog to get through. With a confusing first episode, hideous animation, annoying characters (I’m looking at you, Shea) and a plot that you can find done slightly less awfully in pretty much any other isekai, Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest is one of the worst anime of the year, and I would only recommend it to people who are looking for the aforementioned so-bad-it’s-good appeal, or who will enjoy anything as long as it’s isekai.

While the concept for this show sounds generic and over done, it appealed to me as something that could be enjoyable. Something I could sit down and mindlessly appreciate after a hard long day. This however was not the case, and I would have to be more than just mindless to even enjoy a scrape of this absolute faeces of a show.

Everything about this show reeks of amateurism. It's bland, it's boring, and it gives us everything we hated about every other isekai and nothing that we loved. The male protagonist who was bullied and is out for revenge, but somehow lost any personality ... he had along the way. His love interest; the loli girl who is a million years old so hot damn, it's "okay" if they kiss - she's definitely legal. And let's not forget the disgusting CGI. Action scenes can often save a poorly written show, making up for the terrible dialogue and half-assed attempt at character growth. But for Arifureta, it only adds to the long list of detriments.

Nothing Hajime does is revolutionary. Nothing he does is even vaguely interesting, actually. He trains, he grows. But who is he? We only find out during badly timed and frankly unseemly flashbacks. We have no reason to care about this person because his only known trait, which isn't a positive, is that he was betrayed by a classmate. I think I'd prefer it if he were at least insufferable. If he at least made me feel some sort of emotion. In a show where the art, animation, and vile GCI are just some of the downfalls, the protagonist really needed to carry the show. But he lacks in pretty much every aspect and fails to even keep us glued for one episode.

Yue is the same. She's a cliche loli/vampire and provides absolutely no value. I'm a firm believer that a good show will utilise a few cliches; they're used often for a reason. However this is one that isn't quite necessary. Telling us she's 1000 years old doesn't make us feel any less creeped out when she sucks blood from Hajime's neck. It certainly doesn't make their kissing scene less creepy, either. Fuelling the fantasy's of a certain set of people is lovely fan service but it's not quite what I'm looking for.

All in all, this show is pure garbage. Badly written, badly directed. Poor transitions early on when dealing with past/present scenes make it hard to watch, and action scenes that look like they were animated during the 90s only make it worse. Put the icing of dull, unlikeable characters onto the metaphorical cake and we have one of the worst shows of 2019.

“Our Expectations for You Were Low But Holy Fuck!” , this statement was stuck in the back of my head when I watched “Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou” also known as arifureta. Arifureta is one of the most boring and shittiest isekai shit I had ever watched.There are many reasons as to why this anime should be sent to the shadow realm and should not be watch by anybody even for my greatest enemies.

To start off , this story has many shitty 3d animation which was really bad. I’m not kidding when I say that watching a paint dry is way more entertaining and enjoying ... then watching the 3d animation of arifureta. The 3d design for the monsters were piss poor and the motion of the 3d monster were holy shit.This made every fighting scenes in the anime terrible.Though the 2d animation is pretty good for the non-fighting scenes,the shitty 3d animation for the fighting scenes and the monster’s design far outweigh the 2d animation.

The story has a very bad structure.The story has many missing plots and there are too little details explained about the world the mc was transported into.The story was also rushed faster than a bullet train and many parts were skipped which ruined the main character progress.The main character legit went from the most useless pussy ass character to an overpowered self-confident alpha male in the span of 10 minutes, and the reason is because: he didn’t want to die and ate some monster’s meat! Tell me how am I supposed to accept this kind of bullshit if the anime don’t give me more information or animate more important info in the light novel into the anime.

The chracters in the anime are boring .The main character really is just your badass alpha male edgelord with white hair.Dude really has no character development other than the first episode, after that he became your default alpha male who just wants to go home.The main heroine also is very dull and is your typical 400 years old loli kuudere vampire. She has no interesting traits at all,I can’t even call her a discounted shinobu.The side characters are really not much different , also really boring and dull.

The opening in arifureta is terrible, It did not mesh well with the genre it was showing.The ending was ok though the saxophone background music during the fight scenes didn’t mix well with it, like come on, why out of all the things in this fucking world, why must you play saxophone music as the background music during the fight scenes?

There are anime that are shit in plot and characters but I still enjoyed them, but this anime literally has very few enjoyment in it. The comedy is fairly decent as there are some scenes which are funny but looking at the big picture, I didn’t enjoy the overall product as I spent most of the time being confused with whatever the shit they are showing and I cant enjoy the fighting scenes too as the 3d animation is shit.

In conclusion, there are many things in this world which are undeniably a fact, like how the earth is round is a fact, or how 70 percent of the earth is made out of water is a fact, or how epstein didn’t kill himself is a fact. Arifureta being a bad anime and having a lousy rating in MAL because of its bad quality in animation and its story is definitely a fact.So please do not watch this anime if you can,there is no coherence in the story which greatly affects the characters and its development.The anime is not worth anybody’s time unless you are masochist and have a lot of free time(not me) do go ahead and watch it.But overall everything in this anime is terrible and should be sent to the shadow realm.