Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne!

Having stood out from others most of her life due to her exceptional character, Misato Kurihara has lived without neither the joy of having close friends nor the experience of having a regular life. However, after a sudden death, she was transported to a divine realm to be reincarnated—and granted one wish to top it off. Thinking about the ordinary life that she had always wanted, she wished to be born as a normal person, with abilities that are average for the world she will resurrect in.

Reborn as Adele von Ascham—the daughter of a noble—she possesses magic powers completely exceeding what one would label average. Still desiring to carry out the life she wanted, she leaves her home and enrolls at a hunter school in a faraway kingdom using "Mile" as an alias. However, try as she might to hide her overpowering potential, attaining her goal will be difficult—especially when facing against the crazy situations that ensue!

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

von Ascham, Adele Main

Waki, Azumi Japanese

Reina Main

Tokui, Sora Japanese

von Austien, Mavis Main

Uchimura, Fumiko Japanese

Pauline Main

Tazawa, Masumi Japanese

Nano Supporting

Hatano, Wataru Japanese

Lenny Supporting

Kouno, Hiyori Japanese

Marcela Supporting

Kawase, Maki Japanese

Arledy Supporting

Kikunaga, Akari Japanese

Kurihara, Keiko Supporting

Nakano, Saima Japanese

Monica Supporting

Yasuno, Kiyono Japanese

Iizuka, Aya Producer

Satomi, Tetsurou Producer

Koutani, Satoshi Producer

Umeda, Kazusa Producer

Reviews

Dec 23, 2019

Stark700

Recommended

FUNA’s anime adaptation follows a common trend in recent years with the flood of fantasy isekai. Abilities Average (the shortened title I’ll be referring to) doesn’t demand much on the creative side as we witness the transformation of a teenage girl into an overpowered adventurer. Joining main female protagonist Mile includes Reina, Pauline, and Reina. Are you ready to watch an adventure with these four goofballs?

Clocking in at 12 episodes, the early warning flag raised is the faithfulness of the anime adaptation. Unfortunately, it’s easy to say the anime decided to condense the material in order to maintain a flow of the overall series. Rather ... than following a faithful roadmap, the anime omits Mile's days at academy and instead puts her right into the 4-girls group as we are most familiar with. Needless to say, that cuts value into Mile's character as the audience will have a lesser time understanding her. As the novels consists of over 300 chapters, this decision didn’t take me by storm. Thankfully, Abilities Average make time to bring a comedic filled adventure.

The Crimson Vow. Remember those words well because this entire show is about them and their adventures. Mile may be the central protagonist but she retains the common interest of an otaku that being her love of anime, manga, and video games. Applying this knowledge to her adventures and battles, the show is made effectively self-aware of its standards. Even Mile herself is aware of her personality that is addressed by her own narratives. Joining her in these adventures is Reina, the crimson mage with a dark past but became a Hunter. As a crimson mage skilled with fire techniques, she plays the role of a tactical fighter and is invaluable to the party; think of her as the mage class in one of those classic WOW raids. Reina herself does have a background story that takes the show into a more emotional direction. If you care about her as a person, you will likely feel some sympathy of Reina when told from her personal perspective. Entering the familiar isekai party tropes, we also meet Mavis von Austein, the skilled knight with a noble persona. In any fantasy stories, a knight is almost like a necessity to make its series credible. Hence, we have Mavis although the show pokes fun of her character. For instance, she often gets teary eyed by sad stories despite her masculine appearance. Finally, Crimson Vow has another mage named Pauline who occasionally shows her “dangerous side” when least expected. Brace yourself for this group because they are the embodiment, heart, and soul of Abilities Average.

It makes sense that Abilities Average follows these four characters exclusively rather than developing other characters. After all, Crimson Vow is essentially the collective party of the poster characters. Even though Mile is the central protagonist, the others are featured just as much as her. FUNA’s writng of these characters puts emphasis on their personality than development. Watching their character chemistry and embracing who they are as characters is essential to enjoying the show. The more I watch these characters, the more I feel connected to them. However, I will say the show is aiming for lighthearted humor the majority of the time. There’s also satirical humor with character behaviors such as Mile’s lack of common sense at times. In other words, Abilities Life is more of a deconstruction of the fantasy isekai genre. It’s not an entirely a unique concept but does give a breath of fresh air for the Fall 2019, a season that seems to have an unusual amount of isekai.

The closest Abilities Life gets to with an antagonist is the life adventure itself. The anime adaptation doesn’t truly have a Big Bad but does introduce obstacles for Crimson Vow to overcome. This includes the battle tournament these girls participates early in the show to later facing off against an Elder Dragon. We have to remember that these are still teenage girls who have yet to step into the adult world. However, all these characters are portrayed as adorable badasses. The best way to describe them would be “dynamite come in little packages”. It’s when their opponents are caught off guard and realizes it's too little, too late. Mile’s request to be “average” still turns her into an overpowered character by the Creator. By average, she didn’t expect that her own abilities far outclasses others in this new world. The word ‘average’ itself losses its meaning when you think of the Average Joe. But in essence, it’s still fun to watch their adventure to see how they overcome their obstacles.

Project No.9’s transformed the light novel into anime by making it full of charms. It’s adorably cute with the characters made into teenage girls. If you look at first glance, there’s little reason to fear them until it’s too late. Character expressions is portrayed with a cartoony style of expressions with a vast majority of the time being humorous. On rare occasions, there’s more emotional reactions such as with Reina’s anger or Pauline’s sadism. The world setting is also decorated with light touches of fantasy such as the mystical and fairy tale-like creatures. Of course, dwarves, elves, and goblins exist because it’s part of the Isekai 101 formula. On a lesser scale, the battle cinematics is clean and crisp although looks average in style. Don’t go into this show looking into some high level caliber of animation quality because you won’t find it.

I’d normally discard the voice acting of a cast of teenage girls because most often time or not, they all sound the same. However, I do want to mention that the character voice mannerism of Average Life is more effective than some of the other isekai shows I’ve seen. This is due to how close the character connections are with each other. It’s collected together as a union of personalities coming from different backgrounds but united as Crimson Vow. Plus, who can forget the theme song of the show? When you have an adorable cast posing in ridiculous manners and catchy lyrics, it’s hard not to get into the rhythm.

Average Life always seemed like a series that would eventually get an anime and it indeed did. Here, we have an anime about a cast of goofballs poking fun of the idea of an isekai adventure. However, I do want the audience to be aware of the faithfulness of the show. Average Life is guilty of falling short on expectations when it comes to adaptation. There’s much more in the light novels that you can understand the characters better. But for an anime show of itself, Average Life is much more than just average.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 23, 2019

Hajictan

Mixed Feelings

best thing: the opening I will miss those on my Mondays.
anime was okay, fun to watch and have a chill time to get back home and have an episode to enjoy.

The last episode they decided to add the story, but well this one is not likely to get a second season so for those like me who will watch and forget this, the last episode was a farewell to a soothing Monday.

cringe, a lot of it but fun to watch if you do not start nitpicking faults, better to do it once you have seen and enjoyed all of it >:3

characters were lovable and funny ... but sometimes a little too much, especially MC from time to time was over the top 7/10

the story was, apart from the last episode, cute girls doing adventurer stuff nothing more 3/10

music was really enjoyable and catchy for the opening but during the episode, it was okay nothing noteworthy 7/10

art was more on the lines of making the characters come over cute, many corners cut and well some fights were straight-up 1 picture with some motion 5/10

but honestly, despite its flaws, it was an enjoyable watch to make my Mondays end well with a chill series to enjoy 8/10 for overall enjoyment

all in all, I give this one a 6/10 not something you need to watch but can add it if you have nothing else to do and want to just relax. Also, I do not think that this is binge watchy, what I mean by that is that the series is meant to be watched and relax and not think about anything. watching all at once to get a good story flow will not deliver.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Dec 23, 2019

Zerity

Not Recommended

May contain spoilers

I despise this series, it has everything that I hate in a comedy series, and even being the iseaki trash I am I can't justify this. The jokes are repetitive and not funny, there were close to no moments that I generally liked, and I hate myself for watching this.

Firstly I wanna say what I did like, that one episode where they were around the campfire sharing stories it was wholesome and I did enjoy that, I love the OP even though I wish I didn't, and a few of the anime references the put in. That's about it.

Firstly the comedy is dreadful. ... It's mainly about Adele being like, "I just wanna be average", and she gets her wish just not the way she wanted. She "tries" not to show her power to anyone, but whenever someone says flat, she turns into a rage like, "YOU CALLED ME FLAT, NA-NANI, BAKANA" and then proceeds to use her OP abilities and crush her opponent and at the end be like, "OH, I did that? Teehe", like bitch that shit annoys me so much. It wasn't funny the first time and wasn't funny after the 50th time either. Also when Adele tries to use her power but not in an OP way but still does without knowing that also irritates me, I have seen that so many times in so many different ways and that joke being like the main source of comedy really just grinds my gears. it also tries to play at being to meta and it fails a lot of the time and is generally not funny (and I love me some meta humor).

The characters are bad as well. None of them stick out in anyway, never enjoyed watching them interact. They had their good moments obviously, for example, I liked Pauline just being a sadist, Mavis being a dumbass, but I didn't like anything about Adele or Reina. Even with Reina tragic backstory and understanding were her motivation comes from still didn't make me like her at all. Now because there is not much to say about the animation other than it's complete garbage and hurt my eyes to look at, I'm not gonna make it it's own paragraph.

Overall, complete garbage show, I can see why people like it and if you like parody, reference filled loli shows than I would recommend this show to you. If you don't however skip this show completely you will not find enjoyment in it whatsoever.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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