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Summoned to Another World for a Second Time is a show that follows the basic tropes of your standard isekai power fantasy... or perhaps I should say "followed".

This show falls into the same pitfall that many of it's genre do but somehow even more so. These shows tend to lose their impact or stakes because the protagonist's abilities will just overpower any threat because the script says it does but this show has that and more because the protagonist has already been to this world and has already solved all the issues he encounters and just solves them again with nothing really at stake.

People are really black and white with one, either they're praising it to high heavens or they're branding it as a stain on the media format.

Here's what Arifureta really is: underfunded and/or rushed, possibly both. I'm not rating it based upon what it could have been but what it is. It's a pretty decent story line with good character designs that has been compressed into too few episodes and has been put together too quickly.

Let's get the obvious things out of the way first, yes, the CGI aspects are bad, and I mean REALLY bad, it looks as though they put 3D shape tweens on ... the proof-of-concept models and called it a day. Sometimes the 2D animated characters even interact with the 3D ones like a person talking to someone who isn't there in front of a green screen.
And the sound design, yikes. I don't mean the voices, they're fine, I mean the music. It's the same saxophone solo over every fight scene and it's not even a good or fitting track.

However, these troubles are limited to the fight scenes only, outside of them this show is actually quite entertaining. Although, the show's plot, as I said before, has been compressed into too few episodes and everything moves too quickly. Important story elements that people would have wanted to know sooner are revealed in flashbacks in later episodes when the show really should have started from the real beginning when the characters were first summoned, which it couldn't do because there weren't enough episodes to fit in the whole story arch that way.

I like isekai shows, perhaps that's why I can overlook some of this show's more glaring issues and still enjoy this show myself, but I still wouldn't recommend it to someone unless they're really looking for an isekai to watch.

A lot of shows this season have the similar premise of "Being sent into a primitive world with knowledge of modern technology and introducing the knowledge to your new world" and this one is my favourite of them all, even beating Dr. Stone by a narrow margin.

You have the usual isekai setup of someone dies and is sent to a new world where they have a hidden yet over powered ability which they can use to save the world from... EXCEPT YOU DON'T! You follow a young woman who only ever dreamt of becoming a librarian because she loves reading and learning from books, when ... she finally achieves her dream she is killed by a falling book shelf, when she is sent to a new world her one and only plea to God is that she can be reborn in a world where she can read lots of good books, and as an answer to that prayer a heartless reincarnation system throws her into a world where books are not only a rare commodity but reading itself is a uncommon skill, especially for a young girl at the very bottom of the social ladder.

But what about the usual special power that isekai protagonists get to make them overpowered with a lot of magic power or something and yeah, you're right, she's got one of those, except not really because magic is basically a curse in this world so what she gets is a severe debilitating illness with no known cure that saps away at her strength and stamina.

Watch the story of a little girl who against all this adversity strives and struggles to achieve something so simple as a single book to read even if she has to make and write it herself. Follow along with her as she achieves so many small victories on her way to her goal and mourns the losses of her work as a cruel world destroys and impedes her progress at every step, but it is not the destruction of a little girl's work you see but instead a child who will get back up and try again no matter what.

Her main successes are not from a big amazing display of power but instead come from her knowledge of home economics and her book-smarts, she gives us a great insight into how knowledge was written throughout the ages from wooden tablets to clay to papyrus and so on in her quest. and we find out that in a medieval society even knowing simple crafts like crochet and shampoo are astounding to people around her who have yet to discover it.

It's great if you love the isekai genre and just as good if you don't, because this isn't your average isekai show.

You know what we've had a lot of this season? Isekai anime. You know what else we've had a lot of this season? Isekai anime that revolves around introducing modern technology to a primitive world, and this show is probably the worst one of the season with that premise. It's not a bad show but not really one I'd recommend going out of your way to watch.

The story, concept and visual presentation are fine and there were even a few pretty dark moments where things started to get interesting but whenever they began it was almost always immediately diffused either by the show moving onto ... something else or just lazy deus ex machinas to fix things (usually they resort to "The magician/illusionist did it").

For example there's parts of the show where the main cast do things from their respective fields and explain what and how they do them (usually a bit over-simplified, but still) but at no point does the illusionist character do this. The illusionist "does stuff" but it's never explained what exactly he is doing or how he does it and the show makes no attempt what-so-ever to differentiate the tricks he does from the world's established magic system. (levitation, making buildings disappear, removing his head and having it float around... etc).

Honestly the best I've got this show is "Meh". It'll go on my list and by the end of next season I'll probably have forgotten it exists, I'd watch a 2nd season but I kind of doubt it'll get one.

Obviously the overall rating I've given this show is a joke, which fits it perfectly because the show, too, is a joke.

Look... don't go into this expecting a masterworks of visuals, a nuanced commentary of society or even a story that makes a remote bit of sense.

Don't quote me but I've heard that this show only exists as a practice run for Studio Trigger to run through the anime making process when it initially formed, it's not meant to be good, it's just something they slapped together as a way of figuring out the process and this is why it's so damn good. It's because ... they had no requirements at all they they were allowed to just come up with the most nonsensical concepts ever conceived and slap them on a story board.

Each episode is about 3 minutes long so the whole season is just a bit longer than single episode of most other shows, just sit back for 30 minutes and expect nothing as you are treated the highest level of absurdity you will ever witness from a published animated work.

I just inherently like the Isekai genre, not sure why, I just do, and that's the only reason why this show held my attention for half a season, if only by a thread.

The animtaion is just barely passable.
The characters are... they have names.
The overarching story is... I think it has one.

This is the story of 2 friends, boy and girl, who are whisked away by a magic circle to an exciting new world for some reason or another, I'm sure it'll be explained at some point but honestly, I no longer care, the boy and girl find out they have unspeakably high levels of magic ... power but now they must fight some weirdo with a ball of blood or something and blah, blah, blah. You've heard this story already. The only difference is you haven't seen it done so poorly as this.

Look, I'm sure there are better things in a similar vein you can watch, the genre isn't exactly under-saturated.

Just to start, this show has one of, if not, THE most insane premises I have ever encountered in an anime, I'm no stranger to the Gender Bending genre but this one is a step further.
I won't bore you with a plot summary, you can read that at the top of the MAL page.

Essentially I gave this show a 7, not as an average of it's total score factors but because I enjoyed this show at a 7 level, flaws and all, and there are plenty of those.

Whilst it gets a bit better later in the series (Or maybe I just got used to it) ... the art style ranges from inconsistent to downright lazy. I took a look at the manga after the fact and it's as though the whole show is just a slideshow of the manga panels colourized with a voice-over and lip movements, and very often the faces just look unsettling.

However looking instead at the story, it's insane, just crazy, and I love that it's so over the top. There's quite a lot of character in the show too, I liked the Boss and Manager characters, they all have a bit fleshing out on their backstories and they just seem to fit together well.

The voice acting is top notch really, I saw the dubbed version and a bit of the subbed, there's no difference in quality between the actors for each so just choose your preference.

All in all, if you're looking for something insane and sometimes unnerving (both good and bad) give this one a look, otherwise you're not really going to be into this one.