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Mar 29, 2024
This is such a frustrating series. The premise both felt like it was written specifically to appeal to me and repulse me. The former because, as someone who commonly takes on the healer role in online games but still likes to throw hands as a healer, the entire concept of a "wrong way to use healing magic" felt more personally investing. The latter because it's as basic isekai as isekai premises get: three students (because of course they need high schoolers) get summoned to a fantasy world because they have to save the kingdom, one of whom just ends up coming along for the ride
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but, of course, ends up with the special magic that distinguishes him even from his fellows. To be fair, it doesn't stay rote, as Usato quickly finds himself at the mercy of the powerful and sadistic healer Rose, who steals just about every scene she's in. So begins an ultra-fast training arc that actually makes some sense for once, since healers can repair their muscles and recover their stamina rapidly. Add a cuddly blue bear companion, some decent fights in the wilderness and an incoming army of demons and you've got yourself the makings of an investing isekai series.
Trouble is, that only gets you to episode 3. So, what happens after that? I'll keep things vague to avoid spoilers:
Usato trains. Usato and one of his companions from his original world tool around in the woods. The invasion is imminent... for several episodes! Everyone prepares themselves... and now some backstory! Finally, the promised fight arrives... and ends anticlimactically before trailing off into a couple of episodes that feel comparatively drained of significance. So, yeah, this series has some serious pacing problems.
But it's not just pacing. The writing in this series has so many problems. They insert a plot point where Usato learns of impending danger in the fight ahead and barely acts upon it. Sudden power-ups and conveniently effective magic are frustrating, most of the other characters feeling like they only as scenery (even characters who are supposedly powerful), the series barely seems to use its isekai premise (why couldn't these have been three random kids from this world? They never use technology or knowledge from the other world), and everything feels shockingly easy with healing magic. Who knew? It doesn't help that even the great Rose feels significantly less interesting after we learn her backstory (though she's still the best character in the show). Sometimes, less is more, and I think if her story had remained more shrouded in mystery would have been better than what we got. It doesn't help that the whole narrative direction of the series feels like it's barely established. There are many ways to do antagonists that work, and they certainly don’t all have to be nuanced (Frieren pulled demons off very well with little to no nuance), but this just came off as lazy. It's a nice excuse not to give any of their enemies more than the bare minimum in character development.
Put simply, the writing for this series isn’t good. It took what was a simple but intriguing idea and just didn’t know how to use it effectively past its early stages. It’s a shame, really, because there are the building blocks of something worthwhile here, but the series doesn’t capitalize on its opportunities. It drags out elements that aren’t worth the time and rushing through others that should matter more. I really thought this one would be more worthwhile, and it’s doubly frustrating because they set up more of an adventure-focused narrative for a S2 that may never happen. It seems like they have an interesting world to build, just a shame they have barely showed us any of it so far. Much as I might give it another chance based on that alone, I don't think this season earned a sequel, no matter what potential it might have.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 29, 2024
This one got off to a rocky start, but as it has continued, it has become very endearing.
Generally, I’ve got issues with stories that send a character on an adventure for poorly explained reasons. We’re thrust into a world where we are told that having stars is fundamental to survival, as they go towards a given skill for a given individual. That’s fine, but the series seems to both buy into this premise way too much and way too little simultaneously.
It buys in way too much because Ivy lacks stars and is exiled and pursued with murderous intent for it, mainly built on
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religious zealotry, chalking it up as ominous and somehow as the cause of another character’s death. While similar circumstances can happen in the real world, I found her family’s decision to hop on this train immediately jarring. It’s also all the weirder because this seems almost entirely unique to the village where she grew up – it’s unclear that anyone else holds these views.
It buys in way too little because, as the series progresses, it becomes very clear very early that people can subsist without stars. Ivy’s father put a lot of stock in how important it was for her wellbeing to have stars in a skill that was valuable, emphasizing that it was essential to her future. Yet it becomes clear that, while you probably won’t make a name for yourself or a huge living, stars aren’t required to get by just fine hunting critters in the forest.
So, the series didn’t do much to invest me in the worldbuilding, and even ends up leaving much of those aspects behind almost entirely just as Ivy did. If anything, the way this is built out put me off the series.
Yet, I say it is endearing, and that still holds. You really feel for Ivy and all she has to go through, including the slow gaining of her trust by others as she tries to stay under the radar. Her finding Sora, an extremely weak slime, and taming, raising and bonding with it are so wholesome and sweet that it’s easy to love everything they do. And it helps that so many of the people around them are the exact opposite of the people in Ivy’s village: warm, welcoming, supportive and helpful. That might all change if she ever lets on that she doesn’t have stars, but at least throughout these 12 episodes, you get the distinct impression that many of them accept her for who she is and wouldn’t be swayed by that knowledge. That said, many of the side characters do seem somewhat interchangeable. There’s great variety in character models, but with a couple of notable exceptions, we don’t get a lot of opportunities to see most of their personalities shine through.
And it helps that the narrative goes in interesting directions. Each new town she lands in presents a different set of both positive influences and new trials to overcome. Ivy is helped along by another personality that lives rent free in her head. Unlike so many isekai’d characters, Ivy is wholly herself: a girl who grew up in this world, rather than a person from another world who was reborn and grew up here. The isekai’d character is entirely in her head, a confidant who gives her ideas and inserts comparisons to our world. It’s a nice change of pace, though most of the time, it feels superfluous, as it’s mainly there to give Ivy someone to bounce off of when she has no one to talk to. Later in, that voice goes a long way towards explaining how capable Ivy is despite her being a 9-year-old. It does seem strange that that isekai’d personality doesn’t talk at all about the fact that Ivy, who is very rich by the end of the season, is still for some reason committed to the same subsistence practices that she was early in the series.
Some aspects of this series do end up feeling a little overly convenient. Sora’s ability to tell apart “bad” people from others, which she discovered just before she needed it for the final arc, certainly felt that way. It would have been nice if Sora was wrong on occasion or if there was some recognition of nuance, particularly with Meela, but it was still a nice inclusion. The series also drags in places, prolonging events that don’t necessarily need to play out in their entirety on screen. Maybe the goal was just to give us more time with these characters, which I certainly don’t oppose, though it does mean somewhat missing out on understanding the circumstances that brought her here. We get a nice resolution to that plot in terms of how Ivy regards it and how she sees her path forward, but scant little understanding of why it happened and how the others regard it.
But I still think this was delightful. Like Ivy herself, it went through some hard times, picked itself up and made a great deal out of a bad situation, and it’s nice to even get some payoff on how being starless helped Ivy without making her ridiculously overpowered like so many isekai would. A worthwhile watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 28, 2024
My pick for the most surprising anime of the season. I found myself loving this one for a variety of reasons, but first, I’ve got to talk about that premise:
Top Gun with aliens invading a la Independence Day but giant robot Kamina from Gurren Lagann comes to save the day.
That sounds like a mess, and while it kind of is, this is a show that revels in the mess. It leans in hard as the robot Bravern diagetically blasts his theme music from its cockpit (projecting his opening animation background behind him like a boss), proclaims that his pilot Isami is its soul mate,
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and proceeds to devastate Death Drive alien robots (all of whom have personalities that are some variation of absurd in the best way) with abandon. It helps that Isami and many of the characters in this series are very unlike those in Gurren Lagann – they have no idea what the fuck is going on and they (aside from Lewis Smith) are not anime protagonists by nature. A small touch I love: they don’t wait for an opponent to monologue or have a problem using their full power from the get-go. The series does not let you get fully comfortable with its premise, either, as Bravern and gang face down an array of increasingly ridiculous robot foes. The number of ways this series goes sideways consistently surprises and delights.
And oh man, is this show homoerotic as all hell. Those Top Gun feels come through in spades in the early parts of this series, but when that ED kicks on (easily one of the best EDs of the season), it rocks the house with two shirtless bros singing their feelings. There are so many moments where Isami and Lewis or Isami and Bravern are just having the best bro moments or, in some cases, going quite a bit further. These are some of my favorite relationships of the season, whether they’re just being bros or something more.
As for the narrative, it does have direction and momentum to it, though it’s probably the most basic aspect of the series… if you can call it that. The crazy anime nonsense is on full display in some of these episodes, some of which feels over the top even for the more bombastic series. And yes, it gets dour in places, though the series never stays in the doldrums too long. Hell, even when things seem at their darkest, the only solution is to fire on all cylinders and become the impossible source of light in the darkness.
Yes, this series was absolutely fine being as absurd as it could be as it kept going, and that’s as it should be. We needed some Spirit Bomb/color change/power-of-friendship/multi-fusion nonsense, and anyone who says differently just doesn't appreciate good fun. Like with similar series, it would have been pretty easy from the start to guess how this one would end, but I'd be shocked if anyone could guess what kind of wild ride it would take to get there. Just a joy from start to finish.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 23, 2024
If Frieren is a journey seen through many lenses and varieties of experience, then The Apothecary Diaries is a character, one who dissects her surroundings and cuts to the core of those around her.
Maomao isn’t just a rich character in her own right (though I have a lot to say about her). She taps into the richness of other characters in the show and finds ways to bring out far more than you would expect. While not every side character gets a moment to shine, there are so many named characters with distinct personalities in this show that it’s kind of mind-boggling, and part of
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the reason for that is seeing how they bounce off of Maomao. The most interesting instances are usually with mysteries as Maomao uncovers the source of some plot and tracks down to the responsible party only to unfurl a whole world of history and meaning behind their choices. She often walks away with a desire not to reveal the whole truth and it’s not hard to see why: the humanity of these characters is on full display before her.
As for Maomao herself, she is my favorite character of the season and easily my favorite female character in a while. She really does carry the entire series on her back, showcasing a fervor for her craft that is absolutely infectious even when she's actively drinking poison. Her obsessions with all things apothecary are just the best. Seeing how other people respond to her is a large part of the fun - she's clearly very different from what anyone would expect of a servant within the outer palace, exhibiting an aloofness from the politics at play inside while inserting herself in places she isn't wanted to get what she wants, balancing it all with carefully practiced tact as she makes herself virtually indispensable (while absolutely wanting to be invisible).
It's not that she doesn't recognize her talent, but rather that she knows her place in the hierarchy and knows that she can be crushed by machinations beyond her control at any time. There's a fatalism of her character unspools slowly throughout the series as we learn more about her past, but is painted in a particularly vivid display of red in one devastating episode. Still, that doesn't define her. She chooses to play the apothecary, investigator, doctor and all manner of other supportive roles as the series goes on, always being careful in how much she reveals because she knows the consequences for those affected. This makes her few actions that step into the far more dramatic, whether it's lambasting an attendant for failing to protect her liege or rushing into a sacred rite to prevent a murder, that much more powerful: she throws caution to the wind when it's needed, heedless of what the dangers that might pose for her. Maybe that comes back to her fatalism as well, but you don't get the impression that she's throwing her life away.
But really, the series isn’t just about her. While she really does chart her own course so often, we get deep dives into the various characters and circumstances that shaped her, from her blood relatives to the brothel she was raised working for to her current accommodations at the palace. Her relationship with Jinshi in particular really makes the series and is easily my favorite non-romantic relationship in a long time. She is outright repulsed by his beautiful appearance but finds in him a source of support and care that, little by little, tears down some of her walls. Jinshi himself is still a bit of an enigma, but he’s clearly become attached to Maomao and relies on her a great deal, even while he cannot fathom some of her choices or her mentality.
And I’ve barely even touched on the narrative. The set of mysteries and intrigues that this series thrives on kept dragging me down rabbit holes until I didn’t know which way was up at times. Not everything is resolved – in particular, this season set up two big mysteries, one of which it has only partially delivered on and another that has barely been set up. Loulan, in particular, has me very interested, as she’s a very different kind of force in the palace and represents something distinct from the other concubines.
Straight up, I love this series. I can chalk that up to a lot of its many elements from its excellent music and visuals to its beautiful character, but I think looking at any of those individual elements misses the bigger picture of how well this series interweaves them, turning it into a complex story about class, sex and intrigue based loosely in Chinese history. There’s just too much to get into, but it’s all amazing and has me hooked for another season.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Mar 23, 2024
I think this series has some legitimately great elements. Yuki is an absolutely loveable lead and her experience as someone who is deaf makes the series, as does the incredible watercolor palette that washes over the series in its emotional moments. This series literally thrives on her joy and I was here for it every moment it played out on screen. I was also invested in her trepidation and the various difficulties she faced interacting with a world that is just not built for someone who has to read lips to get by. It’s great to see a narrative about a character like this that
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feels real and grounded. I also found that several side characters really work for me, in particular Rin and Shin, who both feel like they’re grounded and have their own very distinct emotional journeys throughout the narrative. Not every side character is a hit – Emma, especially in comparison to Shin, feels kind of one-note and often blind to others’ feelings (though she somewhat redeems herself in the end).
But that’s just it: all those elements that I find most interesting and worthwhile are slice of life elements. They aren’t the romance, which is supposed to be this series’ strength. And notice I haven’t mentioned either of the male leads: Itsuomi and Oushi. I think the latter of those two is more interesting since he has this long history with Yuki, but his characterization comes awfully late in the series and is missing pieces that would help me connect with his experience. Meanwhile, and maybe this is just me, but Itsuomi came off as pretty flat throughout. We get very limited background on him, and any insights into how he’s feeling are mostly from others' perspectives. He is a very kind and courteous person, even moreso as a boyfriend to Yuki, but that’s all he is: a really nice boyfriend. I guess if you were stretching you could say that he develops by learning how to interact with Yuki, but I call that stretching because it seems like something he’s just prone to doing. He’s a polymath who gets along easily with others. It seems like he was purpose-built to fill this role. And since we don’t get much insight into why he’s so attracted to Yuki, I have trouble seeing him occupy the role for reasons all his own. The series hints at more, but has yet to deliver on it.
This makes the series a bit of a mixed bag for me. When it’s focused on SoL or on the development of certain characters, it’s very strong. When it’s focused on the romance, it can certainly be cute or even sweet, but I find myself tuning out because I’m just not invested in the central relationship. I lack enough insight into Itsuomi to do more than just appreciate how he treats Yuki, and while a couple of episodes do give us some small peeks into his backstory that hint at something more interesting, I think the series could have gone a lot further to deliver a character who stands as interesting in his own right.
In the end, while I did enjoy this series, I share the sentiments expressed by our leads in the finale: if I got to know them better, I'm sure I'd love it more.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 22, 2024
This series does a lot of things right from the get-go. Besides featuring one of the best OPs of the 2023, it also showcases bombastic and novel fight choreography, particularly from its lead, Andy. The ways its various characters connect are particularly striking, even from the very first meeting between Andy and Fuko. And the nature of the powers of the various Negators characters are immediately investing, particularly as Fuko’s is borne out of tragedy, setting the stage for other tales of tragedy down the line as more such characters are revealed.
Much of these strengths are enhanced and morphed as the series goes on. The
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series maintains a precarious balance throughout much of its run, flitting between comedy and drama in ways that might leave other series feeling whiplash. That tonal inconsistency is what the series thrives on, and while I wouldn’t say it’s the series’ greatest strength (that would be Andy and Fuko), it is what makes the series feel like it has a kinetic flow from one step to the next.
The main problem I have with this series is that that kinetic flow does seem to taper off a bit as the series goes. It’s not that the series stops moving, but rather that the series has so many moving parts that it seems to be moving in too many directions at once. You have Negators, the UMAs, the ticking clock that is Apocalypse and all manner of other Artifacts. Then you have different factions like Union and Under along with all the individual actors running around and the threat of a literal deity hanging over everything. There’s a lot going on in this series, some of which I absolutely love – the UMAs are a highlight as they introduce a means of worldbuilding that I’ve never seen before – it can feel overwhelming. The series included a whole episode just to sit down and explain its own inconsistencies and, while I think that did improve my enjoyment of the remainder of the series, it did kill the pacing for a bit.
It also changed the tone of the series. What was once a balance between goofy and serious skews almost entirely toward the latter. Characters behave distinctly as well, since most of the series functioned based on an impromptu “we’ll figure this out as we go” style and, from here on out, things feel more directed and organized, another way it loses some of its kinetic flow. None of this is to say the series got bad, but it just doesn’t have the same energy it did to start. It doesn’t help that what amounts to a major power development for our leads feels surprisingly rushed and poorly explained.
The series does still thrive in its later moments, particularly as one of the characters makes it very meta. That particular character is probably the most interesting example of a Negator and really showcases just how well this series can build both its characters and its world in distinctive ways. The rush up to the climax still feels meaningful, even if the ending leaves us at a rather awkward point that doesn’t feel much like a finale. I can’t tell if the series should have ended sooner or later, but I can say that this didn’t really work for me.
On the whole, I thought this was a great and wild ride. It has its problems, some of which become more noticeable as the series went on (e.g. I wish the screenwriters would have trusted their audience more because having several take-aways repeated as exposition was frustrating), some of which are just inherent to having so many moving parts, and I think its balance of tones was better earlier in the series run. Still, I had a blast.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 22, 2024
There are lots of reasons one might fall in love with this series. It has one of the best designed casts of characters I’ve seen in a long time, a top tier score, impressive animation that manages to be extremely cute and funny in its quieter moments, is cranked up to 11 in its fight scenes, and is handles emotionally evocative moments so well, a narrative that never seems to drag, and an incorporation of backstory that feels organic and meaningful to the story. Doing all those this well would elevate any series.
But if I had to say what makes this stand out for me,
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I’ll put it down to one word: perspective. And yeah, this is going to go on for a while because I've got a lot to say about it.
This series never lets you forget that every individual is experiencing these moments, big or small, through their unique lens informed by past experiences. Frieren is a particular stand-out in this department. From the beginning of the series, her perspective is comprised of large jumps in time. She finds moments to live and revel in, but she rarely connects with others and seems regularly distant. When Himmel dies, her perspective shifts, but not immediately. She must learn how to see things differently, and only starts to make headway when adopting Fern as her student grounds her. She has had so many past experiences to draw from due to her incredibly long life and she has great recall of them, but she has had trouble attaching significance to specific moments. Yet her experiences going forward provide a basis for each moment on her previous journey to feel significant in this one, often for reasons that others in her world may view as flippant or extraneous. Frieren always looks like this unchanging force in the narrative, since her appearance doesn’t change no matter how far back she goes in her memories, but the unseen changes to her build up with each interaction she has and memory she revisits. It contrasts beautifully with the perspectives of others. Fern and Stark haven’t had these experiences before but are far more attached to the limited experiences they have and connect much more easily than Frieren does.
But this use of perspective is most impressive to me when Frieren comes into contact with other long-lived beings. Old Man Voll is a dwarf and, despite living a lot longer than those around him, has come to cherish his memories dearly even as his memory rapidly fades away, fighting to the end to protect the memory of his wife. Kraft is an elven monk that appears to have lived longer than Frieren and prays to a goddess because she’s the only one who can remember his legendary deeds, desperate for praise he thinks no mortal can give him. Serie has taken this distance to the extreme, viewing her extraordinarily long life as a means to generate more power and disdaining people like Frieren who use their long lives to connect with others rather than reap similar gains, even as she recognizes in herself similar attachments she cannot dismiss. She can’t understand Frieren, but she does, in her way, feel a similar connection to her students. Really, anyone in the series appears to have enough depth to be the protagonists of their own stories.
I say perspective is where Frieren thrives because it touches everything in its own way. Why, after so many episodes, do we still not know how Frieren and company defeated the Demon King? Because that’s just another step in Frieren’s journey, and not one she has deemed important to revisit. Why do we rarely even see Frieren fight in her memories, instead focusing on her interactions with others and her finding various grimoires? Because those moments are what matter most to her. Even when she’s thrown into a competition against other mages, playing out fights against skilled opponents, she neither seeks combat nor does she revisit the past to inform these fights. The only time Frieren ever initiates combat in the series is against demons, opponents who she knows she must kill on contact, partially because of the wounds they’ve left on her memories. You even get the impression that she doesn’t revisit life before she was the last survivor of her village largely to insulate herself from that pain of loss.
So much this series is driven by biased perspective. Frieren’s whole drive to collect every grimoire and add them to her Pokédex of eclectic and niche spells comes from a place of connection where one of those spells is integral to a treasured relationship. It’s such a driving focus that she constantly gets stuck in mimics, accepting the risk for an extraordinarily small chance of success. Fern’s hissy fits are her defining character trait, showcasing her jealousy and frustration as she has to be the one to push Frieren faster, keep Stark in line and just generally be a teenage girl with attitude to spare. Stark struggles with being a teenage boy trying (and failing) to understand his companions while training himself to be the man his mentor believes he can be, while occasionally surprising himself with his own proficiencies and courage.
Even the narrative falls to perspective. The party has a distant objective, but while reaching it is important, it’s not all-consuming. They go on side quests, get waylaid, pick up and drop party members on their own quests, and yet the pacing never seems to change. That’s because each one is still important. Whether it’s felling a dragon, performing a dance, waking some sleeping villagers, fighting an ancient evil, finding an elusive grimoire, searching for birthday presents, or getting stuck in a mountain village for weeks at a time, these periods still matter. They draw you in through these characters. I’m a sucker for character development, and seeing how everyone grows, even when they don’t recognize or acknowledge it, through all these events is consistently enthralling.
And then there’s the fights. Even these are all tied to perception. The ways everyone attacks their foes, gleaning info where they can and recognizing both their strengths and weaknesses, is mesmerizing. I love a good hard magic system, but I’m particularly fond of quirky ones. Characters like Ubel are powerful because of her almost superhuman perspective and instinct, while others come prepared with all manner of ready measures to combat worthy opponents. Using the terrain and surroundings in interesting ways changes fights drastically, as does knowing and understanding how both sides think and where there are lapses. And just when you think the series has thrown everything it has at you, it introduces new variables and elements no one could prepare to face.
I’d write something here about the last episode and wrap this up, but it feels kind of silly. The story doesn’t end. It’s just not going anywhere for now. Even big moments like having characters become first class mages are greeted with only muted fanfare, and despite providing the opportunity, there is no great fight here, so there is no crescendo to this series. We are, however, left with a few things to feel. Seeing a bit of how Frieren and the Hero’s Party influenced some of the other characters gives us a distinctly different perspective, turning these characters into their own kind of audience within the narrative and highlighting those stories that matter most to them. The bonds formed between characters, even minor background characters, take center stage as the lights go down. I personally will always remember that random dude who kept intruding on Stark’s training to tell him he had nothing left to teach him… after teaching him absolutely nothing. It’s a small running joke that will stick with me, especially as Stark ends up thanking him.
Given how popular this series is, I suspect it may grant my wish to see further seasons. Still, unlike Frieren, I find it impossible to leave with a short goodbye.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Mar 22, 2024
This series had a great hook: seasoned adventurer Rentt runs into a dragon, loses his life, and comes back as a skeleton that retains his memories. He aims to recover his humanity, slowly improving his skills and strength as he evolves into more human-like undead, eventually exceeding even what he could do before dying.
What I hoped for from here was an opportunity to see how being undead affected his life and relationships, perhaps seeing a broad assortment of skills that were only available to those afflicted and watching him evolve further, having to harness even more abilities at greater cost to his humanity.
What we got
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wasn’t bad, but it was a bit of a letdown, since he just kind of tries (and largely succeeds) to recover his previous life with little of his undead nature impacting his life. He’s still pursuing becoming a mithril-class adventurer, this time with a greater chance of getting there since he has access to divinity, greater speed and strength, and a couple of other basic boons of being undead like poison resistance.
That’s all fine, but that’s all it is: fine. There’s surprisingly little edge to Rentt’s experience. Even when it feels like something bad is going to happen because he is undead, whether because of losing control of himself or having to reveal that he is undead, it just doesn’t end up mattering. Issues are resolved quickly or never become issues in the first place. At times, it feels like the series could have given Rentt any interchangeable source for his power boost and things would turn out basically the same. Even his identity, which initially seems like a substantial concern, doesn’t seem like an issue of much importance for long.
The rest of the story works well enough. Rentt’s afterlife as an adventurer occasionally has some interesting turns, particularly as he showcases his wealth of experience in the role. He does a lot of good for several people and it’s honestly pretty heart-warming in places. Rentt’s struggle with his undead afterlife at least reaches an interesting point by the end of the season, even if it feels like it spends a lot of the season not going anywhere special.
As for the characters, that’s more of a mixed bag. His relationship with Lorraine is interesting and their mutual trust really is on full display. There are a handful of minor characters who make themselves stand out a bit during their time on screen, but most don’t have much staying power and disappear from the story in short order. The show does give us little glimpses into what’s going on with them later, though it still feel like they’re largely left behind. Characters that are clearly meant to have more influence over the story get introduced, but have only gotten the barest of depth so far – I have little doubt they’ll return at some stage. I’m interested enough to see how they could develop, but the series is willing to take its time when it doesn’t need to (which, to be fair, does work in its favor on occasion), while granting scant little time to elements that could use more.
It does not help that even the main ambition of the MC – to become a mithril-class adventurer – comes from a clichéd backstory. I understand that motivations like these are cliché for a reason, as they generally help an audience connect with the character, but this fell flat, particularly when it was trying to evoke that empathy. I’m generally not the biggest fan of backstory a show where you know certain characters aren’t going to survive, but the choice to put it in the final episode just ended up souring the overall experience a little.
Overall, while I don't have any strong feelings against this one, it's hard to give it a full recommendation. For a series that started with the death of the MC, it has largely felt toothless ever since. If the series had more tangible stakes (e.g. if there were more consequences for his being undead or taking certain risks), I'd be able to recommend it wholeheartedly based on its other aspects, but it just doesn't stand out as is.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 20, 2024
The series gets off to a great start that really showcases the power and skill of a champion against a giant golem and placing them in the context of a world that is composed of fragile beings. Given the promise of a tournament featuring a set of characters like this one, it certainly set itself up for success.
…but it’s mostly downhill from there. There are some really good fights later into the series run as various otherworldly characters come into conflict with other powerful beings (many of whom would be participants in a future tournament that would necessarily pit them against one another anyway), where
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they really get to strut their stuff against calamities, sometimes in epic fashion.
However, that’s not the focus of most of this season. Instead, we focus in on a conflict between the Aureatia Kingdom and the New Principality of Lethia, which… is not what I came here for. I love a good war story, but you’ve introduced characters whose functions in the story render most militaries moot. You’ve established that most of this world is made of soggy cardboard compared with these fighters and introduced them with the promise that there will be a tournament used to determine who is the strongest. Telling your audience to care about the normal humans at this point just seems like an attempt to get us to care about doomed characters so their deaths can hit us that much harder, but what it does for me is make most of the deaths ring hollow. Even deaths of named characters just don’t matter much. The series does scant little to get us to care about its relationships, mainly just showing us “backstory” through brief glimpses into the past that barely help us connect with them, and that’s the best-case scenario.
But then there’s all the other elements. When a series leaves me with this many questions and only the barest of hints at the answers, I start to wonder why I should stay invested. This is a world in which the Demon King, widely agreed to be the most powerful and terrible being on the planet, was killed. Everyone assumes it’s one of these champions who did it. Fine. Now they want to hold a tournament to determine who the hero was that killed the Demon King. I guess they assume that whoever is the strongest must have done it and they want to reward them, but a) this seems far more likely to kill whoever the actual hero was, especially since just announcing the tournament guaranteed the kind of free-for-all kill fest that has resulted beforehand (especially considering just how diverse the sets of powers are), b) the fact that said hero hasn’t come forward means they’re pretty unlikely to take part in a tournament meant to uncover their identity, and c) that’s compounded by these characters requiring some national representation, which may just leave out the hero even if they wish to compete. Maybe they just don't care who killed the Demon King and just want a tournament for the sake of eliminating a bunch of these powerful beings and posting a figurehead - that's true for at least some of the stakeholders - but if that's the case, that just raises further questions about why they're doing it this way. Why couch any of this in the Demon King if you don't even care who killed him? Wouldn't this just result in a single powerful individual (or a small group of them) that no one can possibly defeat and that can take over by default?
Who these champions really are, where they came from (it’s only lightly hinted at), and why they arrived in this place are all up in the air. Much of the reveals deal in the warfare between the two countries instead, but even so, there’s so much we don’t know and this enigma is the kind that only serves to frustrate rather than intrigue. If you’re going to dedicate so much of your plot to these elements, the lack of a reason for them only serves to disengage your audience.
Beyond that, there are several other characters who have their own machinations in play, so there are all kinds of political power games going on that have little to nothing to do with the broader plot. Combine all that with a magic system that somehow gets specifically defined while simultaneously feeling almost entirely useless and a world that feels surprisingly small despite a broad variety of characters and environments, and what you get is a good seed of an idea that both feels like it’s been dramatically overcomplicated in many ways and overly simplified in others. And I haven’t even mentioned the CGI, which does look pretty bad in places. It’s not awful, but it does detract from opportunities to make the most of this series’ sakuga.
I don’t mean to make this series come off like a complete mess, it’s just a lot of interesting ideas that are thrown together haphazardly and result in a product that is less than the sum of its disparate parts. It does not help that the last episode suggests a lot of plots at play that just seem to make less sense the more you think about them. It’s the kind of show that prefers to use much of this season as setup for interesting stuff down the line, and while it might eventually get there, I don’t think that’s a substitute for engaging your audience early and often. Whether they’re talking about the period before the story where someone fought the all-powerful Demon King or the period after this season where an actual tournament is set to happen, everything sounds more interesting and narratively satisfying than this. As someone who is not a fan of series that seem to put off the good stuff in hopes that you'll be just hooked enough to see it through to the end, I can't recommend this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 9, 2024
I think the humor here and growth of the MC were pretty great. It's one of the more creative series I've seen for presenting emotions in a way that really made them pop and made me laugh on many occasions. When this series was firing on all cylinders, it went hard, and there were a few episodes that really showcased Kyoko's ability to perform under pressure and produce something that looked pretty masterful, especially considering she's a novice to all this. When she is still struggling with her motivations and her choice to pursue acting in particular, the series is very strong. And many of
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the side characters facilitated both the humor and her growth well.
There are two elements that hold this series back. The first is its romance. I think there could have been something interesting here, whether we're talking about Kyoko x Ren or the love triangle developing with Sho, but the show drags these out so far that they all barely feel like they've gotten started. Kyoko's negative associations with Ren come entirely from Sho's feelings towards a person he views as his rival, which means it makes little sense for Kyoko, who is literally doing all of this to spite Sho, to continue to reject Ren for as long as she did. Even by the ending of the series where they've softened significantly towards each other, there's almost no recognition in either of them of the other's feelings (they both seem to be under misconceptions in that department), and therefore development of any kind of romance. It's almost all individual development. And Sho does even worse, starting to connect with Kyoko through his memories of their connection and then just being jealous that she's working with Ren until the end of the series. There's nothing there, not even an apology.
The second element is that ending. 25 episodes were clearly not enough. We end off just before a pivotal point for Ren's character. This could have been any random episode in the series beyond the short snippets of other characters that rounds it out. While this series did have interesting arcs before, this one felt like it was going to be the most consequential, from a personal perspective for the characters, from an interpersonal development perspective, and also from a career perspective. Sadly, we only got to see what looks like half of it, so the opportunity just wasn't delivered upon.
Overall, while it's certainly not bad, the ending really soured my enjoyment of the series as a whole, leaving me wanting. It's still a good ride, but hard to recommend outright.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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