Reviews

May 1, 2019
Preliminary (4/12 eps)
Kenja no mago is one of those generic isekai that turn out tedious due to taking the fantasy fulfillment element to an overblown extreme. IMO it falls into the same category as "Isekai wa smartphone" and "Death March to the parallel World", so if you could bring yourselves to like these then you'll probably like this one as well.

Story: 1

The premise is a generic cliche at best. The MC is an adult who gets ran over by our good ol' friend "truck-kun" and then gets reincarnated in another world as a baby.

Now the "cringy" part is that the MC, even as a child, retains his memories as an adult-- and while this serves as the secret ability behind his rapid growth and eventual recognition as "Child Prodigy", it keeps rubbing me the wrong way whenever he interacts with his peers.

All the girls are flocking to him, powerful wizards are astonished by his skill at such a young age, because none of them are aware of the fact he's an adult in a kid's body. I don't even want to touch the "flirting" part, considering those girls are actual teens while he's a full grown adult in a teen's body. Yeah...

Art: 5

It's not entirely bad, but it's rushed and that becomes apparent in frequent sequences. I'd say it's your standard isekai anime quality.

Sound: 3

90% of the times the tracks that start playing don't fit the scene at all. It's so weird it makes one wonder what the studio was even thinking when implementing those soundtracks. I've seen much worse though.

Character: 1

I'll start with the MC. He's your generic, OP, Gary-Stu, likable by everyone child prodigy that can just resolve any issue with a finger-snap. The one issue the MC cannot fix is that there's no one who can really challenge him. He's ridiculously broken to the point even the villain-mastermind in the early episodes runs away in fear of the MC's latent potential. That can play out either way, I guess. You can either like an MC who can just fart his problems away or you can just feel bored by his power-farts.

As for the rest of the cast about everyone is 1-dimensional, much like the MC. They don't feel real and there's nothing likable, memorable or interesting about them. They feel like meat-puppets created for the sole purpose of reacting to the MC's dialogue without having a personality of their own.

This becomes more apparent on episode 3, where the MC decapitates a demonized fellow student and the first thing everyone is concerned about is the dust on the MC's shirt. Nobody seems to care or even notice their dead classmate's headless corpse that's lying right next to them. On that particular scene I remember asking myself what the hell was wrong with those kids, not even reacting to a fellow classmate's death, but then I just remembered they were 1-dimensional puppets created for the purpose of worshiping the MC and nothing else. Their characters are so bland and superficial that honestly Goblin-Slayer feels like a multi-dimensional character compared to them.

Enjoyment: 1

Like I said, it can go either way. Personally I can't seem to get any enjoyment out of this show due to reasons I already mentioned. It just feels bland and empty in uncomfortably many ways.

Overall: 2

There's a ton of isekais out there that did the "OP MC" part right. Take Overlord or Slime for example. IMO Kenja no Mago failed at delivering that premise and instead turned out with a senselessly powerful MC that just needs to flex in order to make the world a better place.

TL;DR you should just avoid this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
What did you think of this review?
Nice Nice0
Love it Love it0
Funny Funny0
Show all
It’s time to ditch the text file.
Keep track of your anime easily by creating your own list.
Sign Up Login