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.
