This is the kind of adaptation that I never expected to experience again - because it’s not the early 00s anymore and Studio Gonzo (of that era) is, thankfully, dead. If you’ve had the misfortune of watching Hellsing TV, Rosario + Vampire or FMA 2003 I can just go ahead and say this show is one of those. If not - well, this is a manga “adaptation” that starts by following the manga plot, switches to the completely original material halfway, and the twist is that the anime-original parts are garbage. Here’s a bunch of ways in which this anime fails:
1) Trying to fit square pegs in round holes.
So, the manga is written by Akatsuki Natsume of Konosuba fame, and it basically is a Konosuba re-skin. Meaning, a gut-busting situational comedy in an isekai setting about a bunch of dysfunctional losers who somehow found a family in each other and are now busy grinding through monsters-of-the-week of their particular isekai (Demon King’s generals in case of Konosuba, demonic beasts in case of Kemono Michi). Seriously, go read it, it’s 10/10. And what do you think the anime does with these building blocks? First, it tries to do a plot-focused “serious” arc, which of course fails because the very premise of the world absolutely excludes any possibility of having serious stakes or grand narratives. And second, it does entire episodes without a single joke, supposedly dedicated to developing the characters - except “the characters” were envisioned as the plot-devices for sitcom humor and there is nothing to develop. It’s like the production team completely failed to understand the whole appeal of the source material and had no clue what they were doing. Which brings me to the next point.
2) The production team completely failed to understand the whole appeal of the source material and had no clue what they were doing.
Couple of times they run into a situation where they have square pegs and square holes. Do you think they manage to fit them in? Nope. Here’s an example:
The beginning of both the manga and the anime has the MC deciding to run a pet shop. In the source he actually runs a pet shop. In the anime this premise is abandoned, which is bad, but not terrible. But then they make an anime original episode where literally the best solution for the conflict would by selling a pet to a person - and that still doesn’t happen. Despite the very same episode confirming that yes, they have the actual pets to sell.
Another baffling example: A manga chapter dedicated to a single gag. 17 pages of the setup, 3 pages of the punchline - the most basic structure of a joke. The anime adapts the 17 pages of the setup… and stops. The scene ends without a punchline and the character literally turns to the camera and says “well, what I just did turned out to be a waste of time.” What. The. Fuck.
3) The devil is in the details.
One of the strongest points of the manga is its amazing attention to detail. The female deuteragonist wears what is essentially a pair of assless chaps - because she’s a kemonomimi girl with a huge tail - it’s an article of clothing that makes sense for her. The chairs in the main cast’s home are also designed in a way that accommodates having a tail. Mind, those things are never highlighted, it just something you notice accidentally, have a lightbulb moment, and then feel good that the artist actually put some thought into his work. Which is why it’s such an eyesore when the anime-original scenes have the tails just phase through clothing or straight-up disappear.
A different detail: one of the characters is a vampire, meaning the sunlight harms her. In the manga every time she goes outside during the daytime she carries a parasol (it’s a farcical sitcom, after all). Apparently, not a single person on the anime production team had a clue about what they were doing because in the original scenes the parasol is missing. I mean, it would’ve been perfectly fine to just retcon the thing away if it was too inconvenient, but that would require having a single clue about what they were doing. So the parasol is present in the scenes copypasted from the manga and absent in the original ones, because what is consistency.
4) The humor.
The jokes from the source material are funny. The anime original jokes are not. All of them. No exceptions. Without ever reading the manga, you can tell which scenes come from where by whether you laughed or not.
They also manage to ruin some of the manga jokes by either repeating them ad nauseum or by pushing things way past their limit. Akatsuki Natsume’s trademark humor involves a lot of comedic bullying, and the screenwriters try to imitate it - but somehow come up with the scenes of the actual abuse that can make you feel either uncomfortable or sad, but definitely not entertained. I’m baffled how anyone, never mind the professional writers, could fail at humor so hard. It’s on the level of not understanding the line between cats being scared by a cucumber and cats getting physically hurt.
5) It. Just. Sucks.
Forget the source material. You can look at this anime completely on its own merits, and it’s just objectively bad on the artistic level.
Garbage dialogues: “Hey, ojousan. Your servant is shit, let’s make her duel my, apriori stronger servant, and if she loses, then I, random nobody with no relation to you, will appoint you a different servant (secretly my spy, *Dr. Evil’s laugh*), and also this whole sentence isn’t retarded on five different levels.”
Garbage writing: A wrestling tournament is under way, there is an ominous hooded figure watching it from the shadows, he steps into the ring a second before the hero is pronounced the champion. Is it the main antagonist (also a wrestler) who was teased for the last 4 episodes? No, it’s a local Team Rocket guy who has no reason to be there (actually has a reason to avoid the place at any cost) and just gets pointlessly humiliated in ten seconds (see the abuse point above), because that’s how you do a culmination of a tournament.
Garbage directing: An episode-long flashback that ends on a cliff-hanger, the antagonist plans to go for the main hero. Guess what the next episode is about? Another episode-long flashback, completely unrelated to anything.
Comparing this shitty fanfiction to the manga (which I only ever picked up after liking the first and only two good episodes of the adaptation) reminded me of another thing I’d rather forget - Psycho Pass Season 2 - in a “so that’s how talent versus no talent looks like” way.
2/10 for “that’s not how ‘go read the manga’ works, you incompetent hacks.”
