When I first noticed that this show was being adapted for this season, it was already 3 episodes in. Half the reason for that was: despite [me] having read the LN many volumes in, and having reread the manga twice (1-2 years between, 2nd time coincidentally being only 2 months ago’ish), the story and title were so unmemorable that it was really only because I had time to kill and wanted “something brain-dead” that I reread it at all.
So when I realised that someone had adapted this, my only thoughts were, “wow, what are you even thinking?!! There’s better brainless Isekais for the picking that are way more novel!”...
So, I decided that: if I was going to somehow get through THIS particular story, I’d have to do it ‘as it airs’—else I’d absolutely drop it by around the 7th episode (by my estimations at the time) which, whereabouts, the character-relations and the “obligatory Harem” are all at their peak with nowhere to go - as the “authentic experience” of this series is a typical case of an author writing themselves into a corner real-hard and fast...
You see: in the original, the MC gets handed everything on a platter, and I mean everything. As a result: no matter where you looked, there was no tension, no challenges, no mystery or foreboding, no politics even, and just generally nowhere to progress to—and since that leaves only “down” - for our MC to fall from graces per se - that would only be an option if everything wasn’t so ubiquitously sublime and, ... frankly, inhuman. (There, I said it). So, the author only had 1 option left:
An Adventure/Slice of Life (like Death March where they travel to new places and eat “DELICIOUS FOODS”*x^666) mixed with Comedy & gags that all danced to the tune of, “Oh! Woe is me! How HARD it is to have suuuch a perfect LIFE! *queue laughter from his 2million+ waifus who have 1-mode of emotions and that’s Smile*”.
... Sorry about that. *Ahem*.
As you can see, I was terribly worried of just how much this adaptation would be a flop—until I started watching the first episode and spotted ALL the liberties the Studio adapting this had taken. Changes, changes, changes!
•A rewritten 1st introduction that delivers the premise of our MC’s personal AND family predicament (and the POINT OF THE DAMNED TITLE!!!)
•An OP [which, by the way, is way more fitting than any VA knockoff-pop song with 0 longevity] that’s timed perfectly to tidy the presentation of the storyline and accentuate the development of our MC into his new world
•A fast-track to the most important meeting of our MC’s new life, not wasting any time to “get to what matters”
•An absolutely beautiful ED song that’s, once again, an original by real musicians! (WUT, BOTH ARE!?! Dye me impressed, Shin-Ei Animation or whoever was mostly in-charge...)
If ‘The Good’ ended here, I wouldn’t be writing this review—and frankly, even after all that I’d seen, my head was NOW saying, “Oh no... This studio is really competent... I feel even worse for them now...”, because I was now thinking that ‘no matter how good an adaptation is, if the source-material is contemptible garbage, it’s still unsalvageable’.
Ohhh, how wrong I was! Not only did they rewrite the first chapters of the ‘collective source-material’, but they bloody went and rewrote the next 3 episodes as well!... “HOOWW?! WHY DON’T MORE STUDIOS DO THIS???”, is what the excited voice in my head was NOW saying after witnessing what, before now, I’d just written off as ‘impossible’ and ‘wishful thinking’, etc.
Remember how I vaguely recapped all the issues that the Manga & Light Novels had? They all revolves around every character, relation, achievement, event, and so on, ALL collectively feeling “ubiquitously inhuman or monotonous”. In this Anime-Adaptation, ... *breathes deeply*... this has, so far, been rectified (at least, as much as possible). That’s right. The characters have motives and emotions that ‘come into conflict’ with our MC, AND he’s no longer a “smiling doll” without ‘worries or care or actual troubles’. Above that, the side characters aren’t just there to inhabit the background either and have genuine effects on the main cast.
Now: I’ve been singing praises for this adaptation for “humanising the inhuman” and for their use of ‘creative liberties’, but it’d be unfair to ignore the glaring fault that this series still faces no matter how many Creative Liberties the studio and staff in charge of this mess-of-an-Isekai take, and that’s the very first scene. The very first scene acts to show the personal woes that stick with our MC all throughout this show (for now, at least) - and that’s that he was reborn from being a “White-Collared Office Worker” - but it also gives us a preview of ‘things to come’—and they look identical to the problems of the source material. Remember how I talked about “the author boxing themselves in”? This ‘preview’ shows a future where that fate is inevitable, sadly, and I don’t know how the studio/adaptation will get around or revitalise that.
In fact, when episode 4 rolled along, I began to see signs of 1) budget issues (at least, I saw a huge drop in the sound effects, the CGI, and especially the animation quality), and 2) scene upon scene that neglects everyone but our protagonist as he makes extremely boring and artistically-repugnant facial expressions along with flat jokes [I mentioned the Slice of Life “woe is me!” gags being overused in the source] that at one point, even for an easy, well-known gag, it was so poorly timed that I had to check that my video player hadn’t glitched and skipped a good 20-40 frames...
I don’t know if these changes in quality are just a coincidence, or if they have to do with tighter schedules and potential ‘correspondence’ project-management due to COVID messing everything up, but I just hope I’m the only one who felt these ways with the latest episode and that this isn’t going to become the new standard after 3 initial excellent episodes to this series.
All is not lost though. The adaptation has managed to do so much good thus far that I’m actually thoroughly enjoying this series, so they may just be able to cleverly use storyboarding or their “omnipotent Creative Liberties” (lel) to write-out or skip/fast-track all the problems out of a season of this show. Who knows?
They’ve done beyond “incredible” so far, all things considered—so I’ll harbour faith!
(Fingers crossed I don’t come to eat my words - massively - later, ahaha).
Note: this is ‘so far’
Story: 8.5
Sound: 7.5
Characters: 7.5
Art: 5 (biggest weakness if the show doesn’t pick-up back to the quality of the first episodes)
Enjoyment: 8
Overall: 8
Still a good start. Let’s keep it up, Hachinan tte!
