I'll start with the technical bits, art and sound. The OP and ED are really terrible, screechy, full of broken English in an attempt to sound cool, and entirely made of reused footage or still images panning upwards or downwards. I am fairly sure the production company knew this, as the OP doesn't show up until episode 3, and the ED visuals actually change halfway into the season (presumably somebody realised having the ed start with a close up of a high schoolers foot was a little too strange). The voice actors generally aren't awful, certainly nothing to praise, specifically with the character of Emilia a lot of her lines seemed to convey the opposite emotion of what was being said, and often contrasted with the animation on the screen. The character voices all feel quite bland, except for Chiho. That brings me nicely to the art, which is also incredibly bland and stale, all the designs feel washed out, hair colours are all dark, same with the eyes and the emotion on the characters faces just does not look right (again, except for Chiho). The "art style" of the characters faces, particularly female characters, when they get upset or angry looks like something I would expect out of a low budget western cartoon. It isn't that the studio is incapable either, the scenes that take place on Ente Isla in the first episode look pretty great, and the transformed character designs are equally awesome. Why they couldn't just put some of that effort into the majority of scenes I will never know. As for the action, it isn't the focus so it puzzles me why they try so hard to make it look flashy, but it ends up with me just reminded of early dragon ball super and its hilariously bad animation. The characters faces are also wonky in a lot of shots, not just ones that last for a couple of seconds either, but long panning shots with characters centre frame with hardly any discernable facial features. The last thing that really annoyed me is how the first action piece takes entirely within a magical barrier of sorts, which for some reason is represented by a greyish filter over everything which makes it even duller than usual.
The story is also quite lacking. I am most disappointed with how the series skips over the characters getting used to modern life, it just time skips and they have jobs and understand technology, which could have all been used to comedic effect. Many things are also left unexplained, why is the dark lord suddenly good? Who knows. Why doesn't he just go and get more magic at any time using humans negative emotions? Plot I guess. To keep the dark lord weak, they use the exact same excuse of "Gotta repair the city which uses all my power" I don't even know why he has to be weak, shows like Saiki K and one punch man prove that characters with crazy powers can still be perfectly well written, and actually adds to the character. Instead, the show insists on taking itself seriously by trying to keep stakes high, it is honestly just sad to watch, because nobody cares and there is no tension. It tries so desperately to be an action show instead of a slice of life comedy which is what everyone expects from a title like this.
Finally, the characters, which really should be the highlight of a show like this (I suppose they are, but that isn't saying much) are totally boring. None of them have any personality, they occasionally spill out big speeches but that means nothing at all since they are literally just single character traits given a body. I am not talking tsundere, yandere, those typical character types, I really mean they are as bare-bones as you can get. Characters will go through life-threatening situations and save each other, but will not change at all. I suppose Chiho and Rika would be the most interesting as they aren't so boring, but one of those two appears in like 2 episodes so it isn't saying much.
Just a final note, this should be 12 episodes. The story is wrapped up in 12 and the 13th is just some strange filler episode. Cmon, you do not need filler in seasonal anime, that's just ridiculous.
So in closing, it really is not that good, some problems can be forgiven as it precedes a lot of the typical isekai trash it seems to have inspired, but it is nothing more than mediocre at very best. I am intrigued by season 2, I hope it can fix the biggest problems I have with the series, however, it will no longer have the excuse that it is old so will likely end up rated even worse by me. Thank you for reading.
