The world is interesting. The progression is addicting. The narrative is well thought out. Plus the main is pretty entertaining (though a bit of an acquired taste). But all of that is squandered by a studio that bit-off way more than it could chew.
I won’t sugarcoat it, the fight animation is some of the worst I have ever seen. Keep in mind that I have watched almost 100 days of anime. I would rather watch the fights in Ex-Arm over the worst fights in this anime. Granted, not all of the fights are THAT bad (most of the ones featuring the spider girl Kumoko are coherent), but a lot of ones with the human characters are really THAT bad.
The CGI animation on the monsters is atrocious. Sure, you get used to it after watching many episodes, but it doesn’t change the fact that they look awful from episode 1. However, by the end I actually prefered those fights over the human ones because at least I will be able to understand what is happening. It doesn’t help that the sound design is also awful for the human fights, so now we have nothing to help us process the clusterfuck of images thrown together pretending to be a fight.
But, I never dropped this anime despite the animation. That’s thanks to the world and progression system.
This anime taps into the rewarding nature of RPGs very well (given that it essentially is one). Watching Kumoko (the spider girl & MC) grow and evolve is addicting because she is almost always leveling up and/or evolving in an episode, constantly keeping you hooked with what new skills or new forms she will get next episode.
The world is also much more interesting than I had anticipated. There are monster hierarchies, prophecies, and a meta aspect that makes up for the absolutely dull side story with the human isekais. While I feel that people are overhating the human side of the narrative, boy I would be damned if it didn’t have all the worst parts of this anime. The characters aren’t very interesting and it takes FOREVER for it to even connect to the Kumoko side of the story, making it feel like a waste of time for many episodes.
Would I recommend this anime? Not if you read manga or light novels. All of the good aspects seem to come from the source material, so just read that if it’s your thing. If you are an anime-only, then maybe??? I didn’t hate my time watching it so there’s that. Watch the first 3-5 episodes and decide from there.
It’s a 3/10. Closer to a 4 than a 2.
