Well, at least the girls are cute, right????? Would be a lot better if they were actually animated decently...
This has been my experience with Spirit Cronicles, and as you can probably tell, I'm not a fan. But you'll also be surprised to hear that I think this anime has the potential to actually be decent for what it is.
The good news is that I went into this expecting absolutely nothing, and so far, the anime has been able to perfectly live up to my expectations. Yay! Now I actually thought the first episode was pretty alright as it introduced some interesting concepts into this world. I like how the isekai aspect of this series is at least being handled differently. The idea was a little intriguing and I was interested in seeing where things were going. But then the protagonist went to school.
Everything about Rio's academy life that didn't involve Claire Celia was the most uninspired, bland writing I've experienced in a work of fiction in awhile. It's just...so bad. You have to watch it to fully understand. Even though the reason behind Rio leaving the school was pretty poor, terribly forced, and completely avoidable, I'm kind of glad he left because it just wasn't going anywhere. The male students are the most stereotypical noble douchebags imaginable and the female students do literally nothing. Luckily, the 2 episodes featuring the school went by quickly (though I hope that isn't a bad sign for the overall pacing of the anime. Ah, who am I kidding, it totally is). These 2 episodes only served to show that our protagonist has the potential to be a completely overpowered character. Hooray...
Episode 4 is the best one so far and the reason why I haven't lost faith in this series yet. And no, it's not because Rio acquired an animal girl loli...ok, that's part of it, but it was the execution of it all that pleased me. The combat sequence was actually passable, and Latifa's backstory was well done considering the lore of the series. Yes, it's nothing amazing, but it's a step up from what I've seen previously.
The only character who's been good in my mind is Celia. I like her design, personality, and voice actress. Though that's not to say she's great or anything, it's just that Celia actualy has...character. Plus I probably won't forget about her a week after the show ends, though two weeks MIGHT be pushing it. At least that's more than I can say about the rest of the cast thus far. So the author was able to make a cute, white haired waifu girl. Does that alone make the show a resounding success? Yeah probably. But as a boring semi-critic, it's nowhere near enough for me.
Quick shout out to the ending theme song which is actually pretty solid. They should have switched it with the opening in order to at least attempt to hype up viewers before watching each episode. But then again, this show's placement of music has been quite questionable, so I shouldn't expect anything. I just don't feel like the songs match up with their corresponding scenes a good portion of the time.
I'm not scoring Spirit Cronicles lower yet because I'm an optimist who has hope that the upcoming episodes will be able to improve upon the anime's current shortcomings. Though it's a pretty slim hope. Fingers crossed that I'm not TOO disappointed!
