Seriously, I haven't seen such a bad adaptation that tries to adapt faithfully to the novels. Indeed, the anime only covers two volumes, and it covers every single story point. However--and I am absolutely shocked--the anime still just sucks so much.
If I had to describe one thing about this show, it'd be cheap. It's not just the obvious telltale signs too, but down to the roots of the show. First of all, is the art. The art is extremely generic. I won't really go into Silver Link, the studio that animated this, but damn does this show's art style look like the most generic and boring isekai anime ever. But it's not just generic, it's also terrible. Each character looks the same, aside from Mia of course. Every person's facial structure and expression are so similar that the only thing separating them from each other is their hairstyle and clothing. Of course, this is just because each character is copy-pasted with minimal facial expressions being animated. This really takes away from the show. A great example of this is Dion, a battle-weary captain in the novel, but in the anime, he just looks like a generic salaryman. His tone and inflection are supposed to be more rough, a bit rugged, like a commoner's. Because he obviously is one. He's supposed to be more wary of Mia at the beginning, trusting, and finally loyal. In this show, none of those stages are expressed in either character development, art, or facial expressions.
In contrast, look at Mia's facial expressions in comedic moments. It feels vibrant because Mia is constantly changing her expression to match her mood and feelings. When she's put in the spotlight, the anime highlights that in her face. Now look at other characters. Even when they're fighting to the death, they have the most generic stoic facial expressions like they're talking about the weather. Their voice acting, again, is just absolutely terrible. Only Mia's is fine, but all of the other characters have such lacking ranges of emotion in their voices it's pathetic. It's like they were instructed to talk in a monotone or something.
This genericness and cheapness extend to the focus on character development as well. While Mia gets adequate monologues in the anime, the other characters are sorely lacking. The novel does focus on Mia a large portion of the time and she IS the main character, but the novel also does a lot of character development and world-building from the perspective of other characters. This is cut out completely. The reason why the novel series is fun is because the misunderstanding is between a well-developed character and Mia, but in this show, it's basically like some generic archetypal character that you barely know about engaging with Mia. Even with Mia's love interests, like Sion and Abel, they are completely lacking any sort of actual character in the anime compared to the novel. The main charm point of the novel becomes completely neglected in the anime. I feel like I'm watching some generic Otome game reincarnation anime since I see characters that barely get introduced influencing the story.
Then comes the misunderstandings themselves. First and foremost, Tearmoon Kingdom is a comedic misunderstanding novel. This gets expanded upon of course, but misunderstandings are what the novel excels at creating. And this anime butchers it. You can see it even in the storyboarding itself. Comedic pacing is extremely important, and the show just does not have that level of finesse when adapting comedic scenes. Monologues are done lazily in frozen frames where the person talking has a spotlight on them and everyone is idle. Sometimes, the monologuing is cut completely. There doesn't seem to be any flow of conversation despite there being one because of these awkward freeze-frame cuts. There isn't any pacing. The characters just force their monologues into a conversation and that's about it. It doesn't feel like things are moving in real-time, and as a result, almost all of the comedy is just gotten rid of.
It's not just the comedic pacing and delivery that's awful, though, it's just the storyboarding themselves. Manga adaptations are so much easier to animate since they already have a storyboard readily made for animators. For novels, studios have to create their own from scratch. And it's painfully made aware here, where Silver Link decides to create the most cheap storyboards possible. First of all, there's a lack of spatial awareness. Each character stands still. Everyone stands still, or they're standing really far away and talking, or nothing is happening on screen. This is, of course, to reduce animation costs. People just "wait" on the screen for someone to make their move or talk. There's a lack of tension in scenes that have fighting. Scenes that should have much more impact are trivialized and made a mockery in the anime. Pride, rage, embarrassment, guilt, and spite are all shown in the anime, but rarely are these emotions actually transmitted to the viewer due to the extremely lacking pacing, scenes, and storyboard. Let's not even talk about fights. They might as well not exist for how poorly they are all animated.
If I had to make a closing remark, this show is the opposite of shows like Konosuba or to be the Power in the Shadows, where they completely elevate the novel by making full use of the animation medium. Konosuba has vibrant tsukkomi through their brilliant comedic pacing, simple but good animation, and large ranges of facial expressions and interactions. To be the Power in the Shadows makes full use of its storyboarding capabilities by adding atmostphere to serious scenes despite the novel being full of comedic monologue.
