The plot was a little boring, but not insulting or painful to watch. It just had nothing impressive about it whatsoever. It is the usual formula of: Rio (MC) is secretly cool --> Hogwarts for nobility --> discrimination against Rio for being a peasant featuring the nobles who are comically evil assholes. The deviation here is that the story doesn't follow a line where the MC "proves them wrong by doing some sicko mode moves". It happens, but generally doesn't change much. Then it's the usual isekai from there onwards.
I bring this up to illustrate a larger point that occurs over the entire story. Spirit Chronicles DOES deviate from the norm here and there, but it's not in any way that results in a meaningful improvement for the story. It is different in technicalities, but overall it is just the same. However, you take what you can get. It's better to watch something with differences rather than stock characters repeating stock phrases for 12 episodes in a stock story.
Speaking of the discrimination due to nobles, in this specific example, the lack of any meaningful retribution against the discrimination Rio faces leaves a sour taste in the viewer's mouth. He just gets picked on and nothing happens in return. Rio does nothing about it and doesn't seem to want to do anything about it. There is no hint of ill-will whatsoever. This is unbelievable to the viewer because the main plot is a revenge plot, yet Rio does not seem interested in revenge the first few episodes.
Rio does not have any personality except being the protagonist cardboard cutout. His dialogue is the most boring, standard thing ever. It is not entirely made of the usual isekai one-liners, but it's just either formalities or neutral statements like "What is that? Who are you?" etc. There is no character behind anything he says or does. He also looks like a Final Fantasy character so that's a minus.
As for the characters, the main villain who does things in the background is okay. Some of the important side characters like Celia, the princesses and Latifa were fine. Everyone in the spirit village was boring and unimaginative. That village only exists just to remind you that it is a fantasy show and also to throw anthropomorphic waifus at you. The area which was basically a self-insert of Japan was okay. It makes you think how since isekais are so ass at using the medieval Europe setting, maybe it would have been more interesting to portray Japan. Just food for thought.
