SPOILER HEAVY REVIEW! because frankly, the first few reviews i read of this show were HYPER-critical for no apparent reason other than, the reviewers just wanted to tank this show's appeal to the MAL readers.
let's start with where Alchemist doesn't 'follow the guidebook'.
1 MC is 'timeskipped' BACK in time to a YEAR earlier than the three other heroes. so he's got a leg up. meaning, the same ritual summons all four people from Japan, but the MC gets to spend a YEAR in-world more than the other three folks.
2 all four of them were 'illegally' summoned using a forbidden spell.
3 the MC doesn't get OP out of nowhere. yes, he's got the goddess' blessing on his status card. he also gets some basic stats boosts above and beyond the 'average villager/peasant'. but he DOES have to work at things... grinding operations, making lots of items, learning about his new world, fighting monsters to grind levels, getting trained by experts in various fields, and enjoying himself while he does it.
4 this show is not HEAVY with the crafting, and one reviewer lambasts the anime for NOT concentrating on the crafting/learning like the original source does. but do we REALLY need to go through ALL the mechanics and blablabla BOOKS can clutter a STORY with? especially with JUST twelve episodes? if there were 24 eps all the etcetera etcetera of the MC's 'rise to crafting genius' could have been used.
5 YES the MC owns slaves, but he releases them eventually.
6 YES the MC's party are all cute ladies/girls, demi-humans, one human, and he has the ever-present mascot pet-girl, and a mighty steed. but the romance/ecchi/horni in this show IS low-key and more kawaii/cute/lovely than Gainax Boing and fantasy female armor trope MOAR SKIN = HIGHER ARMOR CLASS. so, NO obsessively in-love and harem romance competition and cat-fighting in the party.
7 the MC makes most of his own and his party's equipment. no armor shop and items shop and blablabla are used in this show.
8 the Adventurer's Guild isn't a place for macho muscular abusive aholes who try to do bad-guy stuff with their abilities etc. in every one of these twelve episodes the AG is awesome and supportive. no 'evil adventurers' have shown up so-far.
9 with that 'illegal summoning' the REAL goddess in charge of this world DOES have a fake competitor but... the fake is more of a concept and possibly still an amorphous 'biggest of the bad guys' to come after these 12 episodes' events.
10 the country that did the summoning is pretty evil. not totally rancid and demonic, but they're damn set on eventually conquering the whole world. they're not the 'good guys' summoning heroes to 'defeat the Demon Lord'.
i'd go on but 10 points of 'outside the norm isekai show' is enough, but there are more.
now, onto how Alchemist goes along with the formula.
1 yep, normal RPG game mechanics, skills, levels, no EXP but somehow 'IT' happens to grind levels. status card. item box. the whole nine yards. monster exterminations. escorting and other quests given out by the Adventurer's Guild.
2 yep, MC has an all-female party. i mentioned that before.
3 normal summoned to another world heroes who are exceptional somehow.
4 MC uses his modern Earth knowledge to help this new world. but he doesn't go totally nuts with it and has to use the new-world-systems and magic to accomplish one simple feat. making toilets that 'purify the poop' so sewage isn't deadly. there is STILL sewage but treating 'poop' and moving it safely is 'better after it goes through his toilets'. so 'attaching' these new toilets to existing 'waste treatment systems' is easy. very simplistic and thumbnail sketch used in this anime so, maybe the source blathers on too long about this and the studio simplified it immensely? almost forgot, MC also makes fridges and freezers.
5 MC is the classic naïve sensitive nice-guy, white hat, relaxed slow-life loving, wannabe slacker, and DOESN'T want to stand out in the crowd. 'The Tall Nail Finds The Hammer' is the old Japanese saying. but he is ALSO still a self-destructive, over-working himself, Japanese wage-slave. but his joy of crafting and making things and being a blacksmith/alchemist/mage etc. is part of the usual 'i want to protecc!' mentality of isekai good-guys.
ok that's enough of that.
onto the technical parts of the review.
art. not bad! i liked the designs of everything, they were attractive. overall, this show is not HYPER-realistic and photograph detailed. simple lines and a definite lack of texturing is apparent. CGA is minimal, well blended, and mostly for mob shots where large numbers of secondary and tertiary items/characters are in-frame. as i mentioned previously, the ecchi/sexy/Gainax Boing/half-naked girls... not much here for those type of isekai fans. sorry folks, the sexy is subtle.
acting. i watched Crunchy's simulcast English dub for eps1-12. good EDub, i enjoyed it. but the MC's EVA Zac Loera DEFINITELY needed to 'butch things up'. yes the MC is in a 16–17-year-old body... but Mr. Loera kept the MC in the 'middle school range' of male vocal tones incorrectly. i've no clue about the Japanese cast.
animation. a smidge above average. stills were overused though. too many minimally animated stills in fight scenes were used. as usual with a middle-to-low-budget anime, the fight scenes were mediocre. the CGA was well done! i liked it! needs improvement with differentiating between mob models though. too many 'cut n paste' monsters, make 3-5 different types of 'one monster' does take more work/time/cash but... it does make a show look better. that last point bridges art and animation, but \shrug/ meh! i gotta put it somewhere! :D
music. meh. blah. boring. environmental and situational music were average and unnoticeable 100%. OP/EP are both forgettable. but i'm not into Japanese OP/EP music to start with so... i'm biased.
SFX/foley/sound effects. i'll just tumble them all together to shorten my review. foley, good! sound effects, good! special effects, good!
writing/story. it did NOT suck! this show was fun and entertaining and enjoyable. just because a screenplay is highly compressed or simplified or deletes 'too much' from the source (i do NOT read sources i'm just going off one bitchy reviewer's statement) doesn't mean the show is shallow. Alchemist goes into the backgrounds of the humanoid/human party members and doesn't skimp on the details. the character development is there, subtle, minor, takes time, but the MC and Main Supporting Cast aren't flat/2D people. the 'other three heroes' are definitely LACKING in character reveals AND details AND their development is meh! the girl hero does have a good deal of depth, but the two guys?? maybe the brainwashing COULD have been concentrated on more? or whatever happened to the two guys. but the girl being highly suspicious of 'the new world' was interesting. the two guys' easily accepting blablabla didn't make sense to me, but maybe that was the lack of episodes/screen-time to present the 'three other heroes' story properly?
to sum Alchemist up? i gave it an 8/10 because it was fun and attractive and entertaining. the pros vs cons for me weighed too heavily on the pros side for me to put this show in the average-5-range. but the cons did keep this show WELL out of the 10 to 9 range for me.
