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Jun 9, 2021
Man, talk about squandered potential. This series is seriously losing me; it's the definition of a 6. It can't decide if it wants to have a plot or not, it's taken over half the season just to introduce all of the characters, and when it tries to have fights they somehow lack both impact AND comedy (think One Punch Man, but without the wit). It started with promise, and it's just not really gone much of anywhere since. It's a fine way to waste 30 minutes, but it's not really fulfilling, and I guarantee a lot of the people leaving good reviews now won't remember
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it by the end of next season.
First and foremost, I appreciate the novelty of an isekai MC whose power comes solely from modest work over a long period of time -- particularly as a result of having a previous life that was full of overworked weeks. I also acknowledge that if we were shown much more of the titular 300 years of grinding than we already were, it would have been insufferable. I can't really fault it for opting for a time skip, as a result. And, for what it's worth, the opening premise of a witch being exposed as being max-level and having to deal with constant intrusions from others is interesting. The first three characters we meet -- Laika, a red dragon, and two twin slimes -- had genuinely interesting motivations for seeking out our MC.
These motivations were quickly swept under the rug, however, in order to introduce the rest of Azusa's pseudo-yuri harem. In fact, as a harem anime, it's pretty lousy. We've seen one major interaction with every character so far, and then they all just sorta fall into the background by the episode after they were introduced so that Azusa can focus on the new girl-of-the-week's starter quest. Sure, some of the plotlines of these are entertaining, but many are just...lackluster. They mostly just serve to take up precious time that most *good* harem animes would spend developing the characters via their interactions with one another. As a result, the characters tend to feel a bit one-dimensional, reduced only to a few, surface-level traits that dictate their abilities and how they tend to talk to others. When you're constantly shuffling off the new girl to make way for whoever's next, you're bound to have flat and/or shallow characters. There's a reason why manga doesn't tend to spend several chapters in a row just introducing everyone -- no one wants to just constantly meet new characters while watching the old ones sit around doing nothing. I can't imagine why they decided that was the right way to do things with the anime adaptation.
I'd give the series props for at least daring to show girl-on-girl romantic affection more boldly than most series do, but it still ends up with an air of...baitiness about it. There's always plausible deniability, and it'll doubtlessly go nowhere interesting with any characters, so if you're in it for the yuri, you'd be better served elsewhere. (I'll admit, though, I did enjoy her fight with and subsequent pseudoromantic conquest of the demon lord.)
As it stands, 7 episodes in, it's just been a formulaic series of introductions that make all the characters feel one-note, and which (for the most part) lack any sense of impact or meaning when Azusa can essentially just hand-wave away most issues. It's not that there aren't good moments here and there, or unique or novel concepts -- it's just that the main framework of the show so far is lacking in direction or purpose.
They clearly wanna show off our MC's powers, because they really put effort into making the magic look pretty. It's just that most of the fights she participates in feel inconsequential and out-of-place, ending in mere moments, and they just contribute to the mounting sensation that the show doesn't really know what it wants to be. If she's gonna be godlike in power, why include fights in any serious capacity? Just go for the witty, "Ugh, can't believe I have to put up with this," OHKO to get the new character into her harem, and move on to spending the last half of the episode letting the characters interact. If, conversely, it's actually supposed to be about the way she bests a neverending wave of challengers who've heard about her power, then put more effort into the fights; make them stand out, or make it seem like she actually has to TRY. As it stands, there's no effort being put into developing character relationships, and there's no effort being put into exhibiting the MC's accumulated power in interesting ways. It's just half-assed on all fronts, pulling itself apart in all directions -- a jack of all trades, but a master of none.
Now, a lot of people who enjoy this series are probably going to read all that and say something along the lines of, "It's not supposed to be engaging, it's supposed to be comfy! Don't go into it expecting much, and you'll enjoy it!" That argument seems to be confusing "comfy" anime with anime where nothing happens. Let's compare it to one of the most infamously comfy anime around -- Yuru Camp. Like Slime Taoshite, it's also contains beautiful scenery and an all-female main cast. Also like Slime Taoshite, it's a very formulaic series wherein every episode centers itself around the same basic elements (travel secenes, camping scenes, and cooking scenes). The difference between the two -- the reason I actually find myself enjoying the comfy experience of Yuru Camp -- is that those scenes are used to actually enrich our understanding of the characters and their relationships with one another. Seeing those girls become better friends, and uncovering more sides to their personalities as you go, encourages the viewer to reminisce on all their own childhood friendships and travel experiences to give us that cozy and nostalgic feeling. It may be slice-of-life, but those slices *reveal* more about the characters and engage the audience.
Slime Taoshite, on the other hand, centers its framework on just getting a new girl through the rotating door every week. Whenever there *are* attempts to show the current cast doing something together, they're wasted by just reinforcing what we already know about each character. There's no development -- you don't feel like you're getting to know these people and see their found family dynamic grow and take hold. Laika's loyal, Halkara's clumsy, Shalsha's kuudere, Beelzebub is the straight-man... No one seems to have any desire to get to know anyone else better, and like I previously mentioned, for characters who are supposed to be learning from Azusa, they don't seem very interested in self-improvement. None of the activities they undertake reveal anything new about the characters after their initial introduction. It's a cycle of endless monotony.
Hey, at least it looks pretty damn good, right? Well, yes, it does. The scenery is, as I briefly mentioned before, beautifully drawn, and the animation of the lackluster fights and hand-wave-y uses of magic is admittedly gorgeous a lot of the time. The character designs are on the whole balanced (i.e.: not over-the-top or gaudy) but also memorable, though some of them do sit a bit weird with me. Aside from the visual aspect, though, things could be better. The voice acting is up-and-down, with the ghost girl's voice actor in particular being a bit sub-par in my opinion. It just doesn't always sound confident, as if they were still workshopping it when they had to record their lines. Oh well, these things happen.
What annoys me much more than the occasionally mediocre VA, though, are the OP and ED songs. Moe whisper-singing is played-out in the first place, and it's hard to get right even if it wasn't. When you couple it with a jumpy, unsure-of-itself melody, its pitfalls as a singing style become increasingly apparent. It doesn't happen that the frantic metre and half-rapped sections just open it up to comparisons with the seiyuu's other current-season series, "Kumo desu ga, nani ka?", whose chaotic yet powerful EDs just show that the seiyuu is capable of a delivery that is much superior to what's on display in this show's OP. Similarly, the ED of Slime Taoshite -- which is a much better composition to begin with -- is kneecapped by the edition of some wholly unnecessary autotune that is just intrusive enough to make this supposedly wholesome ballad seem ingenuine and overproduced -- which I suppose is fitting for a series that's suffers as a result of being overproduced. It's doubly a shame because the seiyuu's delivery is much improved, with a fuller tone and some nice vibrato here and there, but it's hard to notice under the completely soul-erasing pitch correction. There's a time and place for autotune, and this was *not* it. Let Myth&Roid handle the autotune work, and leave your lead seiyuu's excellent performance alone.
So, in summation, Slime Taoshite seems to be an adaptation that can't help but to try to be too many different things at once, and as a result none of them turn out being all that well-executed. It's a time-waster show -- good for a few chuckles and some eye candy artwork, but if you try to engage with it as either a harem anime or challenge-of-the-week type of show (as it seems to want you to in alternating fashion), you'll be left disappointed. At least there are a lot of interesting concepts for fan works, I suppose. Thoroughly mediocre; just a "fine" series.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 7, 2021
Anime reviews are not for what the show *could* be (as some of you seem to think). If you wanna review the story in the light novel, there's a separate page for that; go review it there. This is the place to review the anime adaptation, and the fact of the matter is that as an adaptation, "Kumo desu ga" is just fine. It's not that it doesn't have some great peaks -- just that the overwhelming amount of valleys sort of counterbalance those highs. Ultimately, I'm enjoying it, but that's very much in spite of its problems and not because it lacks any. Giving
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this series a perfect 10 is simply delusional. Whatever praise it may duly earn, it duly earns just as much criticism, and the end product is just...fine.
Let's get started with the story. Kumoko's trials and tribulations are, in fact, very engaging to watch. While it does, at times, struggle with Mary-Sue-esque power creep, it almost never feels unearned. She usually manages to get the upper hand on her opponents through strategy rather than brute force (though in recent episodes, she's been able to essentially insta-kill people from miles away, so let there be emphasis on the word "usually"). As a result, when she manages to take down much stronger enemies, it feels roughly as hard-fought as you would expect fighting a boss while underleveled to feel in any video game -- and the experience payout seems generally pretty analogous to the severity of any given fight. Moreover, she's definitely got a dynamic personality (which is more than you can say for most of the other named characters), even if at times its constituent traits don't seem all that consistent, leading the writer to lean a bit heavily on references to otaku culture that I'm sure won't age poorly whatsoever to plaster over what would normally be seen as some pretty drastic mood swings. She's not a perfect isekai MC, as some have made her out to be -- but she does bring a relatively unique and refreshing perspective to the genre. If you want a new and engaging take on the isekai MC, you could do a whole hell of a lot worse.
HOWEVER, then there's the B-plot. And yes, it is a B-plot -- even though it may intersect with or connect to the A-plot at some point in the future. In fact, it's the promise of that eventual reveal that gives the B-plot any degree of tension or mystique. Shun is a milquetoast "chosen one" with no real motivation -- though not for lack of opportunity. Remember, this is an entire class of people who've reincarnated into a fantasy world. You'd expect some of the politics of their former high school life to crop up, at the very least to contrast with how life in this new world has changed them. However, pretty much universally, whatever potential is offered by their background is squandered or outright ignored. Plus, by the age they are when we first see most of them, any motivation that may have come directly from their life in this new fantasy world is ancient history, left to be revealed in flashbacks that feel like an unearned afterthought in service of whatever trivial conflict the writer felt like constructing. The result is a cast of characters who are mostly interchangeable with one another, except for the villains, who are themselves pretty archetypal and one-note.
In fact, the only member who really showed any promise as a multifaceted and complex characterization was Fei, being the only other reincarnation to be born as a monster aside from Kumoko, who also accrued a Taboo level early on as the result of making a hard choice. Her circumstances are made all the more intriguing when it's revealed that she was sort of the popular, mean-girl queen bee of the classroom in the previous life, and she's having to adapt to not only being non-humanoid, but being branded as sinful as well. This is the closest we get (as of e21) with a non-MC character to seeing the unique ways in which the mechanics of this world affect and motivate the day-to-day lives of the reincarnations. However, when Fei gains a humanoid form -- in a pretty transparent attempt to simply not deal with the potential conflict set up by the somewhat unfair hand she's been dealt -- she immediately reverts to an uninteresting, ultimately interchangeable member of the Hero's party, except with a hint of sass to hopefully make the viewer not notice how little there is to her character. With this transformation, the series reveals its hand: It's incapable of handling meaningful conflict between intelligent, autonomous characters, and only really succeeds when it's either a) Kumoko against other monsters, driven by either survival instinct or a rudimentary monster hierarchy or b) Fei against her own self-perception. This is likely why almost all of the villains so far have a single, unwavering, highly ideological reason for opposing Shun's party -- anything like two characters having a difference of opinion despite seeing the same facts, or coming to oppose one another in the course of pursuing conflicting goals, is too complicated. Half-earned, full-throated hatred is the only motivator the writer knew how to incorporate. The series relies on the intrigue of a non-humanoid MC who mostly fights other non-humanoid (and exclusively non-reincarnation) opponents, banking on the MC recognizing and manipulating the game-like setting against targets that will always act a certain way. Complex, unpredictable, or contradictory human actions are too much for it to handle deftly, so it doesn't even try.
So, yeah, most of the cast is bland and only characterized briefly and exclusively through flashbacks. The B-plot can't stand on its own two feet as a compelling story. It would be irresponsible to overlook that, were it not for the interesting and relatively well-executed A-plot with Kumoko, this series would be the most bland and uninteresting standard nothing-burger of isekai filler material we've seen to date -- easily a 4 or below. But what else does it have going for it?
Well, the art and sound design are a mixed bag. The OST (by which I mean the songs used which aren't the ops/eds) is fairly limited and slimmed-down, but it's versatile enough that a single song can be used to convey different feelings to the viewer in different contexts. The OPs and EDs themselves are very memorable, and I challenge anyone with a rockin' bone in their body to avoid bobbing along with either OP. They slap so damn hard. However, the sound design of each episode -- eating noises, fight sounds, etc. -- is nothing to write home about, and at times is even a bit...amateurish. Perhaps that's because it's so often accompanied by the *drumroll* lousy 3D CGI!
Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm no 2D or hand-drawn purist. There are plenty of shows with CGI that looks downright stellar, and it would be the musings of an idiot to write off the entire medium as if it isn't already being used to make some of the masterworks of anime. But this is not good CGI. Character models seem to be in a constant sliding or floating motion even when they're supposed to be relatively still, faces are static and lifeless, and the models for the dragons look like they were taken straight out of 2008. The CG really drags down the series when it's used so haphazardly, without regard to the current limitations of the technology and what sort of subjects CG tends to animate best. That's not to say that this series shows no promise for the role of CGI in anime, though. There's a fight scene with a puppet-like enemy that's genuinely one of the creepiest and most well-animated CGI portrayals of a humanoid character I've ever seen -- but that's likely because, as a puppet, the animators would've been less worried about making it appear like a breathing, living human, and by leaning into that uncanny aspect you only make it more effective as an intimidating foe. Most of the time, however, the CGI is appalling for 2021 standards, especially when it's appearing next to or even *within* some of the drop-dead gorgeous hand-drawn 2D animation this show has to offer.
THAT'S RIGHT! I have very good things to say about the other art on display in this show! The backgrounds are absolutely stunning, and the animation of the 2D characters is often astoundingly well-done -- especially Kumoko's many battles. So well done is this animation, in fact, that it often leaves me wondering: "Why on Earth did they opt for CGI in that other fight, then?" I give the art here a 6 because while the CGI is a 5 at its best, the non-CG artwork is sometimes up in the 8 or even 9 range. Once again, it's an example of how "Kumo desu ga" is a series full of ups and downs to the extent that the entire show just ends up solidly middling.
And that's sorta what I wanna hit on again to wrap up. Can we all stop pretending that this is the best thing since sliced bread? Can we stop with the grandstanding against supposed "anti-CGI elitists", and stop singing praises for a story that frankly wasn't told by this adaptation? It's a fine adaptation, but it's incredibly far from perfect. It has several glaring issues that make people rightfully enjoy parts of it less than others. There's 3 episodes left in this season, and it's frankly running out of runway to offer any sort of satisfying closure to the main mystery, let alone any degree of compelling characterization for the ensemble cast of reincarnations. It's an enjoyable ride, but an enjoyable ride isn't always a well-designed or well-planned ride. It's unique enough to keep you engaged, even with the less interesting bits, but only so long as it still has the offer of a good payoff at the end -- and we're running out of time for it to achieve that. It's good enough for what it is, but it's not phenomenal or revolutionary. Stop lying to people in your reviews, saying it's the best isekai in the world just cuz it plays around a little bit with the formula, or that it's gonna be an amazing story later on if you just stick with it. It's just OK in the state it's in right now, and that's what we *should* be reviewing, because that's what people who read our reviews *will* be watching. You can only do it a disservice by making it out to be something more than it really is.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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May 14, 2021
So let's be clear upfront: The users giving this a 1 are people who (understandably) got turned off early on by the atrocious attitudes towards women that the main character has, and the fixation of the female lead on him as a result of a perceived misunderstanding of his motives in saving her. I, too, found the MC's attitudes to be downright disgusting in early chapters. In addition, the plot can be very heavy-handed, and character can appear to swing wildly between emotional states at times -- this tends to have a cheapening effect on the more intense or gritty moments that, at its worst,
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appears to make light of some very serious issues. I would not blame someone for dropping the series early on because of these faults.
However, it's obvious from the get-go that the series doesn't plan to maintain these garbage tropes for any longer than it needs to. From the beginning, an astute reader can tell that this is a story about recovering from an incel-like mindset and learning to forgive and overcome your past trauma. The unconventional motivations for the two main characters to help each other are compelling in their own way; as such, it's incorrect to say the romance in this series is predicated on a misunderstanding of the MC's motivations. His non-romantic motivations are made clear early on, but Kotoko moves forward with trying to become the MC's ideal woman anyways for reasons that aren't explicitly about pursuing a romantic relationship with him. For those who are willing to deal with some very dark/malicious situations and attitudes, this series promises catharsis and healing for its characters. I swear to you, if it was just a story about a guy who's awful to women and a girl who's so starved for positive attention that she'll fawn over him nonetheless, or if it glorified those toxic relationship dynamics to any degree, I would NOT be rating it so highly. These characters are much more multifaceted than they seem at first, so give them a chance.
And, oddly enough, therein lie my main complaints about it. I want to see these characters become better people, sure, but the series does a so-so job of actually showing that in an impactful way. Every time it approaches a nuanced point about its major themes -- e.g.: the importance of intent in wrongdoing, when/how to forgive someone who's wronged you, the complex hierarchical structure of closed social systems like high school, etc. -- it manages to step back at the last second in order to avoid its characters having relationships that can be categorized as anything except "favorable" and "antagonistic". There are many times when a character says something along the lines of, "Even if this person didn't mean to hurt me, they still did, so I can't just forgive them," but then moments later is acting all buddy-buddy, water-under-the-bridge with the person in question. I feel the series has great potential to explore aspects of trauma and healing that aren't often depicted in manga outside of settings of war, and to some degree it does that, but it has a habit of fumbling that momentum at the most important moments. Perhaps some of this is the inevitable result of faulty fan-translation, often from people for whom English isn't a first language, but that can only explain so much.
The arc where Eve is introduced is a great example of this. Much ado is built about the girl who traumatized the MC reentering his life, and much tension is built about how things are going to play out and what her motivations are. However, the truth of the matter spills out unceremoniously during a scene that can't seem to decide if it wants to be silly or serious (even though, given the context of what's actually going on, there's really no excuse for the former), and then the process of making up and moving on flies by so quickly that it almost gave me whiplash. I can very clearly see what it was TRYING to do, and in the writer's defense the characters never just up and drop/go against their core traits, but it just feels...unearned? Rushed? When the MC expresses being tired of holding a grudge, it almost feels like the author is telling us he's tired of focusing on his character's trauma, despite it being the MAIN MOTIVATOR for progression for the entire series. They keep coming back to touch on the unease of having Eve around from different characters' perspectives, which I welcome because it further explores this complicated relationship dynamic, but it ultimately feels like a band-aid over a botched surgery. If it had just been explored and developed more fully in media res, we wouldn't need to keep circling back on it.
It's just one example of many where the momentum is lost, the wrap-up is rushed, and the catharsis is delayed or cheapened. Still, it's not a story-ruining degree of dropping the ball. I think the series manages to pull of enough surprisingly moving and impactful moments to make it a net-positive experience, and most of the character development feels hard-fought and well earned. It even managed to blindside me at a few turns; the unorthodox motivations for characters can catch you off-guard, without giving the impression of simply being a tsundere-like pretense used to thinly veil a character's true feelings. They never seem like they're *lying* about their reasons for doing something -- but those reasons may change as the characters grow (as they should). I feel the need to reiterate that, on the whole, I think this is a good, ambitious series that strives to tell a wholesome tale using characters on the outskirts of social acceptance. However, at times that ambition is clearly too much for the author to deftly navigate, and that's not exactly an uncommon fault for a manga or anime to have.
Moving on. The art is very nice, if a bit reminiscent of certain other romance series (the character design reminds me a lot of My Next Life As a Villainess, for example). As the chapter-count increases, so does the number of named characters, and as a result certain character designs begin to blend together and become less distinct. Ryouma, Kiyomi, and Eve's friend Nishihara (who we briefly see in Chapter 39) all have a similar enough face/hairstyle combo that, when they aren't on the same page as one another, it can be a bit difficult to recall from appearance alone which one you're looking at. I was confused for a moment as to why Ryouma -- a kind, reserved, goody-two-shoes-type character who's on good terms with the MC -- would seemingly be siding with Eve over the MC until I realized it was a completely different character we'd never seen before, who just happened to look similar at first blush. However, the art on the whole is quite well executed, and I want to give particular praise to the way in which the artist handles Kotoko. As is clear from the synopsis blurb above, she undergoes quite the transformation in design AND in character -- and yet, when her more rebellious, stick-up-for-yourself side comes out to play, the artist manages to draw her in a way that makes her new prim-and-proper look seem to dissipate and take on an aura of someone you *really* don't want to piss off. It takes skill to pull that off, and I applaud the artist for never accidentally making Kotoko's anger feel less intimidating than it did at the outset of the story.
tl;dr: It get's much better very quickly -- it's not an incel power-fantasy story like some have made it out to be -- but it still has some growing pains and issues with tone. It reminds me to some extent of Higehiro, albeit handled less adeptly (and without the landmine of age being a factor). If you like stories about flawed people helping each other become better, found-family dynamics, and romance that's predicated on more than simple/shallow reasoning, then give this series a shot; you'll probably enjoy it.
Also, the true reason for Kotoko being called "used goods" made me chuckle, so there's that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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May 13, 2020
Not quite the Konosuba follow-up it wants to be, but very moe and funny nonetheless. It at least attempts to write characters that are dynamic and do more than stick to one pattern of behavior because of the role they're supposed to play. At the end of the day, it's an adaptation of a gacha game, but it's leagues better than Granblue's adaptation because of the comedic genius of a director injecting humor and life into every scene.
Yes, the MC is boring, but only because he's supposed to be a parody of the, "You're the chosen one, now start grinding your way up from lvl
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1 you pleb," trope common to these sorts of game franchises. The unfettered, blind devotion from Kokkoro, despite having plenty of reason to doubt her supposed calling, sort of subtly calls out how silly these cookie-cutter archetypes can be. The story is slow to develop and nigh non-existent by episode five, but in reality you're coming to watch these characters interact and get up to Konosuba-esque shenanigans. It's not as impactful, but it's a good substitute while we wait with baited breath for news of a Season 3.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 14, 2020
Black Bullet is one of those series that had massive potential to be good if only it had an exit strategy. It takes the apocalyptic world-invasion setting of the Shin Megami Tensei and Devill Survivor series, with a decent amount of intrigue surrounding the invading lifeforms and plenty of inter-character drama revolving around how people would deal with the end of the world. However, any time a breakthrough is made regarding the nature of the creatures, the series feels the need to immediately throw it aside with increasingly god-mode baddies. This has the added unfortunate side-effect of the Mary-Sue-ification of the main character as the
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series continues. I don't know why it is that these series can't seem to feel comfortable letting their characters have nice things when they've earned it — they always have to up the ante.
Of course, there's always a tipping point where both the viewer and the creators seem to acknowledge that the effect of constantly-raising stakes is coming back to bite the series in the ass. The viewer increasingly doubts that the characters are in any real danger, so to counteract this the creators start throwing in massive, poorly thought-out moments that either involve arbitrary character death or character-breaking moments. This behavior often derails a story and leaves the story full of unanswered questions.
Unfortunately, Black Bullet's final few episodes are jam-packed with these moments, leaving the viewer thinking, "What on earth is happening anymore?!" The two main characters start out likable enough, but eventually one of them completely loses any redeeming qualities and goes a bit insane. Meanwhile, the other fully embraces his lolicon tendencies in a very uncomfortable way. This rapid shift away from an otherwise enjoyable story was the unfortunate result of a series that lost sight of its goal somewhere along the way.
In fairness, the OP is phenomenal, and the art is often breathtaking. So, if you like spectacle for spectacle's sake and can turn off the part of your brain that keeps track of plot points, you'd probably love this series! However, I just can't justify giving it any sort of recommendation as a work of fiction.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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