first of all, this one is not exactly formulaic with the usual isekai, summoned to another world, based on fantasy fiction, and with RPG mechanics. but it also does tick a few boxes in the herd of other shows with those elements i mentioned.
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.
Mar 19, 2025
Izure Saikyou no Renkinjutsushi?
(Anime)
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first of all, this one is not exactly formulaic with the usual isekai, summoned to another world, based on fantasy fiction, and with RPG mechanics. but it also does tick a few boxes in the herd of other shows with those elements i mentioned.
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 ... 
Mar 18, 2025
Kyoto Teramachi Sanjou no Holmes
(Anime)
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meh, this one doesn't suck but it is only a 6 and barely above average. i watched this one years ago... not long after it first came out... i was quite hesitant back then because reading the synopsis i didn't figure it would be worth my time. i just forgot to put this anime on 'MyList' back then and decided to rewatch it now to ensure i treated it fairly with review, comments, and rating.
as a 'Purist Sherlockian' AKA one of the Doyle fans who almost entirely criticizes ANY thing not 'real Doyle'... most of the 'Holmes' that has come out of Japan... that disgusting ... 
Jan 30, 2025
my personal rating? kill it. kill it with fire. then shove the ashes into a canister and shoot THAT into The Sun. hopefully i can dissuade anybody else from watching this filth. i like H titles and some of the off-the-wall ones i've enjoyed are damn weird. but this show? no. kill it with fire. i technically didn't watch episodes 3 and 4, i skipped forwards through them to quickly see if they were as bad as ep2... frankly? they're worse. some of the sickest and most perverted disgusting H put out since i watched Bible Black, and i own BB on DVD. this is
...
Jun 25, 2024
Kami wa Game ni Ueteiru.
(Anime)
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tiny spoilers, but they're quite tiny.
i didn't watch the DUB, just the SUB because i'm NEVER watching this anime EVER again. i just finished ep13 about 30 minutes before writing this review. frankly. this show is just SLIGHTLY better than the WORST anime i've ever watched in 30+ years 'Ex-Arm'. i gave that one a 1/10 (MAL doesn't even HAVE a 0/10 rating in their system) and it DESERVES a 0. but the usage of the classic sci-fi idea 'human brain in a box' juuust barely inched 'Ex-Arm' out of the 'grind it up in an industrial garbage shredder, including ALL video/audio masters' category ... 
Dec 11, 2023
Dekoboko Majo no Oyako Jijou
(Anime)
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this one... definitely FUNNY! i got a hard belly laugh at least ONCE in each episode! most of the 'jokes' got a definitive snort or a genuine chuckle out of me!
for a four-panel-manga, this show had a peculiar but entertaining overall storyline. it isn't truly a story told in classical sequences: a beginning, a middle, and an end... more like... a hop here, a skip there, a jump over yonder. but the stories/vignettes in each episode don't just seem to be random snapshots of these characters' lives. there are backstories told, memories shared, and new experiences on-screen. as to the acting? Mr. Hashi... nailed ... 
Oct 2, 2023
i'm going to repeat what i said in the episode 1 discussion so that anybody's curiosity about this episode can be satisfied without having to check the forums.
frankly, this is one of those H that should never have been made. sado-asphyxiation, both autoerotic/self (girl) and FUB with her in a HEADLOCK!? while he does her from behind? nope. that's TOO extreme. the mind-control/hypnotism 'four leaf clover device' and the 'group/cult' that is doing the recruiting for this is quite the disturbing subject as well. basically, this episode is NOT for you unless you like those themes. the art is meh, barely average. animation, yet again barely average. acting, ... 
Feb 23, 2023
of course i've read all the reviews, most of them suck. because the reviewers are prudish hacks who can't get a chuckle or a laugh from the premise of the show and haven't watched past ep2 or 3 ... bring back the rule that says you can't write a review unless you've seen X amount of episodes please MAL. and one whackjob weirdo who thinks this show is some conspiracy theory or something... then lies when he/she says they've seen all 12 episodes... when ep8 just came out today/yesterday.
i've given it a consistent 8 through all 8 eps because, other than some SERIOUSLY hard-core ... 
Jan 23, 2023
thanks to Crunchyroll/Funimation i just saw the English dub in-theater last night and it was a great movie! :> lucky me, the theater was not even 20 miles away. if i wanna go see SAO Progressive Movie 2 i gotta drive a smidge over 50 miles to see that one. :(
art and animation weren't 'anime movie quality' but almost as good as TV seasons 1 & 2... there were a few sketchy places like... really REALLY long shots of 'main cast of characters' that were just 'vaguely' drawn and colored so you could 'kinda sorta' tell who was on-screen... but those shots were mostly cinematic ... 
Dec 9, 2022
Harem Camp!
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Informative  Spoiler
Well, this H title is this season's (Fall 2022) short format (around 7m each episode INCLUDING EndCredits) series.
The basic premise is this, one 'adult' guy and four 'young ladies' encounter each other out in the woods while he's camping and the ladies are looking for a spot to set up their tent etc. the ladies don't really know diddly squat about camping and the guy gives them some advice and shares his tent, food, fire etc. with them. they only brought a 'shade tent' which has no sides and some school backpacks with snacks etc. plus, three of the girls are hardly dressed for ... 
Sep 23, 2022
ok guys and gals, since nobody has reviewed this one just yet i'll give it a shot.
did you like the original anime series? did you want to see what happened after episode 12? do you want to laugh your A$$ off? well guess what, there was an episode 13 that never aired on TV and only showed up on the DVD/BR boxed set. take the comedy elements of eps 1-12. remove almost all the drama, angst, worry, and abandonment issues. but keep a small amount of the action and adventure parts... and you'll get what White Fox did in episode 13! this ep is FILLED ... |
