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The idea for the series is interesting. The hook is basically:

"A man gets turned into a little girl by his sister. Now he has to live life as a girl. How will he handle this?"

But like many series recently that have an interesting or "unique" premise, the hook only exists to get you to start watching, and then is quickly abandoned for a more run of the mill series.

Anyway, the problem here is, the protagonist being a former (NEET) man, probably about 20 years old, being transformed into a cute middle school aged girl, is largely irrelevant to the story.
After just a handful of episodes, ... he no longer seems to particularly care about being a girl. He doesn't express much interest in returning to being a man. He doesn't seem to have any trouble fitting in with middle school aged kids. Etc.

His sister doesn't seem to really care about the fact that she completely changed her brother's life. Their parents are nowhere to be seen (they live overseas), and the protagonist was previously a hikikomori neet with apparently no friends or anything, so the only person that actually knows the previous male version of the protag, is most conveniently, the sister.

My point here is, that it is designed to quickly turn into a typical slice of life anime with cute girls doing cute things. There are a lot of interesting stories and scenarios you could tell with the premise of the series, but it is entirely abandoned.

The protagonist will every once in a while mention how he wants to return to being a man, or there will be other mentions of how he used to be a man, but really, this is only done because otherwise you would forget this is even supposed to be a TS story to begin with. His actions throughout the series do not reflect this desire.

All that being said, the girls are definitely cute, the humour is good, and so is the animation. So if you are looking for a slice of life anime filled with cute girls, then this anime is probably worth watching, and I think it is enjoyable for that.

However, if you want to watch this show for the TS aspect and NOT the CGDCT aspect, then I would not recommend this show, because it has no depth in regards to the TS and the show clearly has no interest in exploring that angle of the story.

Personally, I enjoy it because the girls are really cute and so is the art, though I wish it focused more on the TS.

TL;DR
Watch this show if you want cute girls doing cute things.

Don't watch this show if you just want an interesting TS story.

No spoilers for the first part. There will be marked spoilers after the first part, for a bit of a longer read.

This is a romcom that does not have a satisfying conclusion.
For me, this is an absolute deal breaker. There is nothing I hate more than to read/watch an entire series, only to find out there is no resolution to anything that was set up throughout the series. There is no real payoff to any of the romance building. In a romcom.
So if you are anything like me, then don't bother with School Rumble. It isn't worth your time.

It's quite clear the author was just ... making it up as he went, and had no long term plans. He likes to write climactic scenes (to hook the reader), but doesn't like to follow through (that would require an actual plan), so everything is just misunderstanding on top of misunderstanding that never goes anywhere.

But it extends even further than that. The author can't seem to decide what genre he wants to write. It will change from being a standard romcom, to just a surreal gag based comedy series, over and over. Even the protagonist seems to be undecided. While the protagonist is supposed to be Tenma, her actual role in the story isn't that large, and at times it ends up feeling like Harima is the protagonist instead.

You'll have your climactic scene (imagine a love triangle, where one girl sees her love interest kiss another girl) only to be followed by several chapters of unrelated characters doing other stuff. Then, when it finally comes back to the continuation we were all waiting for of that scene, it is just played off as some misunderstanding and there is no real pay off. This is basically the entire series.

The comedy and characters are genuinely good at times, so it's really unfortunate that the series ended up like this.









[spoilers ahead]



The first problem, is Tenma and Karasuma. Tenma's affection is originally supposed to be some kind of gag. It isn't really that "serious", if that makes sense. Harima likes Tenma, but Tenma likes Karasuma. Karasuma though, is a completely plain, generic look character who doesn't talk or do much. He only exists to create the unrequited love of Harima for Tenma. Consider when early on in the story, when it is raining, and Tenma wants to walk home with Karasuma sharing an umbrella. Karasuma says he has a kappa (rain coat) and so turns her down. But then he is dressed like an actual kappa (the youkai), with a shell and everything.
Or consider when Tenma asks Karasuma which he likes more, her or curry, and he says curry.
Or consider when Tenma tries to ride to school on a bike, because she wants to go to school with Karasuma, but he is ridiculously fast so she is basically just chasing after him. Harima has the same idea, and is chasing after Tenma with his own bike. So you have Karasuma, completely oblivious, Tenma who wants to ride with Karasuma, and Harima who wants to ride with Tenma.
This is Karasuma's character and his relationship with Tenma.

Now, compare that with the other relationships in the series. Sawachika and Yakumo towards Harima, for example. These are taken more seriously, because they aren't gags. There is actual build up, and it is somewhat understandable why they might love Harima. Compared to the other relationships presented, Tenma's just feels like she is a kid who has a crush, and that's it.

The second problem is the overall lack of attention towards romance, even though this is a romcom. While there is some drama and relationship building in the series, it generally just comes off as clickbait (for lack of a better term), and never really goes any where. There are too many side characters introduced, just to act as filler, when really a lot of that time should've been spent on Sawachika, Tenma, Yakumo, and Harima. There is too much attention focused on misunderstandings instead of actual romance.
Consider when Harima accidentally confesses his love to Sawachika, thinking it is Tenma. Or how Sawachika sees Harima and her name written on the piece of paper. These misunderstandings are never actually addressed or resolved, so throughout most of the series, she thinks Harima is in love with her. In reality they should've been resolved very quickly, to create romantic drama between Tenma and Sawachika (there is a tiny bit of this, but only near the end). Even better, they should've never happened in the first place, and Sawachika could just fall in love with Harima through his actions. Throughout these encounters, Harima himself could open up more to Sawachika, and realise she is actually a good girl and fun to be with (he doesn't necessarily need to fall in love with her here).

The final problem, is the ending, which is a culmination of these problems.
First, Karasuma. You can't just suddenly decide to make Karasuma and Karasuma x Tenma a serious thing. He was a gag character and plot device throughout most of the series. He even disappears for large parts of the series because he is ultimately a boring character and there isn't much to do with him. The sudden revelation that he is actually in love with Tenma but has a serious illness so he can't respond to her feelings and has to leave the country, is absolutely terrible writing. You can't suddenly make me care about this relationship, when you haven't worked for it the entire series.
It doesn't even make any sense. If Karasuma has some incurable illness where he will lose all his memories, then why does he have to go to a hospital in the US? If there is no cure it doesn't matter whether he is in hospital in Japan or anywhere else. There is literally no reason for him to go to America.
What's worse is Tenma follows him and stays with him in America to look after him. Why? How? She is a minor. Did she drop out of school or what? What visa could she even possibly be on? She says she is going to become a doctor to cure his illness. How? She is an idiot. It is established throughout the series. She is just going to leave Yakumo and everybody else behind, drop out of school, and stay in a foreign country she can't speak the language of or anything? Yeah, I'm sure that is exactly what Karasuma would've wanted.
It should've ended as unrequited love for Tenma, and that's it. None of this nonsense. She could realise that she was just a kid and maybe her feelings for Karasuma weren't what she thought they were. Even better, this could've been built up throughout the series. Maybe she could've slowly gotten closer to Harima, but because of her obsession with Karasuma, not have been able to see that.

Second, Harima and Sawachika.
As I said earlier, Harima could've slowly grown closer to Sawachika throughout the series, but this never happens. Almost everything in the series is Harima to Sawachika, be it misunderstandings or otherwise. Lots is done to make Sawachika fall for Harima, but nothing the other way around. Because of this, in the ending, Harima still does not understand Sawachika at all and is very cold to her. This is resolved in an emotional exchange between the two. But... why now? Why not earlier in the series so we could've had a more interesting romcom? Then it immediately jumps to some nonsense about Harima being her fake fiancé so she can stay in Japan. Please note, this doesn't actually go anywhere. This is literally amongst the last few chapters of the manga. Also, there is still no confession from her.

Third, the ending itself.
After Harima decides to be Sawachika's fake fiancé, he realises he has no place to stay. So he ends up moving in with Yakumo. But what is the purpose of all this? Literally nothing happens. There is no confession or anything from Yakumo. There is no romcom with Harima, Sawachika, and Yakumo. There is nothing.
I kid you not, in the next chapter, there is a time skip of some undefined amount of time into the future (probably a year or two). The characters are no longer in school, and Harima is no longer around. What happened to Harima's engagement with Sawachika and their relationship? What happened with Harima living with Yakumo? If you aren't going to do anything with it, then why did you set it up in the first place?
The entire ending arc of the series, feels like the author just went, "Screw it, I don't want to write this any more" and just defecated out the crappiest, laziest, non-committal ending he could think of.

This is a show created to promote a gacha game that ended service just half a year after the show aired.
In the future, fish have disappeared from the Earth's oceans.
In response to this, the government takes the only rational course of action: create oceans in space to be fished from.
You might be thinking, "Surely if we have the technology to create oceans in space that house fish, it would be much easier to just repopulate the Earth's oceans, or at least create fisheries on Earth right?".
Or you might also be thinking, "The amount of money it would take to create these space seas, and launch ... rockets into space every time you want to fish from them, the entire thing would be so cost prohibitive nobody would be able to afford to buy fish in the first place, right?".

Unfortunately, I don't have any good answers for you, and neither does the anime.

However, the main character is extremely cute, and I love her voice. The show is pretty funny too, often unintentionally.
If you want to watch a funny show with cute girls voiced by amateurs, then turn your brain off, and give this show a watch.

You know how in some anime, they will have a recap episode? Where they just show bits of scenes that happened from the previous episode?

Now imagine you have a series, where a few characters watch a recap of what has happened previously. Except there is no "previous episode" where the scenes are taken from, so these bits of scenes are all we get. And the scenes are out of order. And this is the entirety of the series, just watching recap episodes.

This is Isekai Ojisan. This is all it is. The three characters, Ojisan, Takafumi, and Takafumi's childhood friend sit around a table watching these ... "recap episodes". The story never goes anywhere, because the story is literally just the Ojisan talking about things that previously happened, so it has nowhere to go.

The series is also interspersed with chapters that takes place entirely in the real world, but these aren't any better, because they typically just feel like filler and have no impact on the plot. Well that is sort of misleading, because that implies there is a plot in the first place, but you get the idea.

The humour is OK in the beginning, but it gets tiring hearing the same jokes over and over again. I like Sega as much as the next guy, but it already feels like the references have been run into the ground after a few volumes.

Everything that is interesting, all the best characters, only exist in these flashbacks. The story that you would want to actually read, happened before the story of the manga takes place. Honestly, the series would be 100 times better, if there was no real world stuff, and it started like any other isekai story, where the protagonist (Ojisan) gets transported to an isekai, and goes on adventures. And I'm saying that as a guy who has long been tired of trash isekai stories. The real world aspect is just so boring and serves no purpose.

It might sound like an interesting twist on the genre, but you actually have to do more with it. You can't just stop right there and keep doing the same thing over and over. No joke, you could read the first volume, then the most recent volume (7) and there would be almost no difference.

It's especially frustrating, because I think there is a decent manga somewhere in there, and it would be so easy to make more interesting. As an example, have the first couple volumes the same as they are, establish the characters and setting, have the Ojisan show some stuff that happened in the isekai. Cool. But then, how about some characters from the Isekai come into the real world, maybe chasing after Ojisan? Maybe similar to Hataraku Maou-sama? You good have some bad guys, or monsters or something come into the real world too, to create some antagonist or tension that the plot could use. You could instead maybe have a situation like that series GATE, where maybe the two worlds are connected or merge. You could even just have the girls come over and turn it into a romcom, and it would still be infinitely more interesting.
Or on the reverse, you could have Ojisan go back into the isekai, but maybe this time Takafumi goes with him. My point is, there are so many ways the manga could've been continued to create a much more enjoyable series.

In summary, this is a series that started with an interesting premise, but ultimately fails to do anything with it, leaving us with a boring story that goes nowhere, chapter after chapter. I do not recommend this series.
The elf girl is cute though.

Another trashy isekai anime, this time under the guise of being trapped in an otome game setting.

Like many poorly written light novels, the title serves as both a short summary, and to describe a gimmick to make you interested in the series. Otherwise, how else would you discern it from the hundreds of other isekai series? Just like most works that follow this approach though, the title ends up having nothing to do with the series.

This is supposedly a story about a mob character trapped in an otome game, hence the title. However, the protagonist ceases to be a "mob" character after the first episode. ... He is suddenly incredibly rich, and has some cheat AI supporting him that can basically do whatever he wants it to do. He is a typical, modern isekai protag.
So the mob setting disappears right away, even though the author likes to continually tell us otherwise. (just saying you are a mob character doesn't make it true.)

So what about the otome game setting? Don't worry, that falls by the wayside immediately as well.
In the beginning, it would appear that men have almost no rights. They just exist to be married off to women. Women as well, have male slaves and stuff. Ignore the fact that none of this makes sense when you start to think about it (how do they support their population?). Instead, focus on how this is a matriarchy that is unfair for men. Women look down on men. etc.
As the anime goes on though, we realise that this is just a typical isekai. The two main heroines are basically just regular heroines. They never appear to look down on men or anything. The 5 dudes from the otome game are still worshipped by all the girls at the school (even after they are stripped of their status).
The setting only exists to get you to start reading (or in this case, to start watching).

The story itself, I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be about. It's not clear to me what the protagonist is trying to do. In the latter half of the series, it seems the protagonist is trying to make events fold out like they do in the game, but it's not very clear why, and he doesn't do a good job about it anyway. Nothing in the series is explained particularly well. In the beginning of the series, I believe he is trying to find a nice girl to get married to, but the only thing he does in regards to that for the entire series is have a tea party in the very beginning.

The characters are very generic. There is not much in the way of character development. The two main girls just spend most of the series being sad, or being the centre of some drama. I can't tell you much about the two main girls though, because the anime never tells us much either. I sat through 12 episodes, and I still know practically nothing about them.
All the other characters in the show are just side characters. Nothing more really to them.

Outside the action, the art is ok. The show has mech battles though, and they aren't particularly interesting. It's not that the art is bad, it's just not very exciting either.

I think the show would've worked better as a comedy. The most enjoyable part of the entire series was when he was playing the otome game, before going to the isekai. Because it was funny. A series making fun of otome game tropes could've been a lot better.

I will try to divide this review into two parts. The first part being pretty much spoiler free in terms of specific details and events (though it is impossible to talk about the plot without including some general information), and a second part which is basically just a spoiler filled place for me to talk about problems I have, that may be useful or interesting to people actually invested in the game.

--- non-spoilery review ---

This is a show based on a game by the same name.
In the game, there is a point where the plot could possibly diverge. During a climactic, sort of final battle, ... the protagonist gets injured and is given a choice to go back and fight, or to give up, and "reset" the world. Resetting the world means going back to the beginning, and giving up on all his bonds. Or in other words, giving up all the relationships he has formed over the course of the story with all the characters, all the adventures they've had, all the memories. Giving up all this, to "try again".
So you can choose to give up and try again, or not give up and get back into the fight.
Giving up, leads to a bad ending in the game. The protagonist wakes up to Kokkoro singing him a lullaby, the same as when he first met her, but he is crying for all that he lost, even though he doesn't remember.
Going back to the fight continues the story, and the story in the game currently is a continuation of that.

The anime follows this "bad ending" scenario. It is kind of a what-if. An alternate timeline, that continues from his choice of giving up.
This is the premise for the story, and as such, the overall plot should be about the protagonist, Yuuki, regaining all he lost, and this time doing things right.
Instead, he is inexplicably relegated to being essentially a side-character for the show, while the real protagonists are Pecorine and Kyaru. He very rarely has any actual one on one scenes with other characters, and I could probably count the number of times he has any meaningful interaction with Kyaru, Peco, and Kokkoro, on one hand. Even if we add all three of them up.
Whereas in the game, Yuuki has many one on one interactions with the characters, directly creating relationships and friendships between HIM specifically and the other characters, in the anime all of the relationships are built between the other members of his guild, bishokuden, while he just kind of stands around.
This is completely at odds with the premise that they have created for this show, and clashes with the ending.
In fact, the staff frequently make strange choices/changes, only to sort of write themselves into a corner, and then write in things that superficially undo those changes.

The anime has way too many characters that are completely useless to the story, and only serve to eat up episodes that could've been used in expanding existing characters/relationships/plot. Then after their introduction episode, the characters are only brought back in some token, completely meaningless appearance at the end, if they even get brought back at all. Not to mention, all this does is confuse all of the anime-only's who are not going to keep track of all these characters dumped on them every week.
Then we have all the OC characters. Characters who only exist in the anime for gags, or characters who eat up an episode to themselves only to never be seen again (like in episode 1). Here is an idea, why not use existing characters actually from the game for these roles?
Finally, on characters, the anime is missing many characters that are very important to the plot, and whose absence makes entirely no sense. I don't even understand how they could do a proper season 3, because the presence of some of these missing characters in this first arc of the story is pretty important to a season 3.

The anime suffers from an overall lack of direction. A failure to understand what Princess Connect is. It feels like they wanted to do something different from the game, but it ends up just being a vastly inferior version of that story.
If they chose to do this version of the story with an intention to attract new fans to Princess Connect, because they wouldn't be familiar with the story from the game or its prequel, then they have failed at this because you either have slice of life episodes where nothing happens, or fast and loose plot out of nowhere. Couples with the fact the new characters are thrown at you left and right, with no way to possibly remember them, because the anime doesn't care about having you know the characters.

I will give credit where credit is due though.
The art game is on point. This show clearly had a good budget, and talented artists. There are many very well done action scenes, and it is generally very pleasing to look at.

In summary, this is a poor adaptation of a game, but it has a high budget with great art. They should've just stuck to slice of life stuff, because they have no idea how to handle the story or the lore. If you don't know the source material, you will probably find yourself lost as the show goes on.
People who just want to see cute girls, cool fight scenes, and turn off their brains for anything story related will probably enjoy it, I guess.




---spoilery rant stuff---



In regards to key characters being missing, and why this is a problem.
The major problem here, is the absence of Twinkle Wish members Yui, Rei, and Hiyori.
To simplify things, the world that Re Dive takes place in, is a world that is created by Yui's wish at the end of the original game. It is a world created to fulfil her wish, and as such, whenever the conditions of her wish can no longer be met, the world resets and starts again. This is why the world loops. So what is her wish? Her wish is to be with Yuuki forever (I'm paraphrasing). So whenever she, or Yuuki, dies then the wish can no longer be true and so the world resets.
So how can Yui never show up in the first two seasons? Her wish is to basically be with Yuuki. The world is created to grant her wish. Yet the writers treat her like she doesn't exist and is a character from a previous loop.
Further more, the second arc of the story heavily revolves around Yui, her wish, the circumstances of the world, etc. In the game, there is a lot of foreshadowing towards this during the first arc of the story. In the anime, because they have never introduced her, they have also never done any real foreshadowing to the further events. And if they do decide to do a season 3, what are they going to do, make Yui suddenly appear now and act like the viewers should care about her?
There are some other character's whose absence does not make any sense. For example, Masaki. Masaki is Neneka's Princess Knight, just like Yuuki is Labyrista's Princess Knight. So where the hell is he, when Neneka is captured and all that? In the game, he works together with everyone to rescue her. In the anime, I guess he is on vacation. Or where is Muimi? Okuto? etc. All relatively important characters to the story.

Let's go over some of the other plot problems.
For some reason, looping has made certain characters weaker. Namely Yuuki and Kaiser Insight.
Now, this doesn't make any sense, because this never happened in any other loops, it isn't suggested to be something that would happen if they did another loop in the game, and there is no real reason why Kaiser Insight would lose her special ability, and not any of the other Seven Crowns members. Kaiser Insight is not the one creating the loops and has nothing to do with it, so why would it affect her?
Allow me to elaborate on her ability, and why this is a problem. Each member of the Seven Crowns has a special ability. The abilities have a special name that I am not going to bother trying to translate. Neneka's is the ability to copy things. She can create copies of herself or other things she has copied (for example other people), or she can change her own appearance as well. Labyrista is object creation/change. She can manipulate the world. Christina is a combat only ability which basically allows her to change the enemy's hit chance to 0% and her own hit chance to 100% (guaranteed dodge and attack).
Kaiser Insight's special ability allows her to read all of the world's data, and by doing so this allows her to predict her enemies movements etc beforehand, making her difficult to fight (ignore the fact I am saying her instead of him). This ability ALSO allows her to know about previous loops, because she can read the world's data.
There are only a handful of characters who know about previous loops, because their special ability allows them to. Christina's, for example, is a combat only ability, and so she knows nothing of previous loops. Because Kaiser Insight can no longer use this ability, she should no longer have any knowledge of the previous loops. Furthermore, she should also be much easier to fight.
In my review, I wrote that the writers had pointlessly written themselves into a corner on occasion in the show. This is an example of that. If Kaiser Insight can no longer use her ability, which is what makes her strong, then she would no longer be much of a threat for the cast. So in order to rectify the problem that they created, they have Labyrista inexplicably fight her and lose, only to get captured and give her powers to Kaiser Insight. So what was the point in making this change to Kaiser Insight's character? Debuff her to make her weaker, only to buff her again through something else. Why not just have her not lose that ability in the first place?
It's the same story with Yuuki. They create a needless dilemma with Yuuki in that he cannot use his powers because of all the looping, only to give Kokkoro a key out of nowhere to fix him. So why have this plot thread in the first place?

They also actively avoid all mention of the real world. I imagine this is why Muimi is not in the show, because she actually has memories of the real world, and tries to explain it to others. The real world is VERY important to the story of Princess Connect. Outside of that extremely brief scene with Kiiri, where you can't even really tell what's going on and might not even know it is the real world if you haven't played the game, it never gets brought up.
Labrysta's entire objective is to free everyone from the MMORPG they are stuck in, and to send them back to the real world. It is also Ameth's goal. Yet we never really see any of this in the anime.
At the end of the season, Peco reunites with her parents. It is a tearful joyous moment. But... they are just NPC's. They are not her real parents, and any memories she has of them are fake. I feel like they are trying to ignore the real world aspect of the anime, and treat it as though it is just a fantasy world like in konosuba, so they can do things like this. However, it is a complete disregard of Princess Connects plot, and overall themes.

There are many other problems with the anime.
The fact that Yuuki barely speaks, and when he does he only speaks like a toddler. In the game he is a silent protagonist because of the fact that it is a game. However he can still speak normally, and shouldn't be treated this way in the anime.

The fact that they removed all romance. Peco and Kyaru are in love with Yuuki in the game (as is virtually everyone...) whereas in the anime, most people don't seem to give a poop about him.

The changes to characters, such as Kyaru and how she acts with Peco. Kokkoro's character. So many others. Some are still the same though.

The fact that they do not understand the story of Princess Connect. For example, at the end, Yuuki gets gravely wounded. Labyrista says if he chooses to go back and fails, his very existence will be completely lost. This is nonsense, because if Yuuki dies, that just means that a new loop will start. He has died many times in fact. The anime also presents it as though Labyrista is the one causing the resets, when in actuality, she has nothing to do with it.

Or consider that in the game, in the most recent story part, Labyrista gets mortally wounded via a blade, but she saves herself by basically stitching her insides back up together on the fly. She does this because of her special ability, and the fact she is a doctor. Then she does the same thing again shortly after. Meanwhile in the anime, she gets stabbed once and it's gg.

The contradictions they make to the story they themselves wrote. Labyrista fights one on one with Kaiser Insight, which is very out of character for her. It is a gamble. Kaiser Insight mentions this, and Labyrista explains that it is because they are out of time. Yet at the end when Yuuki gets wounded, she asks him if he wants to reset or not, like it's no big deal to go through more loops. I thought we were out of time?

Honestly, I could go on forever. But I have already written a bunch of text that nobody is going to read. So I will stop here.
Just allow me to say what I think they should've done instead.
I think they should've made an adaptation of the original game. Most Princess Connect players are not familiar with the original game, because it wasn't that popular, and it ended service after just a year or so. It also didn't have any anime scenes like in the current game, Re Dive. At the same time, the original game is really important story wise for the current game, so fans would've gotten a lot out of it, and new viewers could get into the anime and then jump into the current game which continues immediately after.
Then for a second series, they could've started Re Dive. They could largely follow the game, and they wouldn't have to reintroduce all the characters because we already know them from the first series. I think this would've been really interesting.

There are a lot of negative reviews for this series, so I wanted to provide my own input.
This show is absolutely HILARIOUS. I feel a lot of people are watching this show for the wrong reasons. Yes the story is bad. Yes the characters are 2 dimensional. But again, the comedy is top notch.

The art is just incredible. The main heroine (the imouto) will go from looking like 10 different people within the same episode. Her face will melt between a cute as heck little sister to a cross-eyed goblin, and it is amazing. She will be on her bed with a normal pillow, then ... the next second the pillow has become a gigantic shark pillow. She will be in the most awkward, physically unnatural poses, and I just can't stop laughing.

As if that isn't enough, the over the top voice acting, for the mostly absolute nonsense dialogue drives it all home.

There is a ton of entertainment value to be had here. Watch this as an over the top surreal comedy, and you will have a good time.

A number of years ago, a friend at work recommended me the light novel this anime is based on, but I never got around to reading it.
There have been so many poor isekai anime over the past few years, that I have gotten to the point where I typically just ignore them. But I remember being recommended this, so that when it started airing I decided to watch it.

The story starts off pretty similar to many recent isekai stories. The bland protagonist who just goes day by day, with nothing eventful, no romantic life, etc suddenly finds himself transported (after he dies in this case) ... to another world. This time we have a twist though. He is reincarnated as a slime!

Some people will try to trick you into thinking this is different from all the other poorly written, OP protagonist, isekai stories. But it isn't. Even as a slime, he is OP as all hell. Everything just seems to work out for our protagonist. And what's more, after the beginning he gets a human form, and the slime bit becomes entirely irrelevant to the story. Oh, and of course, there is a cast of attractive female characters who are devoted to our protagonist.

There are no stakes. There is no tension. It falls into the same trap as all these rubbish isekai stories. That is, there is no reason for it to be an isekai story. The fact that the protagonist is a late 30s Japanese salary man, doesn't matter. It doesn't add anything to the story. The protagonist could've been a slime who had just so happened to be born in that cave, met that dragon, and gained some powers, and nothing would change. His personality when he was in our world, his name, his appearance, everything has changed. So why does it need to be isekai? The isekai here only serves as poorly written wish fulfillment and nothing else.

Here is an example of an isekai done well, before this recent isekai boom. Zero no Tsukaima. Don't get me wrong, I am not going to say that that is a good series, merely talking in regards to the isekai. The protagonist in Zero no Tsukaima, Saitou, is a guy from our world who suddenly finds himself summoned to an isekai. His goal, is to return back to our world. He doesn't want to be stuck in this isekai. He struggles with the cultural differences between the isekai and our world. He doesn't agree with/understand the class divisions. He acts differently from the characters in the world he goes to, he acts more like one of us.

There is none of that in Slime. It's just, hey watch me be OP in this world, and do whatever I want. So really, in terms of story it isn't that far removed from smartphone isekai or Death March.

Now with all that being said, what does set it apart from the other trashy isekai stories, is this anime actually has pretty good production values. The sound is good. The animation is good. The fights can be pretty entertaining.
If you don't want to think, and just want to watch a generic isekai anime, then this could be a good choice. It isn't doing anything unique or impressive, but it isn't overly offensive, and you could certainly do worse in isekai choices. If you watched Death March or one of those smartphone isekais, or are thinking about it (please don't), then you may as well watch this.

After having finished it yesterday, I must say. This show is awful. It makes absolutely no sense. The pacing is absurd. At the end of the series I still didn't understand what the heck I was watching. And they end the series like there will be a season 2, but I doubt it will sell enough for one.

The only good thing about the show, were the OPs. Which, were quite good I have to say.