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I was just watching this series because I wanted something to do with my time, so I wasn't taking it too seriously.

The characters aren't really anything great - Ray is extremely underdeveloped as a main character, and strangely enough, his Embryo, Nemesis, gets perhaps the least focus of everyone, and I expected her to be a main character, but she just wasn't.

The other characters are.... better. None of them are really amazing, but the ones that kept vaguer have an air of mystery to them that makes you think they're pretty interesting, and what you do see doesn't hurt that image. That's most of ... the high powered players, they're interesting, because they aren't really explored. While Ray and Nemesis are like 4's - not good, sometimes get in the way, but ignorable, the rest of the cast is maybe a 6, and for side characters, the side characters are 8's.

The story is pretty basic, and can seem really all over the place, but the ending changed my mind on it a lot. Almost everything ties into the ending - a little too cleanly, but just roughly enough where I still really liked it. Additionally, a lot of the power and details writing was like almost entertaining. I could tell a lot of stuff had been left out in worldbuilding and mechanics, but I could usually follow along well enough and forgive it enough for most of the action and plot to make sense.

The art, animation wise, may not be the best, but I'm not the best judge of that. Some of it is generic, sure, especially in one specific place int he ending which would've been cooler if it wasn't. However, there were also multiple times where I thought that the concept being shown to me was legitimately pretty cool to see. Some of the designs are just straight up satisfying, and they stuck out to me. The ice mecha was a very nice addition to the regular mecha, and made me realize that the jaggedness and hardness of ice make it pair very well with the aesthetics of metal.

As for sound, I skip OP's and ED's, but from what I heard I think there might be different ED's? Which I'm a little surprised by, if true, but I'm not sure it is. I rarely like anime OP's, and I didn't like this one either.

The other thing the story does well is give a sense of world. Maybe we don't get to see it here, but it really feels like there's a greater plot hidden in the future volumes of the light novel - the groundwork is being set.

While I was watching it, it felt like it had the potential to be good, but wasn't. The weak main character and only a little better side characters didn't help. But I did feel like it was worth it by the last episodes.

Also, the last villain... wasn't really the best villain. Although one of the very last scenes did excite me for their potential in terms of interactions with Ray.

I didn't expect it but the top review for this is pretty accurate, although I wanna add a couple things.

Especially, as someone who *didn't* read the manga, and was perhaps expecting more.

Specifically, that the story was simple. Going into this, I was expecting for more development along the main plot line, but apparently that won't be the case. Unfortunate.

Maybe they don't go that path, but there's plenty meaningful-ness to explore in the relationship dynamics of the family, especially with Anya's position - as a fairly normal kid in an intensely stressful academic environment, with the ability to understand her parent's expectations as well as being ... privy to the nastier thoughts of her peers. That could go places. Does it go those places? So far, no, it hasn't, and reading that it's gonna stay a comedy isn't much of a surprise.

I did realize that some situations that maybe didn't need to be turned into jokes, were turned into jokes, instead of furthering plot or exploring Anya's dynamic. Also, Yor has a surprisingly small amount of screen time, especially for I think episodes 5-7.

Like you could go *deep* into Loid's character as a result of these circumstances, make him question why he became a spy, what he plans to do with his life, whether or not he should stay a spy if it puts him in danger or forces him to leave Anya/his family once that mission is done, as well as the questions of being a father, trying to understand a small child - who in this case, understands you better than you do her. There's been a little of the second - Loid pushing Anya too hard - but it's not much.

Additionally, you could go deeper into Anya - since she knows her presence as their daughter started just because of Loid's family, she likely had some doubts on whether or not Loid actually loved her like a daughter. This doesn't need to be anything huge - it could just be under the surface, and once Loid realizes he does love her, and not just for the mission, Anya relaxes a bit more.

And then trying to navigate school, both with her psychic powers (oof) and a secondary or even primary objective, Loid's mission. Doing both at the same time takes balancing, and wouldn't be easy.

Yes, the comedy around it is fine too, it's nice and cute and funny. But delving into those topics, and coming up with heartwarming solutions is what would make this a masterpiece, in my opinion.

Also I'm not entirely sure where Yor would fit in those dynamics because it kinda feels like she's Loid but less important because she's not the main character. Since it doesn't seem super plot focused, her assassin role isn't the most relevant.

That said, it would probably go in the direction of the blooming romance between her and Loid - nothing too deep or special here, but just some dedicated screentime/moments to them actually falling in love would go a long way.

First off: Please watch season two because the source material gets much better from there and the anime is very faithfully adapted. Or at least be on the lookout to see if it's good when it comes out. Don't let this first season turn you away, please.

So, I'd written a review on episode 5 since I thought the early backlash was mostly a result of cynicism against the isekai genre and the fact that this series decided to do mostly all set up in the first few episodes. If followed through on, I think those early episodes would've been looked at as pretty good, because ... by themselves those episodes don't do anything.

However, the later episodes just didn't do anything. Each episode spent it's time on one or one and a half mini-plot points - if you couldn't tell by watching it, the specific events in the isekai world are not what the story's focus is. The pacing ground to a halt, and what was the final episode should've been on seven or eight.

I just realized I haven't really summarized it, so here goes, without spoilers.

Mc and a few people get transported to a sort of isekai, are given some quests that they need to fulfill within a timeframe. Once the quest is done, they go back to their own world with no time having passed - if they fail, they die.
This is immediately a really solid premise - it should be the core of the show, but it isn't. And that's where a lot of the problems come in.

A lot of everything else is like generic isekai, but with just enough of a twist to keep it potentially interesting. For example, the respawn mechanics and pain nullification make room for potentially incredibly brutal strategies, and the level down mechanic from hurting people in universe means human conflict rather than monster conflict is extra deadly.

This almost goes somewhere and is played with slightly in the beginning, and even less later on. It's not leaned on as hard as it should be, because it's one of the main differences from generic isekai.

In between each of the quests, one of them gets a mini-quest in world to find another person to join them on their missions. This is handled a bit unclearly - at first it seems like they get to choose, which is how the mc was 'accidentally' chosen. But when we follow mc on his miniquests (yeah he gets them by himselves after, the others have nothing to do with them anymore) he doesn't get to choose and is rather given someone to recruit.

So you see the structure, right? Quest, some stuff happens in the isekai, return, recruit someone, go back, see how the isekai was changed from - wait, that's a spoiler. Why is that a spoiler? Because the very second quest with our MC, the first two girls, and the fourth girl that gets recruited, ends up taking 3 or four episodes longer than it should have - all the way up to episode 11.

And that's where the entire structure is broken. We no longer have an interplay of real world and isekai - instead, the second half of this season is all isekai. Which is not the focus of the story - all the minor conflict in that universe is nowhere near as interesting as the meta conflict of going back and forth, and their end goal, what happens when they finish enough quests and recruit enough people, etc.
^ This is foreshadowed by one of the questions they get to ask after finishing each quest, which is actually pretty cool.

Notice how I haven't said anything about what the conflict in the isekai is yet? Because it's literally not relevant or fun.

On episode twelve, they recruit the fifth guy - a 19 yr boy with some clear issues and interesting backstory. If only we'd gotten to him earlier, this anime could've been so good.

With this all said - season two has already been planned, for July 2021. So yeah, episodes 6-11 are a bore. But there's a core of great and interesting ideas that might be tackled in season 2 - or they might spend another half season on the boring, useless, isekai world again.

I had high hopes for this anime, and they weren't fulfilled. 4/10. But I'll definitely be watching season two, in hopes that they get to the interesting part.

Update after going through the manga: Wow it's a shit ton better, but also the anime adapted it basically page for page. Basically, author was figuring out their stride, as it were. This anime is barely if at all indicative of what the series is about - I wouldn't mention this if it weren't for the fact that it's getting a second season, and that might be really amazing if they continue with the faithful-ness they have here.

Although, I'm not entirely sure the second island arc is long enough to fit a complete 12 episodes, and there's no way they're getting through the drug war arc.

So yeah - this series takes the parallel world/isekai concept to its core themes- the situations our heroes go in after this arc are directly parallel to current/several years ago modern events. The author does their research and doesn't make any presumptious (aka idiotic) claims about what should work, just uses literally what we have. The time skip means they don't even have to guess at what happens in the medium/long term (which would be quite a bold statement) and instead deals with it in isolation. Some people might dislike that because it's basically avoiding the issue, but I'm not sure there's any good answer when it's so closely tied to reality.

If that sounds incredible to you, it's because it is. If it sounds very basic to you, it also is - but its done incredibly thoroughly - at least for anyone who isn't actively studying the topics, I guess - I'm not one of those people so i can't speak on their behalf.

If you think the religious war part of this season was kinda like that - no, no, not even close.