Have They Managed To Get Anything Right?
Arifureta Episode 2
It is rare that I watch a show when I have pretty much no positives to discuss. Yet Arifureta falls into a very weird space where I feel oddly compelled to continue watching mostly just to see whether they ever manage to reveal the potential of the story in the light novels while at the same time I’m just weirdly fascinated that clearly the people who have adapted this do not understand at all what readers enjoyed about the story.
After the first episode aired, there were so many comparisons made in reviews of Arifureta to That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, but the thing is, other than both being isekai there really isn’t all that much that is similar about them beyond superficial genre elements. Yet you can’t actually blame them for the comparison given the anime version of Arifureta just seems like a failed attempt at a grim version of Slime. And that’s kind of appalling for a whole bunch of reasons.
However, even ignoring the source that is being adapted and just looking at this anime, two episodes in and it is pretty bleak. Not just because of lack of contrast in the scenes within the cave that make it almost impossible to distinguish what is happening, though way to save on drawing backgrounds.
This week we get a little bit more of a flashback about how the class ended up in another world but the characterisation is a simple matter of one liners from a few of the more prominent students with the teacher wailing in the background. Not one of these people comes across as an actual person. They are stand-ins for characters that might eventually develop in the space they are occupying but they’ve yet to do anything two episodes in.
Then we have our protagonist, Hajime. Putting aside the fact that I really feel they’ve butchered his character arc as presented in the light novels beyond salvation, I’d probably accept a different Hajime except that the one presented here is incredibly boring. His transformation was instantaneous last week and this week we see none of his struggle in these incredibly tough levels. Instead we get a simple montage of him knocking off monster of the week type creatures (only he covers it all in one episode) and now we’re fifty floors further down and knocking on the golden haired vampire girls’ door. Mostly it feels like no one writing the anime had any interest in actually developing their protagonist, or even cared for a moment if he came across as anything other than a stand in, so long as they could get to the naked vampire.
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So was the naked vampire girl worth getting to? Not so far. Other than a few wispy lines of dialogue that sketch out a minimal back story she’s had no time to do anything. While Yue was a really great character in the source I’m not holding my breath at this point given the treatment the rest of the cast have gotten.
Arifureta may easily take the crown for most disappointing anime of the year. However, even if we removed any expectations readers had going in, this one isn’t even managing to hold its own against the rest of the isekai this season. It has so far been a bland and dull affair taking two episodes to jump through huge amounts of exploration and character levelling up but not taking any time to actually make us feel anything for a single character in the show.
All and all, this one is a train wreck of the highest order and it isn’t going to fall into the so bad it is amusing category. I can assure you, I’m not amused. Bemused, maybe, by how you take this story and make it this boring. I’d have settled for being a generic and fairly lame isekai over this effort.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
If you are game, check out more reviews of Arifureta.
Images from: Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest. Dir. K Yoshimoto. White Fox. 2019.
Hmm….so I’m guessing that you don’t really like this anime 😂😂
Well, good to know there are a few things I can skip still. Too bad it doesn’t fall into the category so bad it becomes good, because I tend to like those at times. Oh well, can’t win them all I guess 😊
I know, so bad it becomes good can be quite fun to watch for the sheer silliness of them (such as King’s Game). But no, this one seems to want to actually be taken seriously but so far I just can’t.
Haha..I often think back on King’s Game, and am actually still on the look out if it will ever get a sequel (probably not lol). Too bad about this one though. I will avoid it that’s for sure! 😊
I feel like what is happening here is that they decided they wanted to cover a specific part of the LN in the anime, and so they skipped over what they needed to in order to get there. One of those cases where they simply don’t have enough time, due to only having 13 episodes, to cover everything properly. And so it’s “ruined”, in a sense.
That said, I also think that there is probably going to be a big divide between opinions for this one based on whether or not people have read the LN. Already on MAL for example the two reviews are “This isn’t good, they butchered it, read the LN” and “This is fun, I haven’t read the LN and don’t care to”. That pattern will probably continue.
Even without reading the source though, this is perhaps the least interesting isekai anime start for this season in terms of what they have presented in the first two episodes. It is such a shame.
One thing is for sure, many studios are pulling out their isekai anime, and not very many of them seem to understand how to make a good isekai!
There’s something kind of fun about generic isekai though, at least I find it quite enjoyable. It is nice every now and then to find a really good story that uses the tropes. But then every now and then we get something like this which seems confused about what it wants to be and isn’t really doing anything particularly well.
For it to have got you this angry, I need to get my hands on the light novel pronto. As someone who hasn’t read the books, the second episode was much better than the first, but I’d agreed there’s been no development and things have been far too rushed. Maybe trying to fit it into 13 episodes wasn’t the best idea.
I am amazed it has managed to annoy me this much. I’m very accepting of adaptations that take liberties with the source. The new form of the story needs alterations to make the story work in that medium. However, what they’ve presented here is just not good even without the light novel comparison. It is certainly the weakest of the isekai anime released this season. And yes, this episode was better than the first one, but that wouldn’t have been hard given the first episode is probably the worst first episode I’ve seen for an anime that I haven’t instantly dropped in a long time.