Why Not Remind The Audience How Poor The Opening Act Was
Arifureta Episode 5.5
I’ve previously devoted a feature to discussing my feelings on recap episodes. When they work, when they don’t, and wondering just why they even bother including them sometimes. Well, Arifureta has me scratching my head and wondering why on earth it bothered as after the small hope at the end of the last episode that maybe we were finally moving beyond the atrocious start to this anime they felt the need to rehash the whole thing in small pieces.
About the only decent thing this recap brought was it put the events in order and potentially reminded us of the classmates’ names so when they become important further down the line we might have a chance of recalling who they even are. But that is such a small accomplishment and could have been solved if they hadn’t butchered the introduction in the first place.
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Nope, there’s no new insight, no new perspective, and only the faintest, blink and you’ll miss it teaser for a new character coming. It really is just a cut up version of the first five episodes with minimal voice over linking the scenes and events. What is sad is that it is almost a more coherent telling of the first five episodes than the first five episodes were.
I guess we’ll see if next week if we can finally get the right foot facing forward with this series of if this is as good as it is going to get.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
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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.