Didn't I Say To Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life Episode 3 Review

Crimson Vow Mean Business:
They Even Have Their Own Pose

Mile’s quest to be average takes another hit in credibility as the roommates dominate at their graduation ceremony from Hunter’s Prep School. Fortunately they have a plan and have formed the Crimson Vow, complete with their own pose, coloured smoke, and action figures ready to be sold for profit to set up their new life. Yeah, totally average Mile.

At this point it is pretty clear that this anime has no intention of following its source particularly closely. Instead it seems to have taken the four main players and gotten that group together much faster and is holding on to the tone of the story rather than the events. This comes at the cost of backstory and entire characters, but Mile’s motivation remains crystal clear. Where this could have been another case of Arifureta’s confusing narrative with characters later appearing who we had no recognition of and a protagonist left without any clear character due to the rush, the comical nature of the story here and Mile’s rather simplistic goal works. As does having the team face off against a different group entirely at their graduation.

Basically, this story is working whether you’ve read the source or not and it is light and fun even if it is leaning a little on the self-aware side. Whether someone is enjoying Average up until now will depend entirely on whether they find Mile’s attempts at being average charming or groan inducing and whether they like the chemistry between the central characters. While I’m not into self-aware comedy and the lack of a driving story is normally an issue, much like when reading the light novels of this I’m kind of just happy to go with it. It makes me smile and that is quite frankly enough.

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Where there might become a problem for this anime is the speed at which we are warping through events. While it doesn’t concern me that a lot of characters at the school got axed, and the school Mile used to attend before the Hunter’s school in the books was entirely dropped, it does concern me that we’ve covered six months in the space of three episodes. There’s an incredibly strong bond between the group of girls already which from an anime only point of view feels a little disingenuous given the short space of time we’ve seen them interacting for, though does feel real after six months of rooming together. Hopefully now that they have graduated together and formed a group the anime hits the brakes and lets us enjoy them becoming hunters together.

I’m honestly enjoying this anime. It isn’t brilliant but it gets a laugh out of me and it is good relaxing viewing each week so far. I’m very comfortable with the fact that it isn’t going to be the same as the books and actually pretty happy to see where they intend to go with the anime and where we’ll end up.