#reading isekai
Quickly burned through this one because I have also read some of the manga (like, 12 volumes of it) and the anime made some changes early on.
The thing is, the manga is already… I read it because I think the art style is cute and it’s easy to leaf through. But the plot is the most basic thing possible, and the characters are completely flat. Not a single character has any real meat to their backstory, goals, interactions, etc. In fact, most of them lack those things.
What the anime did was compress A Lot, especially in the early chapters so they could put to the first demon appearance at the end of the first episode. The first episode overall had the most changes, including a heavier emphasis on the (quote unquote) main couple, which actually led to Matthias seeming to have a rather different personality.
Fortunately, this evens out in the rest of the show, where they’re more faithful to the manga.
They definitely made an effort to create clearer plotline throughout, with the demon stuff, but tbh the manga just didn’t give them much to work with. The characters are seriously just completely flat, you can’t do much there. Unfortunately, the production values are also very average, so it can’t really hold up during fight scenes.
It’s a very whatever show, in the end. I do appreciate that they have a consistent little team, at least. That’s cute.
I tried watching/reading this one! Yeah, the utter disconnect between Kumoko and the rest of the characters made the two storylines feel like they had no reason to be involved with each other ever, and the edgy deconstruction on EVERYONE made the story in general seem rather pointless.
Around S2, it becomes clearer. We always more or less knew that the kids and Kumoko were from the same reincarnation incident, and toward the end of S1, it’s revealed that there’s a 15 year offset between them (they were all born together, but spiders don’t need time to grow lol).
Once you get around end of S1, start of S2, you get that old magician’s perspective on an encounter with Kumoko, the explanation that the dragon girl came from the egg Kumoko had found early on, Kumoko meeting the vampire baby and then seeing the same girl grown up… and you also get the fakeout that Kumoko got a human form and became the Demon King, plus the thematical (quote-unquote) stuff about how Shun had it too easy because he got to grown up in a stable, prosperous kingdom while others in their group had to struggle, but actually all of the reincarnators are “living on hard mode” as Kumoko puts it, etc etc
S1 definitely suffers somewhat from the tonal disconnect, but imo the anime wasn’t really wrong to move this stuff up. Otherwise, it would probably take even longer to start converging.
The bigger issue is that they didn’t include anything to make the human(oid) cast like… interesting or likeable or engaging in any way? I’ve dropped other shows for similar issues, where they just kind of chug away at their plot, but I just Do Not Care (recent example, “Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles"). I can let that kind of thing play in the background if it’s just bland, but if everyone is also annoying… well.
The other issue for me personally is simply that I don’t vibe with this kind of tone. The human sections and the overall future of the show post-grinding is basically Overlord. It’s just that Overlord skipped all the grinding by using Momonga’s game avatar to make him OP from the start.
I didn’t exactly love Overlord, so…
I had watched like 4 episodes when this first came out, and I decided to continue it now because I remember the anime making some changes from the manga, and I wanted to compare it to how Sleepy Princess handled it (which made some imo really good choices on the adaptation).
I got to this episode 14 and realized I just do not care about any of the storylines we’ve got going, lol.
So the thing about I’m A Spider is that the manga starts out with just Kumoko’s grinding storyline, for 6+ volumes (which is how much I read). It’s just her, killing things and leveling up to become OP without anyinteractions until D’s short phone call.
This is whatever in the manga because you can flip through it very quickly and Kumoko’s internal narration has good energy, but the anime decided that this would not roll in adaptation. The entire thing wouldn’t have been helped by how bad a lot of the monster CGI looks, so they probably weren’t entirely off.
So what they did was move forward (I assume, I didn’t get to this in the manga, but I think this isn’t purely new material) the storyline about the rest of the reincarnated class… which takes place 15+ years after Kumoko’s section.
However, the first problem you get is that these two storylines don’t really mesh well. They don’t feel like two halves of one story. The tone and the focus is just too different.
The second problem is that, frankly, neither storyline suits my tastes.
Kumoko is just grinding endlessly until you become totally broken cheat level, and then you can go fight gods while info dumping about the messed up system of this specific setting. This is a fairly common thing in modern isekai, but it’s really just not very interesting. It’s a shounen training arc except extended for volumes upon volumes, and then it’s DBZ powercreep at its worst, but you skipped through everything that came before. The vast gap in power just makes the entire thing detached and bland.
And then the class storyline has way too many characters that aren’t given any smaller arcs to make them interesting or distinguishable, until they run head first into the edgy “deconstruction” that I don’t care for. There is a Hero! But he gets betrayed because Politics! He’s framed and an outcast, his brainwashed brocon little sister blows his father’s brains out in front of him, the church is corrupt, blah blah blah
I just don’t care, man.
It’s not necessarily the adaptation’s fault (their changes weren’t entirely smoothly integrated but were probably not a bad choice), but the content just becomes increasingly disinteresting to me, and the anime quality is rather mediocre, which just makes the entire experience that much more tedious.
Very light but good.
I read some of the manga for this and ultimately dropped it for getting too repetitive, since it had no plot at all and was just sleep-related hijinks (I don’t remember where I dropped myself, but the manga has hundreds of chapters).
However, the anime does a good job of either heavily compressing what happens later in the manga or just making up whole cloth a small but present storyline throughout. Two of them, actually, with one being the demons getting more used to and attached to the princess as time goes by, and the other being about human-demon relations (the opening narration in particular starts this from the very first ep). The two come together pretty well in the last ep.
As far as the humor goes, it’s okay. There was one point where they got me and I burst out laughing, though I don’t remember which joke it was.
I can’t believe it’s finished!
This was one of the first manhwas I read (years ago now??) and it just feels very strange to see it actually completed.
It’s a manhwa I see recommended often, and for good reason. Part of the “reincarnated as a small child whose father is a heartless and terrifying tyrant, so it’s time to act cute to survive” subgenre, it’s definitely one of the better takes on the concept. The MC, the dad, and the original novel’s protag are all very enjoyable to me, and the art is gorgeous.
This is an easy recommendation for almost anyone vaguely interested in the genre.
That said, a few general complaints (spoilers):
- They do this thing I’ve seen a couple times recently, where the MC realizes that the “novel” she remembers reading during her previous life in the modern world was actually her second life, and now she is on her third life after she turned back time after her own bad end. I’m not fond of this because, imo, it’s pointlessly convoluted.
- As I’ve seen it noted, there is a middle section where Claude loses his memories and it kinda drags. But this is honestly a common issue with long stories, and I didn’t feel it was bad if you’re reading it all at once. (It’s better than whatever loop I Was The Real One seems to be stuck in right now.)
- The ending drags for about 10 chapters longer than it needed to. Half of it is romance hijinks (that don’t even get resolved from what I saw from scrolling through quickly because I lost patience) and half is an unnecessary coronation. You can stop reading after Jeanne departs without really losing anything.
The hit list:
1. Skeleton Knight in Another World
Ep 3, dropped. Its crimes are countless. Starts with sexual assault, rendered in loving detail and lingered on. Continues with a rather convoluted and contrived excuse for why the MC is OP. MC is also bland. Continues on with the female lead being stupidly confrontational, and adds on to its sins by going “look how strong she is, she doesn’t need help just like she said!” except you can just smell she’ll need help in a minute because how else will the MC wiggle into her good graces. And she does… with more sexual violence. Good times.
Aside from that, it tries (rather limply) to do a kind of old school vibe with the opening song and the spell title cards. Think like… old super robot anime. That kind of thing. But they can’t really carry it through, and it’s not nearly enough to excuse everything else.
Overall mediocre and run of the mill, but I have better things to spend my time on, even as background noise.
2. The Greatest Demon Lord Is Reborn as a Typical Nobody
Ep 3, dropped. This one is mostly just too stupid. I’ve seen a few shows with this premise of “the MC was super OP, but he decided to ‘reincarnate’ into the future because reasons and now everyone is amazed by this magic super child who is the hottest shit.” This one is like… whatever, but it is the most mediocre harem focus.
The concepts seem interesting, but I can tell they’ll never get past the stupid way they’re being presented. All this did was remind me of this one Monster High School show where the main girl was a pink-haired vampire with a cool alterego and the MC started to become a vampire too and the second girl was a succubus… it was a much better show. The character designs were also much better than this pathetic mess.
Bonus mention to how much this show cannot handle its own premise. “Typical nobody” but his dad is a super mage and everyone actively refers to him as the son of a great mage, by ep3 he’s announcing himself boldly so everyone will know his name and casually showing overpowered magic… And not even getting into how people from his old era are still around but somehow the magic from back then is treated as a secret lost art.
3. The Dawn of the Witch
Ep 3, ongoing… for now. Though not precisely on its own merits.
This shows is like… it has a fairly good concept, being not an OP protag power fantasy and not being set in a school, with a main cast that has specific backstories and personalities and a setting I at least understand and don’t mind.
But the pacing. The pacing is such a mess. I don’t know if this is an adaptation issue, but you cannot just drop two tragic backstories and a big betrayal in episode 2 and think it’s going to work, on an emotional level.
However, since beginnings are hard, I’m tentatively willing to see how it goes further in.
4. RPG Real Estate
Ep 3, dropped. This one isn’t bad, actually. But it’s just “cute girls doing cute things,” and I am not interested in that. The fantasy setting is nice in theory, but it’s just too off from my tastes.
5. Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs
Ep 1, dropped. Lasted about 10 minutes and then I’m out. I don’t need this moron with an inferiority complex (and the author with presumably the same) wasting my time shitting on a genre made for girls to begin with.
But I will say this: you should have just put the game on auto for the dialogue and looked up a guide for everything else. If you had so much trouble clearing it when it looks turn-based, that’s on you.
6. Love After World Domination
Ep 3, ongoing. I’ve actually read the manga for this. The anime adaptation is pretty good so far. Special mention to the transformation voice announcement and also the way they draw the thighs and asses on the guys.
That aside, it’s just a fluffy rom-com. It’s kind of nice to see such an uncomplicated romance sometimes.
7. SPY x FAMILY
Ep 3, ongoing. Good as expected. God, Anya is so dumb, I love her.
Going forward the two biggest questions will be whether they can keep the pacing from being too slow or too fast, and how they’ll end the season, since the manga is still ongoing. But so far at least I’m pleasantly surprised by how solid the adaptation is.
8. Ascendance of a Bookworm, S3
Ep 3 (ep29), ongoing. Bookworm is still Bookworm in the new season, without too much difference, though they are entering a new arc with more scheme-y political stuff. I enjoy it as a medium engagement show - I pay some attention to what’s going on, but I’m not super into it emotionally. It’s nice and rather different from the isekais we usually get animated.
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….And that’s about everything new this season that I’m planning to try.
Not much survived, and something else will probably bite the dust in a few more weeks, but for now I’ll go and find something else to marathon while waiting for new eps, haha.
