Seirei Gensouki

When 20-year-old college student Haruto Amakawa dies in a traffic accident, he does not expect to wake up in an unfamiliar world in the body of a young boy named Rio. As their memories and personas fuse, Rio realizes that he now also possesses magical powers. He is relieved to find that his burning passion for revenge against his mother's murderers has not subsided, despite his newly changed identity.

Not soon after, Rio comes across the kidnapped princess of the Bertram Kingdom and saves her without hesitation. To express his gratitude, the king grants him the opportunity to enroll in the Bertram Royal Academy. Believing this to be a new chapter in his life, he is excited to study at this prestigious academy, but life here proves to be difficult for him, a slum-dweller surrounded by the majestic children of nobles.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Rio Main

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu Japanese

Claire, Celia Main

Fujita, Akane Japanese

Latifa Main

Kusunoki, Tomori Japanese

Aishia Supporting

Kuwahara, Yuuki Japanese

Ayase, Miharu Supporting

Harada, Sayaka Japanese

Cretia, Liselotte Supporting

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Ruri Supporting

Omigawa, Chiaki Japanese

Beltrum, Flora Supporting

Hondo, Kaede Japanese

Beltrum, Christina Supporting

Suzushiro, Sayumi Japanese

Sayo Supporting

Kubo, Yurika Japanese

Kurosu, Nobuhiko Producer

Aitani, Atsushi Producer

Nishi, Kei Producer

Oomori, Shinji Producer

Reviews

Jan 23, 2026

LightTovel

Recommended

Good anime, better light novels

I rated this 8/10 because when I watched it I did enjoy it enough to get into the light novels, but after reading the light novels, I might lower that rating to like 6 or 7.

The setup is fairly typical of isekais and fantasy animes in general, truck-kun does some work in the first 10 minutes of the anime, of course. The key things that made me enjoy this one over others were the level of ambition and the characters. The main character is very likable, but he's not perfect and not entirely OP. He also definitely faces ... setbacks and adversities that are not immediately solved with power. There is a mix of trope-y clearly good and clearly bad side characters, but there are also a few that are in the middle. Next, **the level of ambition is very high**. The world of this story is huge, and the recurring cast is quite large. This is because S1 only covers the beginning of the prologue of the source material. It's almost 12 episodes of character introductions as much as anything.

I wish we had more franchises like this one where they actually try to build out a world and have some level of commitment to at least a couple seasons rather than "generic dungeon crawler winter 2026" that gets a one-off season. Spirit Chronicles (as far as you know from S1 and S2) doesn't stray too far from the known formulas, but I found that those formulas were used pretty well, and honestly I came here for a fantasy adventure story, and I got what I came for.

For comparison to the light novels, season 1 of the anime covers Volumes 1, 2, 3, and 5, skipping 4. That's quite rushed and you can feel it in the anime. They skipped 4 because with some timeline rejiggering, 5 is a better stopping point for an anime, and it doesn't break things too badly. That said, between the pace of the anime and the timeline changes, I would say there is definitely something lost from the light novels. The light novels just do a better job of thoroughly explaining things (honestly sometimes too thoroughly), especially in regards to everyone's inner monologues. The anime also leaves out several fun easter eggs / cabbage man type things that weren't critical but did make it feel less like a plot speedrun.

PS: @MrSlamboni mentioned that the MC never does anything in response to certain mistreatments, believe me, that comes up later, maybe 3-4 seasons worth of anime later. This story is just that much larger than one season of anime.

PPS: I would ignore about half of KANLen09's review. S2 covers a lot of what they were angsty about, and since it didn't even seem like they had read the light novels themselves, their comparisons to the light novels (and anger therein) come secondhand. If you want to be angry about something, be angry that Latifa's backstory in the light novels gets similar page-time to Miharu's but in the anime it's not even mentioned. However, I understand why they had to speedrun a lot of things. It would have been a huge risk to cover any less than they did because the only other suitable "season ender" would have been the end of Volume 1. That would have meant dedicating an entire season to an arc that could comfortably be covered in 4-6 episodes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 2, 2024

MrSlamboni

Mixed Feelings

Average, inoffensive, unassuming, unimpressive. If I could summarize everything, my reaction to this entire show is the neutral face emoji. This isn't a show that just tapes together 60 isekai tropes and calls it a day, but it also never rises above that level of quality. When I finished watching Spirit Chronicles, I wasn't annoyed like when I watch something bad. I also wasn't in a good mood either. I left just like I came, forgetting everything an hour later. In fact, I had to rewatch it just to remember what happened.

The plot was a little boring, but not insulting or painful to watch. It ... just had nothing impressive about it whatsoever. It is the usual formula of: Rio (MC) is secretly cool --> Hogwarts for nobility --> discrimination against Rio for being a peasant featuring the nobles who are comically evil assholes. The deviation here is that the story doesn't follow a line where the MC "proves them wrong by doing some sicko mode moves". It happens, but generally doesn't change much. Then it's the usual isekai from there onwards.

I bring this up to illustrate a larger point that occurs over the entire story. Spirit Chronicles DOES deviate from the norm here and there, but it's not in any way that results in a meaningful improvement for the story. It is different in technicalities, but overall it is just the same. However, you take what you can get. It's better to watch something with differences rather than stock characters repeating stock phrases for 12 episodes in a stock story.

Speaking of the discrimination due to nobles, in this specific example, the lack of any meaningful retribution against the discrimination Rio faces leaves a sour taste in the viewer's mouth. He just gets picked on and nothing happens in return. Rio does nothing about it and doesn't seem to want to do anything about it. There is no hint of ill-will whatsoever. This is unbelievable to the viewer because the main plot is a revenge plot, yet Rio does not seem interested in revenge the first few episodes.

Rio does not have any personality except being the protagonist cardboard cutout. His dialogue is the most boring, standard thing ever. It is not entirely made of the usual isekai one-liners, but it's just either formalities or neutral statements like "What is that? Who are you?" etc. There is no character behind anything he says or does. He also looks like a Final Fantasy character so that's a minus.

As for the characters, the main villain who does things in the background is okay. Some of the important side characters like Celia, the princesses and Latifa were fine. Everyone in the spirit village was boring and unimaginative. That village only exists just to remind you that it is a fantasy show and also to throw anthropomorphic waifus at you. The area which was basically a self-insert of Japan was okay. It makes you think how since isekais are so ass at using the medieval Europe setting, maybe it would have been more interesting to portray Japan. Just food for thought.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Feb 17, 2025

Psi18c

Not Recommended

If you are the type who use their brain, you will see tons and tons of very questionable situations, because clearly the story was made to make things look good and not well though out.

Anyone who is a bad person: uses their brain and their connections

Anyone who is a good person, including the people who are powerful and have social power: … for whatever reason they are all not doing anything, just sacrificing themself, until MC rescue them, just to ensure to not bother anyone, neither MC nor the bad people, and of course, they don't use their brain, they don't use their connection (including ... not asking MC for help), and their statues or whatever they have earned is non existing. Everything is solved by MC. And any character growth is: character has issues, can't do anything so just sits helplessly until MC saves them (aka there is no friends, no comrades, no families, no one who directly helps them, even if they might show up after MC save them), and once MC helps them, if woman, now fully in love with MC for no reason (or what, if next joe is helping her, she needs a reason to fall in love with the next joe, but with mc, just instantly? yeah....)

Other then looking nice here and there, the story and character build, are not good. None existing. To the degree that years pass and you don't see any changes except for MC growing physically.

Anime had some good part, so I kept watching, especially since season 2. But the more I watch, the more I realise that all the plot holes, all the issues in character decision and logic, where not a build up for later development, but really just a bad story that was not clear since the anime itself looked nice and it did have a lot of good moments

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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