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TL;DR This anime is as stagnant and uninformed to the human condition as a teenager’s fan fiction. The visuals look good on the cover, but the animation ends up being noticeably subpar during the show's runtime. Overall, this is an unremarkable anime you should skip.

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There are people far more weird than me out there, but I would wager that if I’m an American youth watching Japanese cartoons, I’m at least slightly removed from the general population. Up through high school I always had friends that were pleasingly weird enough for my tastes, but when I went random for my college room assignments, I was always ... buddied up with people that were just blatantly… Normal. Boring. They were content with liking what everyone else liked, etc.

The characters in this anime remind me a LOT of these people. They’re supposedly joking around and laughing when they haven’t said anything funny enough to warrant a chuckle from me. They’re *enjoying* their social life as high schoolers, which only people who peak in high school are capable of doing. I can’t relate to these characters at all, and I don’t know if any other otaku-types watching this will either. These characters are normal and therefore boring.

…Well, this is true for most of the cast, at least. Four out of six of these clowns are side characters that have about three scenes each, but at least they have ideas and personalities (however predictable) of their own. You've got the genki gal, nerdy guy, etc. Number five on our list of offenders, however, is none other than Uchiha Sasuke himself (Kakeru).

Sasuke's just as guilty as the other inhabitants of the clown car, except his defining "character trope" is that he's depressed. That's all. He's deeply upset about an admittedly traumatizing event, but the story basically centers around how his life needs to be improved, or else he'll harm himself from his sadness. I understand that depression can really rule over a person that's affected by it, but in my (admittedly uninformed) opinion, it just seems disrespectful to people with depression to make a character that is "depressed" and nothing more; there should be a person in there.

I would soon learn, though, that it was silly of me to expect the author of this to write people correctly. Let me introduce you to Naho, a dead fish of a human being. (Look at her glossed-over eyes, filled with blank confusion. https://imgur.com/a/M9L5DHx)

I agree with other comments that “Naho is an idiot,” but I think it’s slightly more complicated than that. Naho mentions early on that she "never wants to be a bother to anyone," and to that end she completely shuts off in front of others instead of supplying her ideas, leading to her “idiot” moments with Kakeru. She is so deprived of either desires of her own, or so driven by the opinions of others, that she never thinks for herself to any capacity. I joke about Naho's eyes looking vacant like a dead fish, but they reflect her problem very well. Naho is a poorly-written character, let alone main character, with no driving cause of her own besides the obligatory love story track she's set on: it makes for a confusing, disappointing, and markedly awkward plot.

The author's unfamiliarity with the human mind makes itself the most apparent in the adult versions of the main cast, an inorganic plot device. The gang meet up *ten years* after the high school timeline in order to perpetuate the fourth-wall part of the plot. But when they interact, it's as if nothing about them has changed. They still focus on something that was collectively troubling them in HIGH SCHOOL. I've been in college for two years and I can barely remember what I was worried about in high school! Their lack of convincing character growth annoys me to no end, because I know for a fact that real adults don't act like this. People grow so much in ten years.

They're allowed to reminisce as much as they want, but they should definitely have a lot more dimension to their characters after a decade away from high school. Maybe having the reflection-party one or two years ahead instead of ten may have fixed this problem (while achieving the same, honestly cringey result).

That's enough of me grilling the characters: One last gripe I have is with the visuals. This is one of those anime where you’re tricked into thinking the art is good because there are nice filters and photorealistic backgrounds all over the place, but one honest look and you’ll see how sloppy the drawings and animations can be at times. The shiny, almost “plastic” look that is easy to accomplish with computer-animated things these days also demonstrates the cheapness of this medium; it happens to many shows, but that doesn’t make this show any better.

Overall, don't bother. This is an anime that imitates what romance shows look like without having any of its substance.

I have two major gripes with this show that won’t let me comfortably watch any more of this: the animation is terrible, and I can’t be bothered to care about the “story” at the moment.

I hate to put a show down for animation quality; the industry is attempting to make insane amounts of (underpaid) output happen. This seems to be the way things are going, so I don’t want to be too critical of shows for this reason, but time and time again I found myself uncomfortable with how this looked. Faces are void of the emotion their voice actors attempt to put on. ... There are sometimes long and awkward pauses on unimportant images. Heck, the flashbacks people complain so much about probably aren't a shortcoming of the story, but of the animation budget, scrambling to fill up as much of the 20-minute block as they can. It’s a shame, too; the story isn’t absolutely terrible, but when it’s this hard to look at, it’s not worth continuing.

The story isn’t bad, but it’s certainly not great. The main issue with it is that there are so many mini-plots going on at a time, and I can't bring myself to care about any of them. I’ve waited six episodes for one solid anchor to pop up, but instead I get a ton of different trains of thought (mild spoilers):
- Aoi almost starved to death once, and her grandfather taught her how to cook, so she appreciates food. When she gets whisked away to the spirit realm, maybe she can work off this surprise debt by running the restaurant, and I oop-
- But no one wants her to cook? They say “women don’t belong in the kitchen,” but they never explain that one to me, at least from a western perspective.
- Oh, and she’s that smelly grandpa’s daughter. You know, that guy that everyone spontaneously loves and hates at the same time. AKA, the guy with more characterization going on for him than the lead character. And we can’t even decide how she feels about him because a.) he’s treated her like gold and like dirt, teaching her how to cook but also giving her away in advance to some demon dude, and…
- b.) the lead barely has any emotions of her own, it seems. She just likes to unconditionally take part in the lives of the…
- ...other characters along the way, which seem to pop in and out of episodes like nothing as if they’re already known to me but they’re really not. (In the case of spider brother/sister, Sasuke, snow woman, etc.)

In short, this series hasn’t given me a solid reason to care about what’s going on. It’s a shame because the world seems lush with creative ideas milling about in the background, but I can't get through its main presentation.

If you’re looking for a flashy, fun issekai anime, this is not the show for you. In truth, not much really gets done when this twelve-episode season draws to a close. But if you’re looking for the short story of a few inexperienced adventurers gaining their footing in the world, this anime should satiate you to some extent.

The word that comes to mind when thinking about this anime is “natural.” The general color palette and background paintings are all warm, you don’t see too many flashy attacks or techniques, and the characters progress through this brief snippet of their journey at a gradual pace, ... which can be relaxing to watch at best and boring at its worst.

At first, the main cast is thrown into this medieval, typical RPG-like world out of nowhere without any memories, so they arbitrarily form parties of six or so in order to get by. You’ll watch as six young adults flounder around attempting to slay even one low-level monster, which is pretty refreshing when many issekai anime have over-powered characters in them from the get-go. They eventually grow over time, learning how to allocate their resources and better work as a team, but admittedly not by much after twelve episodes.

It is also important to note that a couple of semi-major plot holes are left open by the end of the show, but a.) these may be addressed in a coming season, or b.) it may be possible that said points weren’t important to the creators of this show, and they didn’t want to focus on them.

All in all, I wouldn’t say that this watch is entirely worth your time, as it discusses arguably basic human feelings and interactions, but I found it to be a pleasant, leisurely, and quick issekai experience.