ARIFURETA SHOKUGYOU DE SEKAI SAIKYOU

DESCRIPTION

CAST

NOVEL ActionArifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou
MANGA ActionArifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou
SPECIAL ActionArifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou Specials
ANIME ActionArifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou 2nd season
ONA ComedyArifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou Prologue

REVIEWS

• 

  CodeBlazeFate

  9/100
  Arifureta quickly went from the most gloriously awful anime of the year to the worst I’ve seen all year.

  Have you ever been excited to watch a dumpster fire? You know, that special kind of train wreck that reaches so bad it’s good territory, or the legendary "schlock" status”? It’s rare to find such titles in the current anime market, as Big Order and Inuyashiki are some of the last ones out there at the time of writing. Most bad anime are just frustrating or boring, especially when it comes to the prevalence of bad isekai anime. With episode 1 at least, Arifureta seemed to have done the impossible. It had become something so legendarily awful that it would be remembered as the best so bad it’s good anime of the year. Imagine my shock, my awe when we were told that isekai finally had a Big Order to call its own.

  Imagine my grief when Arifureta quickly went from the most gloriously awful anime of the year to the worst I’ve seen all year. Barring a few tolerable moments, the more the show went on, the more dreadful the experience became. Even when I thought I grew numb to whatever the show threw at me, it would always find a new way to make the viewing experience worse. I felt betrayed, as did fans when the premiere dropped. Now that this anime has ended, it’s time I get a little payback.

  Let’s start with the least awful aspect of the anime, that being the music. The background OST, whenever it's actually present, is either fairly decent or downright awful. A lot of these tracks (inserts included, of which there are four and only one of them works) don’t even fit the scenes they’re put in half the time. Let that put into perspective how low a bar I’ve set for this anime. As for the OP, it’s trash with an obnoxious saxophone and weird autotune, as well as an awful trap beats section right before the chorus. The worst part is that the moody piano and violin combo at the beginning makes the track inviting, like a siren or a succubus luring you into your untimely demise. Barring an admittedly decent insert song in episode 5, my only other compliment to the music is that the ED, “Hajime no Uta” by DracoVirgo is actually pretty good. One could call it a generic sort of soothing ending theme meant to give the viewers a breather after whatever whirlwind any given episode puts them through. On the other hand, with vocals and instrumentals this inviting, I don’t care. It invokes something sweet, almost nostalgic at points. That said, one can only be so positive here given that we are talking about one of the worst anime anyone cares about this year.

  Speaking of worst things I’ve seen all year, the visuals in this anime are some of the worst to come out of 2019. The character designs (the better ones, at least) are inoffensive enough but that should not be my highest genuine compliment beyond some of the girls being attractive. Even then, the MC’s design is so ridiculous that it’s almost endearing. Sadly, the insanely bold and bright colors damage even that, especially when you consider that the show has to swap from these characters being barely visible in a cave so dark you can barely see a thing, to bright daylight. The contrast with all this in mind is downright eye-searing, so much so that I often needed to squint to the point of closing my eyes in order for my eyes to stop hurting. When you couple this with how poorly drawn, borderline melted their faces are at times, and how comically the show likes to distort the main character’s face, it all just becomes an aesthetic nightmare. It takes 5 episodes for us to reach a setting where the color palette works to the point where the characters aren’t too dark or bright to look at. Even then it sometimes crosses over into squint territory whenever the lighting remotely increases, and the colors are so much brighter in the side characters that they almost feel too bright in the dark labyrinth. To finally get away from the color and brightness complaints, we have the monster designs. They’re ugly as sin both in 2D and 3D. The 2D animation itself is...there. Don’t expect to see it too much and even then, it feels stilted whenever it is there a lot of the time. There are moments where it’s unbelievable like when Hajime unveils his giant rifle in episode 4 and you can see the wrappings linger and only move once every half second. I am not exaggerating. There are two factors that influence the awkward feel of the 2D animation, and they’re the three most noticeably awful aspects of the production: editing, direction, and CGI.

  The CGI is child’s play for any anime fan to pick at. The models and are so bad and jarring that any scene with them automatically looks like shit. Their movements are practically nonexistent as well, just being thrown and dragged around wherever the anime pleases. The worst part is that this Berserk 2016 and Overlord-tier CGI is almost as abundant as the 2D visuals of the show, and if both are done terribly, imagine how horribly they blend together. Actually, by the time we get to the hydra in episode 4, it’s safe to say the CG in this anime is Skelter Heaven tier. The abysmal directing exacerbates the problem, as entire shots and camera movements make absolutely no sense, especially in the OP, which is such a monumental train wreck of horrendous visuals and transitions it’s impossible for me to do it justice. Whenever the show isn’t forcing head-scratchingly bizarre shots, everything is just lifeless. The action has no choreography whatsoever and for some reason, the shots have absolutely no flow to them, especially in the first episode. This is where the editing comes in. Characters are constantly teleporting for no reason and while yes, the MC learns a quick step teleportation power, that’s entirely different from the characters randomly and abruptly being in a completely different location or part of a scene for no particular reason. Characters look one way and other characters, monsters, or objects are moving from somewhere other than where the characters are looking at, causing whiplash as we scramble to piece together what’s going on. Entire scene transitions amount to nothing but a fake-out before the same scene abruptly cuts to flashback or to present day. I don’t even wanna tell you how the show fucks up visual gags with shitty zooms and cheap “animation”. These problems are a constant with the show, and while they do enough damage to the visuals as is, they’re also inherently an issue with presentation. Bad presentation can really damage one’s narrative, as this show proudly demonstrates.

  The writing in this so bad on so many levels that we have to tackle it in three different ways. First is how the presentation turns the first episode into an incomprehensible shitshow. Then we have how the presentation turns the entire narrative into a jumbled mess. Lastly, there’s how the writing is generic at best and frankly pathetic at worst. I won’t even come close to hitting everything but there’s more than enough for you to get the gist of these issues several times over. I hope you enjoy my extensive coverage and journey of this hellspawn.

  For starters, the main character just assumes someone sabotaged him because one of the magic laser blasts in a volley of magic collided and ended up hitting him cuz it was misfired, and because we (barely) see a guy smirking for a brief second. First off, how in God’s name did the MC even see the guy while being assaulted by bright lights, one of which basically hit him? He couldn’t. On top of that, since he could have only seen the volleys of light, and the visuals communicate that one of them just ran into another and hit him due to that collision making it go off course, how did he not see it as anything other than an accident? Sure, he was on death’s door before becoming the white-haired, gunslinging edgelord we know now so of course he feels resent for his situation and would like to blame someone, but the anime presents it as if he knows exactly what happened. WE barely know what’s going on, which is a problem in and of itself! This is a common problem throughout the show, even when it temporarily stops being borderline impossible to follow...at least until the penultimate episode tries its valiant hand at in medias res storytelling one last time and making time and events impossible to follow. There’s almost no context or connective tissue between scenes in this first arc, and entire episodes throughout.

  My condolences to anyone who thought they could get into the franchise with this anime because context is not a concept this show understands. Sure, it presents a ton of flashbacks that technically explain on some level how the MC got to where he is, but we have no context for why he and those who teleported with him are doing what they’re doing, or how many of them got there. We barely even know jack or shit about the most basic aspects of the world or character relationships because the anime doesn’t bother explaining any of that and we’re just hit with contextless, incohesive montages, and sequences of characters fighting in dungeons. The sheer lack of personality beyond the most basic of caricature characterization only worsens the issue. Even worse is the fact that the flashbacks are erratically placed, sometimes appearing after a scene that necessitated the flashback beforehand makes a transition, sometimes without any transitions to speak of and without the scene prior even requiring the flashback in any capacity. Vital pieces of information are either relegated to throwaway lines or downright nonexistent, so it’s not like rewatching a second time or thinking about it more will suddenly illuminate everything for you. Doing so somehow leads to more questions. That, in turn, forces you to assume things and go out of your way to try to figure out where anything is in relation to its environment, which kills any semblance of joy you could have just laughing at how jumbled everything is. This is the premiere of your anime for God’s sake! If you want to start in medias res, you have to do it in a way where things make enough sense by the end of it that it isn’t a disorienting, incoherent mess. Otherwise, you end up with this glorious train wreck, one I wish lasted longer than a single episode.

  Immediately after episode 1, the show just becomes this obnoxious, tiresome mess as it swaps between perspectives no one gives a shit about, not even going far to make the action sequences with our now mental protagonist exciting in the least. Hell, he loses all of the hilariously crazy edge he had to him, just becoming a no-nonsense tsundere character who points out predictable tropes in this cliche fantasy land while purposely going in the opposite direction of where he needs to in order to even begin getting home. He fell to the 65th floor and instead of going back up he goes down 50 floors in a 100-floor labyrinth. Soon after you start to question that, he reaches what seems like the 100th floor in order to fight a boss and free a vampire loli caricature before they head down even more floors to the actual 100th floor. If that doesn’t make any sense, don’t worry, none of this does! Hell, even when they answer why he’s going down with him wanting to get stronger, we have to ask...why is he even bothering when all he has/wants to do is leave and have nothing to do with anything? There are other easy contradictions and logic problems to pick at within this whole excursion, but you get the point. Also, the way they cut between this and the scenes of the other characters coming back is dreadful as there’s no cohesion, and again, they barely expand on the important context we need to understand what is going on and why, just dumping more and more lore on us and presenting more abilities that are sometimes inconsistent cuz we need the MC to do something cool, or otherwise seemingly irrelevant to what he should be learning.

  Speaking of inconsistent, it takes until episode 3 before the show settles on establishing a concrete personality for our MC-kun, or Hajime, if you will. It didn’t even set one up to be broken in the first place because that would require competent writing. We’ll touch back on that real soon. Episode 4 has an insufferable number of death fake-outs which include a contrived scenario where the main character gets blasted nearly to death and only after the monster trying to kill them fires again several seconds later does his partner put up a force field. Said force field is also inconsistent about attacks getting through it and then the rest of the fight sequence is told out of order for no reason. The pair also arbitrarily kiss multiple times because we need nonsensical faux emotional beats, as if there aren’t enough in this episode. I could go on about the asspulls, inconsistencies, and forced drama for the sake of emotional manipulation, but you get the point.

  Pacing is another gigantic issue with this anime. Apart from how badly episode 1 utilizes flashbacks, the show has a dismal time deciding what to show and when. It often skips or montages relevant progression, like Hajime’s journey towards being an “edgelord badass”, or the offscreen training his classmates did after their collective failure in the first episode. We don’t even see how or when Hajime gets everything he needs to complete his character design, as we’re instead forced to assume what happened. The two month time skip in episode 5, the fight the classmates have with the enemies they had trouble with in episode 1, and the aforementioned incoherent ordering of events in the second half of episode 4’s big emotional action sequence serve as further examples of how bad the pacing and storytelling is past the first episode. Nothing feels earned from any emotional standpoint due to both these storytelling reasons and the general lack of decent writing, whether that be the classmates in episode 5 overcoming the CGI monsters that gave everyone hell in episode 1, or any of the big moments in episode 4.

  All of this sounds bad enough, but it gets even worse when you understand what this anime is trying to be. It’s a light novel adaptation with intents on providing wish-fulfillment via presenting a dark, brooding, angsty yet (selectively) compassionate main character for angsty teenagers to relate to, all while surrounding him with character archetypes, including tons of waifus. They somehow managed to fuck this up so spectacularly that it actually fails at being just generic and trite and becomes an absolute disaster. I’ve complained about shows that fail to even be generic like The Asterisk War, but that was solely on the writing being so broken that it manages to fuck up the easiest of things and make no-effort plots feel convoluted and nonsensical. Arifureta is so horrendously constructed and presented that it’s actually incomprehensible at times. At best, I can say that this show technically did succeed at creating a bunch of archetypes like the classmates and harem girls our main character, Hajime has to deal with. They still didn’t even succeed at properly establishing, breaking, then revamping our main character. Also, no one is even remotely likable, and their interactions are obnoxious, which seems like a given. The only interesting thing about Hajime and the first girl he gets with is that both of them suffer some kind of abandonment and betrayal issues, but again, both characters are hollow, and nothing is told well so it’s difficult to care. Their lack of chemistry makes the emotional character and relationship moments of episode 4 particularly jarring and laughable. By the time we get the gag of Hajime accidentally clenching Yue's butt in bed, I knew that if they told this story properly, it would still be a disaster. It wouldn’t be as corrosive as it is now, but it would still be a tiresome, badly produced, practically broken mess of a show I’d want nothing to do with. If they stuck to making a hilariously jumbled mess that goes all-in on that “edge factor”, then it would be at least amusing. No one wins when the show fails at going both ways, as if the second arc didn’t make it clear that no one involved is coming out of this ok.

  Once the first arc concludes after 5 episodes, the series doesn't exactly get better. While the remainder of the show isn’t as broken as the first half (including this sixth episode), it basically stops trying to set itself apart in any way, shape, or form from its contemporaries minus the one small plot thread that lingers throughout, that thread being Hajime’s bitterness towards those who betrayed him. From here on out, the main duo shuffles between absolute pieces of shit and begrudgingly compliant assholes that do things because they’re strung along by the slowly emerging pieces of Hajime’s harem. Obviously, asshole characters forced to lay off the edge and do something worthwhile don’t have to be intolerable but given how annoying the rest of the harem is and given how broken the existing caricatures are, the experience becomes significantly more corrosive than ever before. The conflict the second harem member introduces at the start of episode 6 gets resolved, and the rest of the episode is just montages and dicking around before the main characters have to leave. Said second member, Shea, is her own level of destructive at first. She’s not only annoying on her own, but she brings out a new level of dickishness within the main duo that makes their early interactions some of the worst I’ve seen in any harem or anime period. The interactions do get better rather quickly given that the very next episode gives Shea a time to shine, so at least that’s one bit of positivity in the midst of this sea of bile. To quickly leave that reprieve, I’ll mention that backstory is also pointlessly shoehorned in as it has no connection to anything. It might be one of the most insufferable backstories I’ve seen since it only exists to hamfistedly reinforce the idea of “the outcasts coming together and not being so alone in this world” and tell us Shea’s goddamn name. It’s almost as soul-crushing as the episode itself whose only purpose is to introduce a new, big-tittied waifu, and to set up a point which our main characters will have to return to before completing four more labyrinths which the previous episode established. This is our end goal for the show, and where even many fans of the source material feel the show has gone to shit. Need I say more?

  Actually, I do, so I’ll just go through the second half of the show in a more rapid-fire fashion. This review is overly long as it is, and that’s without devolving into a ton of nitpicks like how Shea arbitrarily has a change of clothes somehow between two scenes early in episode 7. Said episode is probably the best episode, as we actually get to see Shea beating people six ways to Sunday and prove her worth to the team after all the shit everyone and their mother gives her. It actually reminds me that sometimes these characters have the potential to be compelling, even if the blatant fanservice gags feel shoehorned in at times even considering her appearance and purpose. On top of that, the way they get jettisoned out of the second labyrinth (yes they got there already because pacing is not something this anime cares about) is actually pretty amusing. From then onwards, it’s back to getting the Steph treatment for her, as if using the absolute worst character dynamic from No Game No Life but with a character who is actually obnoxious this time makes it better than when the aforementioned 2014 anime did it. Episode 8 is a tedious reunion episode with some of Hajime's peers, albeit not the ones he has any beef with. Outside of the arbitrary bit of moment a tertiary character has with Shea, the only bit of note is Hajime's equally arbitrary lore dump he gives as a reason to why he won't come back with everyone. He doesn't even care about this, stating to the person offering him a guaranteed way home that he just wants to find some maverick keys so he can leave. It would have been more interesting and in character for him to just say that he wants nothing to do with some of his classmates.

  Episode 9 has a moment meant to make Hajime give an angry pep talk to someone about life, which is meant to be an emotionally resonant and inspiring moment, except dismal pacing, a lack of time, and a lack of exploration of this side of Hajime renders this scene moot. Tio Klarus (ok, why do the subs not match the MAL or AL names again?) makes her appearance this episode to round out the “I love Mr. Edgelord Man” party. She’s the masochist of the group, which we learn firsthand in the most embarrassing sequence I have dealt with all year. Apart from all the masochism nonsense, her nice design, and the fact that the anime can’t keep her nail size consistent within the first scene she’s in her human form, she’s boring and obnoxious. I’m done with the episodic play by play. You get the point and I refuse to cover any more of this now that we have all of the relevant characters out now, 2/3 into the anime’s runtime. You can already deduce that there’s nothing left to talk about and that it’s yet more obnoxious LN cliche gauntlets and insufferable character interactions from the diet version of the Konosuba cast and friends. There’s a bad guy and then another evil lord to be stopped, and we’re gonna meet Kaori and her female swordsman friend from early in the series again because they love Hajime as well and we need to fully assemble the harem by the end of the series all while getting sidetracked with more side quests and lolis! This review is long enough as it is, and I’ve wasted enough of both your time and mine! Fuck everything and everyone! Time for final thoughts!

  The saddest part isn’t even that this is one of the biggest anime of its season. It’s that this show was delayed by a whopping 15 months. Imagine how much worse it could have been if we got to see it in its original state! The fact that the original author stated "Every time I was sent scripts and storyboards for the anime over these past few months, I writhed in pain in my room” back in January of 2018 makes that bizarre, alternate reality all the more tantalizing. Perhaps it could have been less incompetent given how there was a different director and team before the shift. Perhaps it could have been even worse given how bland the art style of the original plans looked. Still, it’s hard not to feel bad for everyone involved, fans included. At the same time, it’s hard not to point and laugh at what a dumpster fire this show is before later hating what it became. What it became is a bland, fugly, shitty isekai with nothing to offer but shock value from seeing blood and gore and a crazy turned boring tsun jerkass with a heart of gold. I’d actually recommend watching Re:Zero at that point, disregarding my disdain towards that show. You might even have a better time with Shield Hero, I dunno. Just don’t watch this, not even for the occasional bright spot it may have. Obviously, the manga and LN readers aren’t happy, and people like me who wanted that ironic entertainment are left just as disappointed. Barring those with Digibro’s specific tastes, it pleases no one but the most accepting of anime fans who just wanna see a gunslinging underdog get a harem. The only remaining exceptions are those who are willing to trudge through anything that has the theme of defying a world that hates them, and those who adore the art of baffling, broken direction. If that doesn’t meet the criteria for “so bad it’s horrible”, I don’t know what will.

  I wish this was just a single episode OVA instead so we could have ourselves a modern-day Mars of Destruction. It would probably have even worse reception, but it wouldn’t be this pathetic or worthless, and I wouldn’t feel like a donkey after watching it. Now I’m left angrier at myself for being duped than I am at this piece of shit for promising ironic entertainment in a fantasy subgenre devoid of any kind of entertainment value, and then spitting in my face. I’m angrier about that than I am about the show frequently throwing away or otherwise undercutting the potential it constantly brings up for itself, as unbelievable as the phrase “this show has potential” might seem to many here. The review you’re reading right now is the only reason I finished this humiliating train wreck which has been mildly amusing (dare I say endearing) at best and unbearable at worst. Perhaps this show wanted to make it clear that I’m not allowed to have fun with these types of shows anymore, and that any bright spots like the occasionally decent character moment, are just flukes.

  Eh, what can you do? Even Big Order stopped being funny bad at some point.

  Written and Edited by: CodeBlazeFate
  Proofread by: Peregrine

  Continue on AniList
• 

  Bubblesssssss

  10/100
  The train-wreck of a generation

  Yeah I’m not introing this. In like a year this show won’t need it.

  There is so much wrong with Arifureta that its impossible to tear through the show episode by episode and I can’t really break it down into animation, music, characters etc because the flaws of each area bleed together and become difficult to separate. I’ve shied away from doing Plinkett-style reviews because imitating Plinkett reviews is what hacks do, but I don’t have much of a choice here. Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.

  #1: Continuity, Pacing, and Editing
  

  Continuity. The establishing of events, characters, and setting in a narrative. It is arguably the most important part of a story, as without it...literally nothing would make sense and no one in the audience would even be able to understand what is happening. Establishing shots tell you where events are happening before scenes in that location start. Character introductions are done to familiarize yourself with a character before they become a part of the story. And from scene to scene things like where characters are located, what clothes they're wearing, their visible injuries, the way they look needs to stay consist to establish a stable and believable continuity for the audience to latch onto. Without this, it is impossible to tell where scenes take place, who is and isn't in a scene and who isn't, and scenes can fall into confusing nonsense when a proper continuity is not established. And good lord Arifureta has a massive problem with continuity. The first 7 episodes are so chock full of this shit that we’re gonna have to go episode by episode to properly show how confusing and messy it is.

  The first episode is told in reverse like Memento, but not deliberately. Its told backwards because they wanted to start with an action scene even if it meant the rest of the episode would be a confusing mess.

  After the first scene, we start with the main character (Hajime) with a puddle underneath him in the cavern. Then when they do a wide shot of the cavern you don't see any puddles. But then he goes down a tunnel into another part of the cavern and you don't see any puddles in the wide shots. Hajime wakes up after eating the meat, and he's laying down with his face in a puddle. It does look like there's some holy water in the background of the shot right after he eats the meat, but no puddles. Right before he passes out, we do the see the puddle in front of him. So I'm to assume he just happened to fall into the only holy water puddle in that section of the cavern. This is what’s SHOWN to the viewer. Here’s what HAPPENED based on re-watching this scene 6 times:

  _Cavern with tunnel visible_

  Hajime first drinks from the first puddle, which is in an upper portion of the cavern. We don't see him move after drinking from it, so I have to assume it’s right next to that cave he himself dug. He then goes down into the tunnel he dug, and the monsters chase him. He then he kills them and eats them, and passes out in this second area, and wakes up with his face in a different puddle. This is all taking place in the same cavern, even though we see Hajime go into a different cavern and travel downwards. This cut is misleading. He is still in the same cavern after traveling downwards through a tunnel. Through the first 7 episodes, this is the general level of storytelling and conveyance prowess Arifureta has to offer, so buckle up.

  _The same cavern, despite traveling through a tunnel_

  Episode 2 starts off with current events, then it flash-forwards to some sort of briefing over what happened. After that, they start backtracking via flashbacks to the events of the attack on the traum (I wrote this in my notes and I don’t know what it means!) soldiers. They show half the fight that was used as a flashback in the last episode, again. Then, we're in the scene where Shizuku is checking on Kaori in bed, who I guess is injured. I am unsure if this is happening now or if this is flashback. Then they do a mega super flashback to before the events of the first episode, but before Pope Ishtar can explain anything someone starts doing a voiceover to explain some aspects of the universe. Then they exit the voiceover to go back to the scene with Pope Ishtar.

  You notice how some of these events I’m describing sound uncertain? Well this is after rewinding the episodes multiple times. The reason it sounds uncertain is because the show doesn’t give me enough information to be sure, not for lack of investigation. There is no logical progression of scenes and the way they are edited. Every episode feels like a giant jigsaw puzzle that the packaging company threw together while they were drunk. Half the pieces are re-used in places they shouldn't be, none of the pieces that are placed next to each other have the right connecting pieces to fit together, and some pieces feel like they might be from a different puzzle altogether. But the editor, drunk as shit at 4 am, hammered them into place anyways.

  _Arifureta's editor, putting in the extra effort to make Arifureta great_

  After that, there’s some shit about humans, demons, and beastmen that’s placed in the middle of a random flashback for some reason. Then after that scene we're back to maybe current events with Shizuku doing sword stuff in a courtyard area. Then a flashback to events that appear to be before the mega flashback from earlier, which then proceeds to the events from the attack on Traum soldiers and back to Shizuku in the courtyard. That last one all happened in 20 seconds. Then back to the cavern with Hajime. Feel confused yet? Imagine what watching the show feels like.

  Finally, at the end of the fight between Hajime and the cyclops giant thing, we get an establishing shot transition that implies that what is happening with the MC and Shizuku in the castle courtyard/Kaori's room are happening concurrently. Good job showrunners, it only took an episode and a half to establish that!

  Okay, episode 5. We start with the dungeon boss. Then they cut from the dungeon boss to a different building. I have no idea where this is. They don't show the outside of the building. They're just in it. Initially I assumed they got out of the labyrinth somehow but then they cut to them in the spa again. So they never left? We never find out where that room is actually located.

  As a warning, episode 6 is the point where the pacing fucking dies. An entire story arc is crammed into half an episode. This is the most confusing episode and will be the hardest to describe. You’ve been warned.

  Episode 6 starts and we are once again immediately thrust into a location we as an audience have never seen before. The geographical schizophrenia of this show is the bane of continuity's existence.

  After a quick fight scene they do a montage. You might think this is just a montage of certain uneventful battles, but you’d be wrong. This montage is the show skipping over the entire sequence where they travel to the Sea of Trees. An entire story arc is crammed into a single montage, which results in skipping all of the character development, world building, and anything that might make the audience care about this arc. By the way, the only reason I know this is because it was implied they had finished their journey and I assumed the forest they reached was the Sea of Trees. I’m grasping at context clues to determine what’s actually happening, which is a clear-cut sign of awful conveyance.

  _"Oh, I guess we're here!"_

  Oh, and the bunny girl character (Shea) instantly falls in love with the MC despite being on-screen together for less than 2 minutes. Now in the novel/manga, its likely there was a lot of character development that occurred between the 2 during their journey to the Sea of Trees. Problem is, like I said earlier, the anime skips over ALL OF IT.

  Episode 7 starts off at the entrance of a cave before proceeding to the opening credits. From here, we are instantly transported to somewhere else in the cave as they skipped the scenes where they figure out how to get to Shea. They just appear there.

  Then right after that they transition to a building. I have no idea where this building is, what it looks like from the outside, how they got to it, or even why they're in it! That is literally the what, where, why, and how of storytelling that the show fails to clearly establish. The only thing Arifureta gets right from scene to scene is continuing to use the correct names for characters. That is literally it!

  _The mystery building, complete with horrible cg boulder traps_

  Then after that scene, they arrive back at a room they claim looks familiar, which...does it? Apparently this was the first room they appeared in, which is news to me! I have no idea how they got into that room from the cave entrance but apparently it didn't require them to enter any more rooms than the one they're currently in! Has it clicked yet? This show tells the viewer nothing and expects the viewer to desperately attempt to piece together its fragmented continuity and plot progression.

  Then we're taken to what apparently is the castle the students are in. If you had forgotten about Hajime’s classmates don’t worry, the show did too. There's a red haired guy I'm almost certain I have never seen before talking about a character that either has barely been on screen or we as an audience have not been introduced to yet, and I have no idea who these people are or why this conversation matters enough to randomly cut to it. I know they're his classmates but why are we here? They haven't been relevant in ages if my assumptions about how far into the manga/novel we are is correct.

  Then back to the labyrinth with the main characters. Hajime says something about this being the lair of Miledi which...who???? Who is Miledi? Is it a boy or girl? Were they a king/queen? Why would it be in a random labyrinth and why would he instantly recognize it when there has been nothing to establish who this Miledi is before now. Seriously, how does he know that that's the lair of Miledi? I think it may have been the name that was mentioned once at the start of the episode off-hand by the computer thing? But given how batshit confusing the rest of the episode is, there was no chance I was going to remember such a small detail.

  Like the episode before, they skip over all the fights and conflict that I assume was in the novel/manga's arc so we basically saw none of what would make exploring a labyrinth interesting. We see them go in, appear in a room, appear in another room for a terrible cgi fight, then they teleport back to the first room, and then they teleport to "Miledi's lair". So in what I assume was originally a large, expansive underground labyrinth; we only get to see the entrance, a cavern, the inside of a building but not the outside, and a throne room. Its also likely that in the original novel/manga, Miledi was built up over the course of their exploration of the labyrinth. But they skip over all that. Fuck this show. Nothing is built up because the show skips over entire story arcs in the course of one episode, and I can't get invested in the fantasy locations they explore because 1, we never see them exploring them and 2, WE NEVER GET TO FUCKING SEE MUCH OF THE LOCATIONS.

  And if you don't think establishing shots are that important, I'd like to present the opening of one of the greatest horror movies of all time, The Shining.

  

  The Shining's opening sequence is literally just Jack driving his family to the infamous Overlook Hotel. But why this sequence is so great is that it serves multiple purposes. One, it builds tension. All we're being show is a bunch of pans and establishing shots, and its a good 3 minutes of these shots and nothing else. The music doesn't help in this regard but it fits the scenery. Two, and most importantly, it establishes the isolation of the Hotel visually. We see how far Jack travels to get to this hotel, from the low-laying forests and hills to the top of snow-blanketed mountains. So instantly as an audience you know that this place is way the fuck off the map and if something terrible happens there, no one is coming to help for quite a while. All this done with establishing shots.

  We don't learn anything about the locations they're at from wides or establishing shots. And that lack of context serves to constantly confuse the viewer and is a missed opportunity for potential world-building, something that show desperately needs.

  Episode 8 starts off with a detour, where our protagonists go to eat rice or something. Why is this the thing that gets full attention? Also the establishing shots in this first part are awful. The citizens are only moving in one of the shots, and the water near the mill isn't moving, so we're basically being shown a slideshow.

  _None of these people are actually moving_

  It is episode 8 that the main problem with the show changes. For the first 7, it was horrendous pacing and horribly confusing continuity. From here on out though, its…

  #2: Visuals (Visual Effects, Character Designs, Animation, Art Design, Art Direction)

  A lot can be said about how awful Arifureta’s visuals are, but the sheer number of things wrong with the art and animation is honestly kind of impressive. This show does things wrong with its visuals I didn’t even think it was possible to get wrong.

  At some point in episode 8, we get the scene where Hajime attempts to tell the backstory of some war, which is accompanied by crappy drawings that appear to be drawn by a 7th grader with colored pencils. Also in tow are some of the dumbest zooms and pans I've ever seen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show so incompetent that they do zoom-ins and zoom-outs on a still image. It’s honestly incredible. It honestly feels like the cameraman was just fiddling with the zoom and waving the camera from side to side to distract from the fact that they're showing a still image that looks like garbage.

  _lolololol_

  Then we have the scene where Hajime meets the dragon…thing. Visually, this is one of the most pathetic scenes in the entire show. So the dragon is talking but the mouth literally doesn’t even move half the time. Like this fucking thing is center frame talking with its mouth wide open the entire time. That is an incredible amount of laziness. They even have the nerve to close the dragon’s mouth after the entire paragraph of dialogue ends, as if no one would notice she didn’t close her mouth once during that string of horrible dialogue until she was finished.

  _Re-watching I was still just as shocked they actually animated the dragon's mouth this way_

  While partially due to bad writing, a big part of why the comedy never works is the show tries to use reaction shots to sell the humor. But they’re always under-animated or not expressive enough, which makes most attempts comedy the show attempts feel awkward rather than funny. This is especially true when they’re to write comedy that comes from a dragon whose mouth doesn’t move.

  It’s the big battle that comes up next that really cements in the viewer’s brain how appallingly bad the art style is. Mainly because this scene actually does have big wide shots, which unfortunately only serve to drive home how little effort was put into making the various elements of the art design feel at home together.

  Overall, there are 4 different clashing aspects to the art design:

  The main characters, that is to say anyone that is humanoid, are 2-dimensional. They are drawn in a very cutesey way with very bright colors and often lots of pastel colors used on clothing.

  The backgrounds and locations appear to be mostly painted, and are rarely stylized. They are very plain and appear to be deliberately drawn so that they don’t stick out.

  The monsters are 3d-animated cgi and look robotic and unpolished. Their movement is extremely stiff, and I don’t recall them using many colors other than black or brown for most monsters. Cg weapons tend to always be gray and sometimes black, and also look unpolished and rough.

  The visual special effects range from really terrible-looking cg effects to rather lame 2d effects. They stick out like a sore thumb against the painted backgrounds. Most special effects are unpolished and tend to look like the animator or editor whatever just pasted it into the frame and then just forgot to clean it up afterwards. This is also due to clashing artstyles, as the special effects are animated in a way that don’t look like they would be produced by the object that’s producing them. This is especially true of muzzle flashes from MC’s gun, lightning spells, and any spark effect.

  These 4 elements are shoddily thrown together in battle scenes, and jesus are they an eyesore to bear witness to. You could have a 2d muzzle flash coming from an unpolished 3d-modeled gun, or a 2d-drawn bunny girl holding a cgi hammer generating a hand drawn dust cloud, or a drawn character throwing a cgi grenade that generates a drawn blinding flash, etc.

  

  Sometimes the cg looks okay, like the hammer the bunny girl uses. But it looks fake when she holds it because they don’t touch the hammer up to look flatter to match the flat look the hand drawn character has, so it still looks bad. This is what I’m talking about. The show looks like a visual clusterfuck because nothing was done to make any aspects of the art design look at home together.

  

  The other part of why the art direction doesn’t work is due to color choices:

  The characters usually have very bright color palettes. Even the blacks of Hajime’s coat are pretty bright for the color.

  The backgrounds and locations have a more neutral color palette that rarely strays into shades that are very bright. They occasionally use darker shades but only in caves or at night.

  The monsters and weapons are always colored very dark, which was likely done deliberately to hide how hideous and unpolished the 3d models are.

  Okay now imagine that clusterfuck of visual styles and color choices all coming together in one fight scene. No effort whatsoever was put into making the characters look like they belong in the locations that are presented, nor was any effort put into making the backgrounds and locations look like they come from the same show as the characters.

  _Ganon and the boys wishing they'd been touched up before their close-up_

  So basically no parts of the art direction work well together and each part looks out of place among the rest of the art. Nothing looks like they really belong together or feel real, and it makes it really hard to pay attention to what’s happening when literally everything is distracting me with how fake it looks.

  That’s it for the 2 biggest problem areas. All that’s left is the writing and sound.

  #3: Writing (Storytelling, Characters, Plot Specifics)

  So for starters, the game doesn't make sense. At level 8, all his stats are over 100. Then he kills 3 monsters and he's up to level 12. Now his stats are: 200, 300, 200, 400, 350, 350. What do these stats cap at? He'd go over 1,000 in every stat by level 30. Why are the numbers so arbitrarily high? Doesn't it make sense to operate in single and double digits instead? Why would the programmers do their stats like that? Also why would the digits at level 8 be rounded but not 2? Why not just start at 0 if you’re only going to increase each stat by 2 after the first level?

  The stats never stop being confusing until they completely forget about them later in the show. Here’s each instance of them showing Hajime’s stats:

  level 1- 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10
  level 2- 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12
  level 8- 100, 300, 100, 200, 300, 300
  level 12- 200, 300, 200, 400, 350, 350
  level 17- 300, 400, 300, 450, 400, 400
  level 76- 1980, 2090, 2070, 2450, 1780, 1780

  So at level 76 they're moving in intervals of 10, but at 17 they were intervals of 50. Like what???

  Even the different in stats between levels doesn’t make sense:
  The difference in stats between levels 2 and 8 is a total of 1288 (6 levels)
  The difference in stats between levels 8 and 12 is a total of 500 (4 levels)
  The difference in stats between levels 12 and 17 is a total of 450 (5 levels)

  This would mean that between levels 2 and 8 (levels 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8) you get 214.66 skill points per level. But you get 125 skill points per level between 9-12. And then you get 90 per level between 12 and 17? I thought the number of skill points you get per level was supposed to be increasing. How the fuck does that make sense? So basically you move in increments of single digits to start, go up in intervals of 50 through at least 17, and then down to increments of 10 at level 76. What the fuck?

  I guess if you wanna dig into the bigger writing problems, a good place to start is the characters. They’re all fucking terrible. The main character is so grossly overpowered he actually exceeds Kirito, and he’s probably the single edgiest main character I’ve ever seen. We’re talking about a guy who stops his own arm from bleeding out after his arm gets chopped off by sheer power of will. He also likes to yell dumb shit like "I'm going to kill you and eat you!", because apparently someone on the writing staff let their 5-year old write some of the dialogue.

  _Picture of Hajime Nagumo_

  The rest of the cast consists of female characters that represent different sexual appeals. Yue is for those who are into lolis. Shea is for those who appreciate the bustier figure, and also people who like bunny girls. Tio is for those who are into perverted girls, as well as sadists. Myu is 4 years old. If she appeals to a fetish, I don’t even want to think about it.

  All of these girls are in some way attracted to the protagonist, because it’s a harem. Obviously. But it stoops to the level of trash like Smartphone, having them all at one point outright claim they want to have the MC’s babies. Is this where we are now with anime? The only remaining step left here is for Hajime to turn to the camera and say “You want to be me. I’m a badass. All these chicks want to fuck me. You want to be me.”

  

  Oh wait, did I mention he doesn’t even want to fuck them? Whenever Shea or Tio flirt with Hajime, he gets annoyed. He acts like they have cooties. Why doesn’t he want to fuck the bunny girl? I'd fuck that bunny girl and use her ears as handlebars as I railed her. Who wouldn't? Nothing in this show makes any sense. Why make a bunny girl character that's clearly only there for sex appeal, and then have the power fantasy male lead pretend she's disgusting? That makes no fucking sense.

  Speaking of male lead, lets get back to how overpowered he is. He can make literally anything he could ever need and the show still can’t manage to set up the shit he uses properly. Like you made it to where he can make anything. Then why the fuck are you not setting things up that are going to be used later? Are the writers seriously that lazy? You should not be resorting to asspulls when your main character can literally make anything. Want some examples?

  In episode 3, Hajime gains resistance to plant parasites by eating unrelated monsters. No clue how that works.

  The Miledi fight is won by a device I’ve never seen before, so there’s another asspull.

  This isn’t Hajime, but Tio claims a man used mind control magic to usurp freedom from her. I have no idea what that even means and it isn’t brought up again.

  In episode 11, the writers make up an ability called Sense Presence. This allows you to detect everyone that’s nearby. He uses this ability to find a person in the sewers. He’s in a village surrounded by people. It’s probably catching tons of people. Why would he focus on some guy in the sewers?

  This also means he can sense people through walls and floors. So its impossible to sneak up on Hajime. Our main character can make anything he wants at any time and cannot be surprised or caught off guard. There isn’t any tension here. Nothing is a threat to this guy and its impossible for him to get hurt.

  _MC is omnipresent_

  Then I guess there’s the lore. It starts being introduced in episode 5 with some shit about a Holy Church and "godly beings", which comes right the fuck out of nowhere. It comes back in episode 8 with some more nonsense about mavericks and overcoming trials to get superpowers, which I guess is the show's attempt to pretend any of these events make any sort of sense. Why is this shit here? You skipped over the entirety of a story arc plus Shea’s development with Hajime but this dumb fucking shit needed to stay in? What was the editor on????

  _Arifureta's editor, still hard at work_

  #4: Sound (Sound Design, Music, Sound Effects)

  Arifureta embodies all the traits of a true 1/10 anime, and that includes terrible music and sound. The music is terrible across the board, but the battle theme in particular is just shit. You can hear like some drums and a crappy trumpet? What the fuck is that??? There’s a saxophone but it's mixed so far into the background I can't make out the structure of it. The rest of the score is pretty bland and forgettable, but amazingly its also placed poorly! Here’s some examples!

  There’s the first scene of episode 9, where Hajime is using a power the writers made up to scout the mountain. Watch the episode yourself and you will notice this song is not only a fucking pain to listen to, but it does not fit the current scene in the slightest. That level of incompetence regarding the score and use of it is usually impossible to achieve, as either the music will usually be okay or the music will be placed decently. Here it is neither. The music is awful and the editor has no idea what he’s doing with it.

  4:45 into episode 11 you have a totally random insert song pushed into the middle of a random scene, which is immediately distracting and ruins the scene. 16:17 in the same episode it happens again.
  Finally, the sound design and effects are shit too.

  Generally the sound design is pretty mediocre rather than bad, but there are occasions where its actually so bad you’ll notice it’ll manage to distract you from the hideous visuals. For example, 11:17 into episode 11, the sound mixing they do on the stomach grumbling sound is just turned way up in the mix to I guess make it clear? But neither Hajime nor bunny girl react to this so…I assume it was the girl? Apparently, that’s how you do sound design. Just make the important sound really loud and that’s good enough. Why is it turned up louder than anything else in the mix if the character don’t react to it? That implies visually that it wasn’t audible! You absolute fuckheads!

  For an example of bad sound: Check the cat creatures in episode 12. I swear they sound just like the dad crying in the “best cry ever” video that went viral like a decade ago.

  Conclusion

  I think Arifureta is an imteresting case study because this is an isekai anime has been pretty widely rejected by the anime community on MAL, AL, etc. So if you want to see what it takes for mainstream anime fans, who rarely tend to care about art design or story structure, to turn on a series; Arifureta appears to be the series that crosses the line of what people consider to be an acceptable anime to be.

  As for the score; other series I give low scores to almost always have some redeeming aspect in the music, art, artstyle, you know something. Like Alicization has decent music despite being horrible, and Highschool of the Dead actually is pretty solid visually despite how fucking annoying it is. And sometimes terribad shows are entertaining and I’ll gives them points for that. Cipher and Dark Cat avoided gettings 1s for this exact reason. But Arifureta has no redeeming qualities. Literally name anything and its done wrong. The story is stupid when it actually makes sense (and half the time it doesn’t), the pacing is way too fucking fast for the first half and way too fucking slow for the second half, entire story arcs are skipped over within a single fucking episode, character motivations are not always clearly established, basic continuity is often broken, establishing shots are rarely used so half the time you have no idea how characters got to locations or where they even are, the main character is a cringey overpowered power fantasy and they constantly make up powers for him to have, the female characters have no depth and only exist to appeal to specific sex appeals, the background art is bland and uninspired, the characters are all poorly designed as well as poorly drawn and animated, the animation in general is stiff corner cutting is very visible in every episode, the special effects are downright pathetic, the sound effects are all terrible, the monster cg is some of the worst cgi work I’ve ever seen as well as constantly sticking out against the 2d drawn people, the music is fucking awful and is never placed correctly, the attempts at humor are fucking pathetic and pander to the lowest common denominator of brain dead isekai fans, the premise is isekai which is beyond oversaturated at the moment, and the entire thing is either boring or annoying.

  There is nothing redeeming here. Literally everything is awful. I would only recommend this if you hate yourself AND you want to learn more about art design and pacing. Otherwise, stay away. 1/10

  Continue on AniList
• 

  yabp1600

  80/100
  En resumen, una serie que vale la pena ver, la historia cumple con lo que se necesita entretener.

  Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou

  En resumen, una serie que vale la pena ver, la historia cumple con lo que se necesita entretener, ver como el más débil del grupo se convierte en el mas fuerte del mundo es un argumento con el cual la mayoría se identifica y le toma cariño con facilidad y de eso trata este anime.

  Historia: 8/10
  La historia nos lleva a el típico ISEKAI de fantasía en donde el personaje es llamado de nuestro mundo a un mundo similar al de un video juego, pero a diferencia de muchos animes de este creciente genero el protagonista llega y no es fuerte o resalta frente a los demás, por el contrario es el mas débil, es muy cautivador ver como el personaje principal crece y se levanta frente a la adversidad y con trabajo duro y estando al limite supera sus problemas. A medida que avanza la historia vemos como ser muy fuerte no es suficiente y nos empezamos a sumergir en la mente del protagonista en sus decisiones y manera de ver el mundo ahora que tiene el poder y la fuerza para realizar algún cambio en él, la verdad es muy interesante la historia pero en como avanza la serie se va perdiendo el objetivo principal por ello no es un 10 de 10.

  Características de los personajes: 6/10
  La verdad tiene el problema de toda serie corta de no poder desarrollar los personajes a profundidad sin embargo nos deja con la posibilidad de mas temporadas en donde este desarrollo de personajes sea mas profundo y con ello se generen más historias y enriquezca toda la obra en general tiene mucho potencial peor no se desarrollo en su totalidad en esta primera temporada

  Animación y arte: 8/10
  La animación no es la mejor, pero los dibujos están bien definidos, sin embargo pudieron haber invertido más tiempo en hacer las batallas más vistosas.

  Disfrute: 10/10
  Fue todo un placer ver los 13 capítulos de seguido la serie definitivamente te atraparte y te deja con ganas de más, el toque psicológico que se desarrolla con el personaje principal es el causante de esto es un hecho que es fácil de identificarse con el mismo y por ende siempre está la expectativa de que será lo próximo que le suceda a su personalidad, lamentablemente en el último capítulo no confirmaron la segunda temporada, pero la espero con ansias.

  En general: 8/10
  Un buen anime, la recomiendo al 100%, vale la pena verla te entretiene y te pone a pensar ansioso de saber que pasara más adelante.

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