DESCRIPTION

CAST

NOVEL AdventureKumo desu ga, Nani ka?
MANGA AdventureKumo desu ga, Nani ka?

REVIEWS

• 

  CamTheCritic

  50/100
  A Clash of Two Visions – Fun Spider Misadventures vs. Generic Fantasy Trash

  **Introduction** Generally, the latest influx of isekai titles each season seem to interest me and many others as the genre is essentially like comfort food in anime form. While mostly lacking intricate plots, heavy themes, and stellar drama, isekai franchises, at their best, are simply *fun*. And they all seemingly offer a familiar yet satisfying escapist fantasy adventure which makes for an easy going watch. With that being said, naturally, *So I’m A Spider, So What* (shortened to Spider for each consecutive reference for ease of this review), caught my attention at the beginning of the Winter 2021 anime season. Ultimately, upon watching the entire runtime of the series, I will concede *Spider* consistently captures that sense of fun I am seeking from an isekai title. However, it would be dishonest for me to say I think *Spider* is a competent show, even within its own genre. Unfortunately, this anime is truly a clash of two visions – each constantly competing with each other. These two competing visions of the story are mostly embodied by POV changes essentially. On one hand, we have the fun comedic misadventures of Kumoko the reincarnated Spider. On the other, we have generic fantasy isekai trash, mostly represented by humanity’s perspective. **The Plot** In essence, an entire classroom is blown up & all those who perished are reincarnated into this video game-esque world. Each student from the class is reincarnated into a being with a special skill that is tailored to mirror their personality & traits as a human. As an illustration, Kumoko, our protagonist, is reincarnated into a spider monster, unlike all her contemporaries, as she was practically a loser NEET loner in her life as a human. As a newly reincarnated Spider, Kumoko is tasked with leaving the cave she finds herself in now, defeating various monsters that challenge her survival, and exploring the greater fantasy world beyond the cave. I would elaborate further but, practically speaking, that is all you really need to know to understand the underlying concept for this anime. It is fundamentally a shallow plot, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just different. **The Setting** The fantasy world at large in which this show takes place in is exceedingly generic. There are elves, demons, monsters, humans, etc. – pretty much everything any standard generic fantasy series needs. The worldbuilding is minimal as well, but there are a few competing factions that give rise to some nuance. For instance, the elves seem to have their own autonomous lands but tend to mingle within humanity’s domain, having good relations with them. The monsters generally stick to secluded spaces like the caves and forest and are driven back from occupied towns by human forces. The demons seem to have no alliance to anyone other than their own brethren and actively seek to demolish everyone else. And, humanity is defined by a multitude of sovereign townships and some competing religious factions. Once again, I could elaborate further, but there simply is not much to the setting and plot of this franchise. Even this rudimentary map I provided below pretty much tells the whole tale – there just isn’t much going on here. **The Animation** The animation of this series is a weird ungodly concoction of full 3DCGI elements and more traditional 2D animation. Of course, the 3D elements look like shit; I don’t think any studio has figured out how to make *full* 3DCGI look remotely competent other than Studio Orange, who produce Land of the Lustrous & Beastars among others. Like, we are talking occasion Berserk 2016 levels of dogshit 3DCGI at the low points.

  What is so odd about this is sometimes they have 2D and 3D elements in the same exact frame or scene. So, that begs the question, why not just stick to traditional 2D? The 2D stuff isn’t impressive, far from it in fact, but at least it doesn’t look horrible. As a package, it is *just barely* serviceable altogether. At least they generally play to 3D’s strengths, having dynamic camera angles, large amounts of entities on screen, and making it easier to portray actual movement during action sequences. As an aside, I am sure the production choice of 3D animation helped save some money budget wise as well, which is advantageous as this show seemingly had a very low overall budget production considering what we got as the final product. **The Characters** As aforementioned, the setting, plot, and animation of this isekai venture is particularly weak. In fact, this series on its own does not hold up well at all against the vast landscape of its many contemporaries. However, this series does offer a saving grace – Kumoko herself. Kumoko’s character & her actions as the spider *singlehandedly* carry the show. Kumoko has amazing voice acting, voiced by industry veteran Aoi Yuuki, who brings so much life into the character. Kumoko is frankly hilarious, and her comedic nature plays into itself well as she is ultimately extremely self-aware of her situation. In fact, a recurring joke is that she is a spider herself, playing the shounen protagonist character in a world seemingly against her existence from all angles. To further amplify how much Kumoko steals the show, she later adopts the Parallel Minds ability, gaining three alternative personalities in essence, which all play upon each other with perfect chemistry. Likewise, Kumoko is very expressive and frequently monologues, directly showing us *and* telling us exactly how she feels, her plans moving forward, and how she plans to accomplish her immediate goals. It cannot be understated or stressed enough how much this show would be nothing without its lead protagonist. Conversely, as a aforementioned above, the show has frequent perspective shifts. Our other main protagonist here is Shun the Hero, a former classmate and reincarnated contemporary of Kumoko. This is where the title *a clash of two visions* comes from ultimately. Anything involving the human characters is such a damn snooze fest. These characters are the most generic fantasy characters of all time, lacking any quirks that could set them apart. For instance, these minute attributes completely summarize some of the human characters in the show: - Shun the Hero is good & righteous because he is the hero. - Hugo the False Hero is bad & corrupt because his the false hero. - Filimos remains a caring mentor as she was a teacher in her past life. - Feirune is a self-absorbed yet kind hearted bitch. These characters don't even have distinctive physical attributes like special armor, unique clothing, or different hair colors that would set them apart from any other layman in the universe. I mean, I could go on & on -- the point being is that these character lack any depth. Directly comparing these husks of characters to someone like Kumoko, the difference is like night & day. Kumoko is morally ambiguous as she directly kills many humans and elves, sparking an entire war. She adopts the persona of an ancient divine beast to get free food from her mistaken worshippers. She tries to kill her own mother to gain independence. She kills many monsters not out of the need for survival but simply because she is gluttonous. These quirks infinitely give rise to a much more interesting, compelling, and likeable character than any of these caricatures on offer from the human faction. **The Verdict & Final Thoughts** *Spider* is an extremely shallow experience. It has its moments of fun, but, unfortunately, they are few and far in-between. Rather than focus on what works -- the fun spider misadventures, the production team would rather dump you with generic familiar fantasy exposition. If this show simply focused *entirely* on Kumoko, the series itself would be an infinitely more enjoyable entertainment experience. However, as it sits now, it is very inconsistent in quality from episode to episode, switching between snooze fest to laugh-a-thon. With that being said, alongside all the other criticisms I offered throughout this overview, I cannot recommend this series in good faith, especially at 24 episodes. But, I would be lying if I said I did not have a good time with it, albeit even if those moments were sparse. It was entertaining but only in a surface level type of fashion. Nevertheless, I would probably give Season Two a go if they ever made it, but I would be much more prone to dropping the series or even skipping entire episodes if it continued the same trend. Ultimately, I am going to score this at a perfectly average, 50/100 points. Because, really, this show was just an exceedingly average experience in all facets. - - - Anyways, I hear the light novel is good, so maybe check out that instead if this franchise interests you at all! If you made it to the end of this review, I would like to thank you for your time & reading this. Feel free to message me if you agree/disagree, whatever really, would love to discuss more. I generally follow back, so drop me a follow too! And I have some other reviews I have done you can access like [Record of Raganrock](https://anilist.co/review/11884) and [Demon Slayer Mugen Train ](https://anilist.co/review/9344) alongside some others I plan on doing in the future, so maybe check out those on my profile when they drop. Thanks again. :)
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• 

  kenta

  50/100
  Even a Jojo's reference wasn't able to save this anime.

  The jojo's reference is "Muda muda muda". Now onto the review.

  Is the KumoDesu anime good? No. Is the KumoDesu anime bad? Yes. Very much so. It is fairly ambitious with how it tries to presents two different timelines and frequently switches between them. This sort of made the story more engaging, easily making it the most bearable and enjoyable aspect and that's saying something considering that over 50% of the anime was mind numbingly boring.

  Story
  I personally enjoyed some of the story despite it's shortcomings. We start off with Kumoko, a high school student reincarnated into a spider, who is in a labyrinth and her classmates reincarnated as normal humans with the exception of a few. The first half of the anime gets pretty repetitive as it follows the same cycle of Kumoko finding a strong monster, killing it, eating it and finding a stronger monster. Although, it does get better in the second half as we begin to learn more about the world through Kumoko's perspective. The world building was appealing enough to make me want to continue the anime. Then there's the human side that serves almost no purpose other than boring the viewer to death.

  Characters
  Meh. Kumoko's jokes and witty comments get stale very quickly but she manages to remain more entertaining than any other character. The main human characters follow every classic cliche there is. Shun, a brocon who is obsessed with justice as much as he is with his brother. Then there's Hugo, the villain whose motives are almost non existent because of how stupid they are. I watched 24 episodes of this anime yet I'm barely able to recollect major human character names.

  Animation
  Yeah, this sucks massive balls. The action direction is so crazy that it turns into a slideshow. It's just so half assed at points. Imagine any kind of fighting scene and that would still be better than what we got in KumoDesu. The action sequences were so well done that I would rather skip to the end than torture my eyes. Atleast we got a scene where the camera went under Hugo's clothes in the final episodes. Truly the peak of this series.

  Soundtrack
  Besides the second opening, I wasn't a big fan of the rest. The first ending was kind of cute, I guess?

  Conclusion
  This is the same studio that did the critically acclaimed adaptation of Berserk so I don't want to judge the whole series just by the adaption. I can see the potential this series has but this adaptation ain't it. The anime's high moments were quickly overshadowed by the lows (human side of the story). If you want to watch anime just for it's story, KumoDesu is pretty solid as it sucks at every other aspect.

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• 

  LordReno

  63/100
  Great Story, but unfortunately with a ruined anime adaptation

  Warning, this review will contain minor spoilers for the Anime.

  ‎

  

  I'm a Spider So What, is an anime with a very interesting story, and from what I can tell rather interesting characters, but with an anime adaptation that is so bad, that had I not been hooked to the story, I would have instantly dropped the series.

  Unfortunately, while the story is very interesting, the author picked studio Millepensee to bring his anime to light, and for those of you who are unaware, studio Millepensee is the same studio which was responsible for Berkserk's first and second season adaptations. So from the start, I instantly feared the worst for this anime, and the worst happened.

  From horrendous CGI, to animation in the later half of the anime which was so poorly made, that I wouldn't even be exaggerating if I said that my dog could probably animate better than that. (And no, I know animating is hard, but trust me, you have no idea how poor the animations is in the later half of the anime. I will however, give them props for the animation at the start of the anime.)

  ‎

  I will delve into everything in detail below:

  ‎

  

  ‎

  Story 9/10:

  The Story of this anime is quite literally the only thing that managed to keep me entertained and wanting to watch more of this anime. The story doesn't have the best start, but after a few episodes, I guarantee you that you will definitely be hooked, and want to watch more of this anime, just for the sake of exploring the story. There are many unexpected twists, all of which are explained eventually, and make sense, and the overall world building is pretty interesting. Unfortunately, I am a bit skeptical of some of the scenes that take place at the end of the end of the anime, which may or may not downgrade the story in the long run, but I will maintain a positive perspective on this series, and as such I shall not comment on what may or may not occur in the future.

  

  ‎

  Art 3/10:

  When delving into Art, I mainly look at two aspects within an anime. The Aesthetics (i.e. how the anime looks) and the animation within the anime.

  In terms of overall Aesthetics. it starts off at a fairy nice light, nothing visually astounding, but not bad either, so I would say overall mediocre. However, as the anime progresses, there is less and less detail placed into the artstyle, which results in the anime being visually painful to look at.

  In terms of animation. This was where the studio adapting the anime mainly failed at producing. While at the start the animation was decent enough, it was absolutely horrid at the end. Furthermore, this anime frequently switches between 2D and 3D, without trying to smoothly transfer between the two, which results in pretty weird scenes. Especially considering that some scenes have both 3D and 2D characters next to each other at the same time.

  Adding onto this, 3D is not necessarily a bad thing, I have seen several 3D anime which manage to use 3D well. There are also western cartoons such as "The Dragon Prince", which I absolutely love, which is entirely in 3D. However, this anime fails in the 3D aspect. Fights are poorly animated, especially at the end, and the anime never takes advantage of the 3D models to make stunning camera movements or anything of the like.

  ‎

  Sound 5/10:

  In terms of sound, the music in this anime is okay, there aren't any really memorable soundtracks, but at the same time, there weren't any moments where I felt the music didn't fit the scene.

  In terms of voice acting, this really depends on you, I personally really enjoy the voice actress of the main character, so do most of my friends. However, I know that the majority of the community dislikes her voice acting, as such I shall not comment on this aspect.

  ‎

  Character 6/10:

  Similarly to what I mentioned inside sound, the characters in this anime are really hit or miss, meaning you either like them a lot, or else you hate them. Unfortunately though, apart from a few main characters and side characters, I feel that some of the major cast have rather bland characters. However, I didn't find any of them to be annoying, or too bland, as such I believe a score of 6 is justifiable.

  ‎

  Enjoyment 6/10:

  I overall enjoyed watching this anime. However, to be frankly honest, it wasn't really the anime I enjoyed, but rather the story that was portrayed within the anime. I will definitely not watch any second season. However, I do plan on grabbing the light novel and reading it through to see the story that got me hooked into this anime.

  ‎

  Overall 6.3/10:

  The Anime Studio honestly ruined the adaptation of the light novel. While the anime is still pretty watchable, and as long as you like the story, you should remain entertained. I would highly recommend reading the Light Novel instead of watching this anime.

  ‎

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  [If you enjoyed this review, please feel free to read my other reviews](https://anilist.co/user/LordReno/reviews)

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