Isekai World Tour: Sword Art Online: Aincrad Arc

Lets rip this bandage off and talk about SAO. I'm going to handle this differently than my other posts in this series. I'm going to split this show up by arc as opposed to season so each arc will get its own post (also because there is only so much Kirito I can handle in one viewing). This mostly because the first arc of SAO ended up being more enjoyable than I remembered and its really in Alfheim where my issues with it as a whole start cropping up. Welcome to the next stop on the Isekai World Tour!

Premise: The hottest and most anticipated new mmo has dropped. 10,000 lucky players log in to get a feel for the game and everything is going fine...right up until they log out. Suddenly they're transported to a town square as the sky goes red. The Game Master appears and tells them that they're stuck here until they beat the game and if they die in the game, the nerve gear will fry their brains. He congratulates them for being able to play his little game and wishes them luck.

I surprisingly enjoyed this arc more than I did the last time around. Its not bad but its not amazing either (well, outside of two episodes) and I have a few minor issues that don't break the arc for me. Kirito is still op as hell tho. The first half of the arc was really good but honestly, it gets kinda boring once Kirito and Asuna get together. Its one of those things where the constant time skips makes me not believe their relationship because its not shown on-screen until they get together. I legitimately said "WTF!" out loud when Asuna tells another player that Kirito is her reason for living. The arc is at its best when its just Kirito bumping into people and helping them out. Easily the best episodes in the arc for me are episodes 5 and 6. They're a pretty sweet murder mystery about players somehow getting PK-ed in safe zones. Its a fantastic episode that gives a decent amount of insight into how certain aspects of the game work. 

Kirito is a weird protagonist for this kind of story because the people he meets are more interesting than him. I would've loved to see an episode centered around Klein or the merchant guy. Outside of Asuna, the supporting cast isn't there consistently. I honestly would've preferred if this arc had been an anthology following Kirito as he helps people out during his traveling because the relationship with Asuna and her guild don't really add anything until the final two episodes. Actually now that I think about it, this show might have been better off if each episode had a different pov character in general.

I'm torn on the Yui episode, its an ok episode but its also a bit manipulative. Spoilers: Kirito and Asuna find an amnesiac girl while on vacation and adopt her while they try to figure out who she is and if and she has any family. She isn't a player, she isn't even human. She is a mental health algorithm designed to study and help people acclimate to SAO. The system admin forbad her from doing that so she could only watch on in horror at the players' mental anguish until her code bugs out and she seeks out the only two happy players in the game: Kirito and Asuna. See the problem yet?  Yui is designed to poke, prod, and study people's mental state and because of that, she inadvertently sort of controls the responses people will have to her. So I'm not sure how much of their "family" was legitimately Kirito and Asuna liking her and how much was Yui's programming accidentally causing them to react that way. It leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth the more I think about it.

Final Thoughts: All things considered, the arc is ok and it held my attention well enough. As mentioned earlier, the second half of the arc is a let down compared to the first. The show makes a point of saying a few times how emotionally scarred and terrified the player base is due to being stuck in the game but it only really shows it in one or two episodes thanks to all the timeskips. Sadly from what I remember of the next arc of the show, its all downhill from here.

Isekai World Tour: Konosuba: God's Blessing On This Wonderful World Seasons 1 and 2

I know I already covered this show on the blog before but I reread my original review and I really didn't say much about the show other than that I liked it so it was due for a redo. Like the other posts in this series, this post is probably gonna be kinda short. Welcome to the next stop on the Isekai World Tour!

Premise: After a tragic and frankly pretty embarrassing death, Kazuma Sato appears before the goddess Aqua. She insults him and laughs in his face about how he died and then "graciously" offers to bring him back to life in another world with a single boon to take with him. Kazuma is the petty and vindictive sort so he chooses to take the goddess herself as his boon.

How do I describe this show? Back when I first watched it, I was just testing it out as this kind of comedy can be very hit or miss with me. It took a few episodes for me to get a feel for the show but by episode 4, I was on board with it. I absolutely adore this cast. They're just one big lovable catastrophe of an rpg party. This party only has 2 braincells between the 4 of them and Kazuma has one of them. You have the overpowered but basically useless arrogant idiot (Aqua), the hyper focused mage obsessed with one spell (Megumin), and my favorite: Darkness. Darkness is the best of the trio for me. She is a crusader specifically because she likes getting hit and she can't hit back due to her low accuracy. Thats something she basically admits to in the show. I don't usually enjoy characters like her but man, this party and show really makes her work. All 3 of them combined makes for one enjoyable headache for Kazuma. It is never a boring day for the man with these 3 ladies. I can't really go into much else about the show because imo, how the party plays off of each other and the shenanigans they get into because of it is the main draw. There isn't really much an overarching plot at they just happen to luck into fighting the evil generals. Saying anything else about it would also basically require me spoil the jokes and thats not really something I should do for a comedy.

Final Thoughts: I started typing this before season 3 got announced. I miss these lovable idiots and I'm really looking forward to season 3. The show somehow manages to side step the cringe aspects of its characters' comedy. It manages to do it so well that I actually found myself laughing about Darkness'...tendencies. Not just any laughs for that matter, minute long deep laughs. For real, if you asked me which character I was certain I would've hated when I first saw this show, it would've been Darkness. This show managed to leave me a smile on my face with each episode. Its is easily one of my favorite isekai anime to the point where I actually want merch from it. However, its not a show I can easily recommend, mostly because if the comedy or characters don't click with you, you're probably gonna be bored or annoyed.

Isekai World Tour: In Another World With My Smartphone

You know, there are so many other light novel adaptations I should cover in this series but for some reason I really just have the urge to vent about this one. Its not something I'd consider bad, its just really meh. Also, this is specifically just going to be about the anime, not the novels as I haven't read them so if any of my complaints are rectified there, I won't know. Now, join me on the next stop on the Isekai World Tour!

Premise: God screws up and accidentally drops a lightning bolt on 15 year old Touya Mochizuka. He is surprisingly chill about being dead all things considered. As an apology God brings him back to life in another world and grants Touya's one request...to bring his smartphone with him.

First off, I really don't like the title. It sounds like the setup to a joke that never comes, which honestly sums up the show itself imo. The show's whole setup makes it sound like it should be a parody but its not. Furthermore, God also grants Touya a few other gifts he didn't ask for. He enhances Touya's physical abilities and (this part is a sticking point I have with it), he grants him complete magical affinity with all the elements. Due to this, Touya can learn every spell in that world, including custom abilities that are effectively rng-ed into people at birth.

All of that wouldn't be much of a problem if anything in the world could touch him. Between him being so broken and his chill nature, there is absolutely no tension in the show whatsoever. So the show just feels like a sequence of things that happen. I can't even call it a power fantasy (ugh...I hate using that term due to it being a tad too broad imo) because of all that. Its an odd case where the story is too chill for its own good. Maybe that changes as the novels go on but the anime doesn't have any really draw to it imo. Even the characters didn't manage to grab me. I know I keep complaining about this but Touya is way too chill to be interesting. The show doesn't go much into the female cast either so...yeah, there is virtually nothing to this cast at all.

Final Thoughts: Yeah, this post is kinda short given my usual lengths.This show just strikes me as a way to kill time and thats about all there is to it overall. Its way too chill for its own good. It doesn't go beyond what you'd think it would and doesn't really do anything interesting with the semi-comedic premise. Its not bad but there really isn't a big draw to it. It kinda feels like the only reason this was adapted was because of the Isekai boom. I can't even recall anything about the world he was dumped into. I dunno, maybe the novels fix my problems with it as they go on but I can't really say this made me even want to check out the novels after seeing the show. Thats really all I have to say about the show since it basically gave me nothing.

Isekai World Tour: .Hack//Sign

Isekai is a genre I'm rather fond of even if a lot of it comes off as same-y. I have found some I really dig but I've never done a deep dive into the genre before. There are so many I should cover at some point: Log Horizon? Re:Zero? SAO (ugh)? Konosuba (ok I already did a post on that but still)? There are so many Isekai to choose from these days (and I really should experience just how much the genre has to offer) but I figured before covering anything new-ish, I'd go back to the first Isekai-ish show I ever saw. This is going to be less of a review in my usual style and more my thoughts on the show in general so its not going to be in-depth. Welcome to the first stop on the Isekai World Tour: .Hack//Sign!

Premise: A player of an mmo game awakens after passing out in a dungeon. He can't remember exactly what happened before he passed out. To his surprise he also can't log out and even then, he doesn't particularly want to. In addition to that, he can now do things that outright break the game's rules landing him in the sights of a few other players in The World. If that wasn't bad enough, strange unkillable monsters are starting to pop up. Only one thing seems to be (relatively) certain: The mysterious Key of The Twilight just might be the lynchpin of it all.

Full disclosure...I went into this show with relatively fresh eyes cuz it had been so long since I'd seen it that my memories were hazy at best. I was pleasantly surprised with the show. There was a lot more talking than I would've figured going into this and quite a bit of meandering early on. With that being said, its actually a pretty solid character study and has a decently intriguing mystery. Tsukasa learning that while his mind is trapped in the game he can feel everything happening to him but can't actually die because the entity keeping him there won't let him was downright horrifying. The man has an existential crisis wondering if he is even real at all.

While Tsukasa is the main focus of the show, I dig the supporting cast. They all get some nice moments and in the case of BT and Bear, we get a look at their lives outside the game. Bear's focus episode is great because it asks the question of how much of his desire to help Tsukasa comes from his desire to make up for failing to be apart of his own son's life. He eventually comes to the conclusion that he legitimately does want to help the kid. Pretty much thinking that no matter how bad the real world is for a person, its healthier not to spend it all in a world of fantasy. As for BT, well...she just straight up prefers the virtual world to the real world. Its not really delved into but I kinda got this vibe that her irl life was kind of sad, hence her insistence that reality is reality and a game is a game and that the two should never mix. That basically implies that the game is all she has in her life. Its even more apparent because she makes friends with a former member of the Crimson Knights (Crim) while chasing down the mystery of the key and when she wants to meet up irl to hangout and he shuts her down because he has the same mentality she does. There isn't much to Mimiru because she never wrestles with the question the others do. That being if they should help Tsukasa even if its not what Tsuaka wants. Mimiru is all in for trying to help him really early on and she doesn't really back down from that. There are three other characters in the show (Sora, Crim, and Silver Knight) who I can't really talk about for spoiler reasons. Sora's overall plot isn't finished until the video games and Crim and Silver Knight tie into Subaru and I can't really talk about her.

I'm not going to get into the main mystery because well, gotta leave some mystery to the show. I will say this, if you're going into it for the first time, you'll probably figure out what the key is at about the halfway point of the show as thats when Tsukasa does even if he doesn't say it out loud. Because of that, I also can't talk much about Tsukasa and by extension Subaru. I will say that in the end Subaru basically becomes Tsukasa's rock and helps him take that one step forward.

Music: The only thing I remembered from my first viewing of the show is the music which is still fantastic. Its actually even better than I remember and its downright haunting. Yuji Kajura pulled out all the stops for this soundtrack. I swear if I could mute everything except the music, I would totally have it on in the background as a I go about my day. Its easily one of my favorite soundtracks from any show I've seen. It gives me goosebumps every time I hear it and I wish I could track it down just so I can play it as I go about my day.

Final Thoughts: I uh...don't really have much to say as a closer. There was a lot about this show that I did not remember. I know there is a contingent of folks these days who hold the talk-y bits against it but honestly, I don't see the point of the hate. Even the non-plot talk-y bits are important because its character interactions letting them get closer to each other so that they can build to the eventual moment when all of the cast comes together for Tsukasa's sake. The change brought on by the talk-y bits are entire reason BT sides with Tsukasa in the end despite only caring about the mystery of the key itself in the beginning. Its not a show I can easily recommend but if you haven't seen it, give it a look if you're curious. You might get as much out of it as I did.