Reviews 3r154o

This is a fairly generic fantasy isekai that has a few interesting ideas in its first season that it doesn't really capitalize on. The start is intriguing enough with the show almost become a revenge story, prompted on by a false rape accusation and the protagonist stooping to magically-enforced slavery. That's fairly edgy stuff for an anime and it piqued my interest at first, but unfortunately it peters out anticlimactically over the course of S1. The slave-girl obviously chooses to side with the protagonists of her own free will after a time, and the false rape accusation is shown to be a sham. There's the usual anime problem of the bad guys not really receiving significant punishment for their deeds, although at least this show is funny with one of the antagonists being referred to as "bitch" and "whore" as her penalty.

The action scenes, like in most anime, aren't particularly special. It's goofy to hear characters announce their attacks. Something like RISING MUNGO SLASH -- SUPREME SWORD STRIKE is just silly and makes it hard for me to take any of this seriously.

Raphtalia's character design is fairly boring. It's kind of weird that whoever designed her dropped the ball, as anime is usually good at this type of thing if nothing else. She's pretty plain which makes me care a bit less about the interpersonal dynamics.

There are probably too many characters in this series overall. They're frequently introduced, given a bit of personality, and then mostly forgotten after a few episodes.

The power fantasy isn't done nearly as well here as it is in, say, Solo Levelling.

After season 1, the show doesn't really bother trying to be anything other than a generic isekai, and it's not a particularly well-executed one either. I wasn't utterly bored in the moment-to-moment beats of the story, but it's certainly not memorable. Perhaps its building to something with its overarching conflict, but after 3 seasons I haven't seen much that would persuade me to stick around.