Alright, fine. No more procrastinating, let's do this. I'm even watching the episode in an incognito window because I don't want it tainting my browsing history.
Our first episode starts off with a brief cold open, in which our protagonist is brooding alone on a mountaintop, only to see a leather ball rolling to a stop at his feet. Its owner, a little girl with what I would guess to be bear ears but what are apparently what japanese raccoon ears look like. He gets up and returns it, and the sun shines brightly down on the two.
The man then wakes up at home, realizing it was a dream.
Remember this going home, audience. As far as the author sees it,
this is you.
We are immediately treated to an "all show, no tell" approach, as our protagonist, Naofumi, narrates his situation with us. He apparently "save his brother from falling in with the wrong crowd", and as a reward his parents let him live at home while he's in college and pay for all of his expenses.
Also, his first interaction with other people shown in the whole outside of that dream sequence is a girl rudely shoving him aside, which the camera lingers on for a good few seconds.
Oh man, it's just giving it to me for free, huh?
Anyway, since his parents pay for almosts everything, he spends most of his allowance on games and light novels, and when he has no money he goes to the library and reads even more light novels. He can't get enough of 'em. Just pour 'em all over him, he loves it.
And then, I shit you not, he finds the magic macguffin book in the light novel section of the library.
Just keep reading those books, viewers. One day you'll get the one that takes you to waifuland.
He reads the start of the book, which details the basics of the legend, and...
That's Naofumi's second on-screen interaction with the fairer sex, by the way. We're two for two. Remember, viewers. Naofumi, who is literally you, is the kind of person who'll call a girl a slut after a single glance.
Anyway, he keeps reading, the book starts glowing and then falls into a weird green room, surrounded by robed figures, holding a shield and next to three other people with weapons. Wow... that was three minutes. Just three minutes before he got pulled into the new world.
Well, I guess he just has zero attachment to his parents who were nice enough to go above the call of duty in supporting him, or the brother who he nondescriptly saved from "the wrong crowd"(I'm just gonna imagine Chris R. from The Room here). Nothing to establish his life at home with, since it's intended to be the viewer's life. Just "Here's your stand-in, here is in the new world. Have fun."
The architecture of this room is pretty neat. Vaguely Aztec.
So, here are our four heroes of legend. Naofumi, Edward Elric, Kirito and Quatre Rebara Winner.
The lead summoner explains the situation, saying that the four have been summoned as the Four Cardinal Heroes to save their world, and begs for their assistance. Naofumi, the putz he is goes to immediately agree, because his "embody the audience" programming is particularly strong at the moment. The other three do the more sensible thing and refuse the strange man who just pulled them here out of nowhere, demanding either an explanation or to be sent home.
...wait, no. Actually, they've taken things even more in stride than Nao, and immediately begin demanding rewards from their summoners. That's a real dirtbag move, but considering how they were rudely abducted without their consent I can't say I wouldn't act the same. I respect the hustle, but Naofumi does not, looking scandalized while internally expositing what we just saw happen with our own eyeballs, because that's good storytelling, right?
The two head to have an audience with the king of this nation, Melromarc. ALong the way, the other three heroes are rude to Naofumi for literally no reason, and seem to be in sync with each other despite presumably having never met each other. The king also seemingly forgets about shieldboi while the heroes introduce themselves, despite him standing right in front of the throne like the others. No attempt is given to explore their perspective; they are simply The Other.
Also, all four of the heroes are Japanese boys between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. Normally I would wait a while longer to see if there's an explanation, but something tells me that's not gonna happen here.
Also, the somewhat unique architecture of that summoning room is nowhere to be seen here, giving way to a generic European fantasy throne room, and not even a particularly extravagant one. If just looking at it doesn't make me want to break out the guillotine, what's even the point?
Anyway, rather than let the King, who has a much cooler voice than him, explain the situation, Naofumi simply "summarizes" the story with a verboseness that makes me question how summarized it even is. Anyway, every once in a while, there's a thing called the Waves where a bunch of calamities and monsters appear. Each kingdom has special Dragon Hourglasses which predict when the next Wave will come. The last one was successfully fought off but they'll only get more dangerous from here.
The reason I'm not bothering to post an screenshots is that everything looks fucking boring. From the throne room, to the still images of off-model knights killing off-model zombies, there aren't any frames that look particularly nice or convey anything that my text isn't already saying. This is not a show that looks good.
I screenshotted this frame because I was desperate for something and thought the lighting effects were pretty, only to then realize that no one has a face.
The three Guys Who Aren't Naofumi, henceforth known as GWAN, demand that the king reward them, and he tells them to "check their status". The four then realize that, surprise surprise, it's just like a video game!
Christ, it's even a blatant knockoff of the HUD in SAO...
The king at least spins it in a kinda neat way, saying that the magic within the legendary weapons has to gradually attune itself to their wielders through battle. However, all of them working together in one party isn't advised, because they have a discordant effect with each other, hindering their development, so the four heroes should each make their own party.
This concept of multiple isekai'd protagonists working individually within one setting and sometimes competing is really neat, honestly. To bad everything I know about this show tells me it won't be used so well...
We cut to the four in the room which the palace has provided them for the night, discussing their situation. the GWAN bicker over what kind of game this is like, and apparently this is the same setting as SAO too, because VRMMO's are a thing
For once, I actually wish Kirito would show up, because all four of these guys are worse than him. The GWAN are one-note dickbags with the same personality, and Naofumi is such a gormless, personality-less meatsack that I don't even feel that bad for him.
This scene goes somewhere interesting though; the four want to test whether they're just in some kind of VR trick, and exchange trivia. It turns out they're all from different timelines(which makes all of them being from Japan even stranger, though I guess the books might have all been in the same 3D space across universes. However, it only serves to make the GWAN's unity even stranger, since we now have confirmation that they didn't know each other before today.
And now the scene finally forces me to confront the elephant in the room that I've been avoiding: Naofumi is apparently not a gamer. Despite him mentioning purchasing games sometimes, and how we see him logging into some kind of game during the brief "real world" section.
Thankfully, my attention is quickly torn away from this and towards something even stupider, as the GWAN briefly bully the poor guy about how one thing that's constant across the universes is that in the game which this world is most like, the Shielder class is low-tier and can't keep up in the current meta.
The idea that this universe's magic would not just be like a game, but like a
poorly balanced game and thus make one of its legendary heroes worse is honestly really endearingly funny to me, even if it's incredibly dumb.
And then Naofumi starts thinking about his future party... Specifically, he thinks about how his role will be to tank for and protect his party, and how he hopes there'll be girls in it who he can have a romance with. That's Naofumi's third interaction with the concept of womanhood, if you're keeping track.
The bullying continues without pause the next morning, as the four heroes are brought into a throneroom where a gathering of the kingdom's greatest warriors and spellcasters are there to party with. For some reason, they are the ones choosing the hero, and no one wants to be on Naofumi's team.
I haven't seen bullying this laughable and over the top since Worm.
It's then explained that the heroes are supposed to be summoned "with a firm understanding of their world", but word has gotten out about Naofumi being a Fake Gamer Boy, so no one wants to party with him.
-_-
Fuck, how much longer is left in this episode? O-oh... the first episode is double length....... oh.................
Also, Naofumi is mad at Spearboi for not being guilty about four of the five girls being on his team, despite Nao himself fantasizing about having waifus in his party the night before. We're four for four.
Then, accompanied by literal god rays from heaven, one person decides to switch to Naofumi's side: Myne, one of the girls from Spear's party.
She doesn't give a reason for why she's switching and Naofumi doesn't ask. She just flutters her eyelashes at him and he gets flustered.
The heroes are then given all of the funds they need for their adventures: 600 silver pieces each for the GWAN and 800 for Naofumi, since he only has one party member at the moment. You'd think the four most important people ever, who are going to literally save to world, would be given a lot more than that to make the early grinding faster for them. In general, the king is amazingly blase about how this is being handled.
You see, if it were up to
me, I'd do it Dwarf Fortress style. But then, I suppose that's not a good way to secure their loyalty
.
The heroes go their separate ways, with Naofumi and Myne heading towards a nearby market to buy the gear they'll need. It's a fairly generic medieval eastern European market, or rather the JRPG version of one; no bizarre old timey food on sale here.
But then......
Congrats, Nao. You managed to last about four minutes without a girl before you made it weird. New record. Just to reiterate: Naofumi is twenty years old, and still thinks about girls the way a twelve year old would; as an entirely separate class of being from boys. You, as the audience of this isekai show, are expected to feel the same way.
They enter a weapons shop and meet a shopkeeper who's an exact dead ringer of the merchant guy from SAO except not black, and he calls Naofumi "the dud", in a continuing trend of bullying a literal legendary hero who is here to help save the world. The doublethink at play behind this story is just incredible. "I'm your average otaku, but now I'm someone special, but even though I'm someone special people still look down on me."
Naofumi tries to test one one of the swords on sale but it painfully shocks him. Turns out him being the Shield Hero is metaphysically enforced; he literally cannot hold other weapons. So instead, he buys some armor for himself, and the show lies to our faces:
I'm not sure what exactly that is, but it sure ain't chain-anything. He doesn't buy Myne anything, presumably expecting her to go out to battle in a blouse, skirt and corset with a small amount of leather padding. Though since this world is MMO-based, maybe that
is the female version of the chain mail item.
The two head out into a nondescript meadow and fight some small slimes. It tlurns out that Naofumi doesn't actually have to block with the shield; it enshrouds his entire body in a protective aura, making the mere idea that the Shielder class sucks laughable. However, it takes him an entire minute of punching to kill one and get a single point of EXP, whereas the Sword Hero, who he notices nearby, is killing them in single hits.
Even when the animators don't draw his face, he's still more of a chad than Naofumi will ever be. It's actually a really fluidly animated shot in motion tho, it's the first time this show has actually looked good so far.
Some undefined amount of time later, the two have a boring conversation about using monster materials to progress through the shield's skill tree; honestly, who gives a shit?
They go back to the shop, and Myne immediately uses her body to convince Naofumi to spend more than he's comfortable with to by her the best gear possible, rationalizing that she needs it since she's the one who can actually kill monsters efficiently. Naofumi responds by...
...monologuing about how much he loves this trope.
sigh. Come on, more than halfway done, I'm over the hump, I can do this...
If you're keeping count, we're now five out of seven, in terms of scenes where Nao interacts with women or the concept of womanhood that have either sexual or resentful vibes to them.
Splitting the review here because of SV's image-per-post limit.
