The full English title is "My Isekai Life: I Gained a Second Class and Became the Strongest Sage in the World!". The title is exactly how the story would play out and it’s bad. So far, this anime perfectly sets the bar for having all the things wrong with the isekai genres being churned out by the industry. If you’re sick of watching isekai shows with overpowered plot armors and bland protagonists, spare yourself the trouble and not bother with this show.
Plot
Yuji wakes up in an unknown world with no knowledge how he was summoned away from his daily routine as a salaryman. He discovered an interface only visible to him enabling the ability to see his status like it was a game. After learning his class as a tamer, by serendipity he comes by a slime monster which became his first tamed monster. The same slime led him to a library within the woods containing magical spells and housed many slimes. The slimes willingly let themselves get tamed. These slimes were capable of reading several books and transfer the knowledge acquired to their tamer. Thus, Yuji became the strongest mage on his first day in the new world as an adventurer.
I thought about mentioning the villains in the story on the plot but then it’s like a waste of space considering there aren’t any real threats existent that can scratch Yuji’s plot armor. Not only did the plot established how much luck this guy had on his first day, it also seals the deal with how much his audience gawks at his great talent and how quick he can dispose his enemies.
The villains of the show are some secret organization that aims to bring chaos into the world through fulfilling a prophecy as hinted. You have a standard world conflict where the protagonist gets caught up with and double down how awful the story is by showing the audience how the calamity level monster appearing early in the show get rekt.
Everything wrong with the state of isekai genre is present within this show minus the fanservice. The lack of lewd scenes is probably the saving grace I could see from the animation. Going through the sex sells route is probably another tier low this show can get but it’s near the 12-episode mark and so far so good. I spent more than 6 episodes watching and still not much character development occurred that’s as significant since the first two episodes.
The overpowered, loner, introverted, mystery and skeptic protagonist trope has been overused for several isekai shows that it ruins whatever beauty the genre has left. Now there are still isekai shows that still offer some variation to the formula but this particular show I’m talking about feels like shaving the genre to its bare flesh and bones minimum.
There’s no struggle to get stronger, no drive to do anything meaningful, and no great conflict that pushes Yuji forward as a driver of the story. He is a protagonist that reacts to the circumstances he is in and whatever quirkiness this guy has been given for character development just feels like it was decided by randomly drawing from a hat.
There's no side character development or even anyone remotely worth remembering from the show. We do get some small backstories here and there but nothing substantial to what an audience can piece together on their own about the side characters.
Yuji, the protagonist, other than a plot armor and staple screen time, has little to offer as the main driver of the story. There is no clear motivation to established what his goals are in the new world other than travel aimlessly (as far the shows have portrayed at the time of this writing). It doesn’t help that his overpowered plot armor makes his circumstance distant to be relatable.
To make things unsurprisingly worse, his backstory is an overworked salary man and we only see hints about his past portraying his disgust with people. Watching the show past 8 episodes has made me a willing participant of the sunk cost fallacy for my time. Because I’ve invested some time waiting for the story to redeem itself for this long, the latest episode just became worse and worse.
Conclusion
I don’t recommend watching this show with its 1.5/5 personal rating. The isekai genre is a steep competition given how many titles are published per season running the same themes and tropes. Having shows like this pop up isn’t helping the genre but I know there’s still a market for power and wish fulfillment fantasy out there. You’d have to look past the second page to see it even during episode updates on some sites just to get a gauge how much unpopular this show really is.
If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.