So since I'm house-sitting again, I've re-Crunchyrolled since yo-ho-ho to watch anime is less convenient when I'm not home.
I decided to give another try to "As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World," which I saw maybe the first couple of eps about, as it has managed to get a S2.
So this show is conflicting. Buckle up. No, I don't expect you to read all of this but I do go on about this fucking show.
Pros:
-There is a solid story in this somewhere.
-The MC's father is a cool dude.
-The idea that the MC has a skill to help him find good people and knows he needs to use it since the world will be in peril is an interesting concept. I like that he must surround himself with nakama to survive or whatever.
-The way the world's politics play into story here and there is neat.
-I like how time passes by and we see some of the characters get a bit older.
-Butler fighter-guy is still a cool dude. We also meet some other neat characters like a cool gender-bender assassin/spy and some of the government official dudes are a'ight.
Cons:
-Yet another isekai where the fact the MC's isekai'd doesn't fucking matter. In fact, that he's actually a grown man becomes creepy and creates issues where issues didn't need to exist.
-Almost every child character that appears--as in children that are major characters--are super smart beyond their years and it's weird. The MC's a grown man but no one else has that excuse.
-Cool dude butler does get kind of sidelined. He's still important but the cast is bloating and this is a natural consequence. Still putting it as a con.
-Chad Dad dies. (Not a spoiler, the first episode opens on this fact.) He doesn't die in a stupid way or anything. I actually like the plot line around his death and the drama around it is touching. But he's the best character in the show so his dying is to this show's detriment.
-Minor nitpick but the dad's blond and the mom's a redhead so where the fuck does the MC's haircolor come from. Yes, I know kids don't need to match but then the main character gets two siblings and they don't match either.
-Titty witch does not fit into this world at all.
Le Rant below on the titty witch...
Look, I knew this show had a titty witch. She's on all of the art or whatever. We meet first titty witch as a child, when she is both magicless and tittyless. She immediately reaches her final form at 14. 14! Nah, man, that's too young. She's the ONLY titty witch so far and I saw the entire first season of this show. What the fuck.
The show Magi has a titty witch, too. But while Magi's titty witch apparently can't fit into a shirt, she does still fit into the world of Magi. Other people in Magi are missing clothes: shirts, shoes, sometimes both, and some characters even also show titty. There's boob-jokes in Magi that mesh with the other humor present in the show. Not that I find most of Magi's sex-humor funny but I can't say it doesn't belong in the world in which Magi is set in. Titty witch in Magi functions within Magi's world.
Meanwhile, in this show, there's NO other people missing clothes. There's no shirtless dudes or shoeless people fighting side by side with titty witch like they do in Magi. Titty witch lets it all hang out as she boldly goes into battle with other mages wearing all of their clothing and with soldiers layered in armor. The battles at one point carry a bit of emotional weight as Chad Dad is dying in the course of the fight. Meanwhile, titty witch is flopping around.
Sometimes there's a joke where the main character's face is being smashed or slapped with the titty. There is NO other weird humor in this show like in Magi or something like Level 1 Demon King One Room Hero where Zenia bends over. Zenia's a fan service joke in a comedy with sexual humor. That is NOT this show. It's a different vibe and thus titty witch feels completely out of place.
Titty witch is not a terrible character but she needed to cover the titty and the show needed to shelve the titty jokes. Especially when you make those jokes about a 14 year old girl.
/end titty witch rant
-There is other titty that comes along and it's covered titty. No jokes were made on this character's titty. She's a drunkard with a weird fang. You know what kind of character this is: loud-ass character with a fang. Just picture one but it's also drunk. This is that same character. No, I don't know what character you picked but I promise you this is that character. She annoys me but doesn't irk me like titty witch and this show tries to redeem her but I still consider her a "con".
-I will count it against this show for being such a sausage fest. Even something like Hajime no Ippo--being full of male boxers--managed to have fleshed out female characters. I don't see something centered on a male dominated arena, be it boxing or war, as an excuse to not interact with women in any capacity.
Aside from the two titty characters and a little girl, I can't think of any other female characters with more than a couple of lines of dialogue. The Mom character and the Maids could've been fleshed out a bit more for starters.
-Lazy Racism. The butler guy's dark and they don't want his kind here. It's a part of the plot of the first episode. Don't worry, they forget all about it in the blink of an eye and everybody loves the guy. We never see anyone else of his race making me wonder why the fuck they brought it up in the first place. They bring up his race because they didn't want to let him in the house but there were other reasons to not let him in the house. In other words, they didn't need to use his race or make it part of the conflict at at.
-Circling back to my remark on the humor of this show, this show in general has a weird vibe. Part of it wants to be funny with a few jokes on titty witch's titty or titty witch being stupid or jealous. This show did have one joke that made me laugh out loud. But it also indulges in showing or talking about violence where it doesn't need to.
As a child, titty witch was a slave. And the show lets us watch her be kicked. We didn't need to see a child lying prone on the floor and getting kicked. Just show her with some bruises or something.
Then a guy gets executed and it's supposed to be super traumatizing for our main character. We see the guy's smirking face as we hear about how he's a murderer and r@pist and puppy-kicker and muffin-squasher and whatever else. There's NO reason we had to see this guy's face or hear about his crimes. This guy is not a character. He's a plot device for the main character to understand the brutality of death. Yet this show strangely wants us to know this guy was a horrible man and lingers on this. It doesn't matter. It doesn't make it any less traumatizing for the main character. It's a strange choice and I don't like it.
Thought I was done? I'm not done.
-The MC is praised but does little to nothing to contribute to the plot other than to look at people. His appraisal powet lets him find strong, useful nakama and they all carry his ass. Do I want him to be a Gary Stu? No. But this doesn't make him fun to watch either.
He needs something. Like being super smart. Or like being able to appraise himself (which he can't do in the show) and learn to lean in and leverage his own strengths.
Everyone in this show wanks this fucking kid. He enters rooms and conferences with adult men--some of them battle-hardened--and they treat him as an equal. People tell this kid "you should be emperor." No, he shouldn't. His skill is useful and makes him a useful person but that doesn't mean he can rule a fucking country.
Egregiously, he knows damn well the world is in a bad place but instead of training in order to be prepared, he does jack shit. The fact that he's not a child but an isekai'd grown man makes this worse. He has no excuse for this. He only throws himself into his training after Chad Dad executes that rotten muffin-squasher or whatever I mentioned earlier in this post. That takes place years after he's already aware of his situation. So, no, someone like this shouldn't be emperor. He's only a useless child with a very useful powet.
-The MC is also a massive creep. Amazingly, he manages to be a creep without actually trying. This is because he enters into a wholesome marriage with a smart and kind little girl. He's a little boy himself, yes, but he's been isekai'd. There's a GROWN-ASS MAN in that body. This could've been an adorable relationship if they hadn't written him as being an isekai'd man. They ruined this by putting isekai where it didn't need to go.
I give this show a C. I'm not rating it lower than that since it entertained me enough to actually watch the entire first season. After the start of the second season, I ditched it.
