I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in The Real World, Too
(dropped after 8 episodes)
There's a scene in The Animatrix where the machines have just defeated humanity. They are experimenting on people to figure out how their brains work and how to plug them into the Matrix. One poor victim has his skull cut open and a machine stabs electrodes into his brain, making him laugh or cry by stimulating those parts of the brain directly. It's an awful, soulless, mechanical way of brute-forcing someone to have a reaction. This show is like that.
To be fair, a lot of power-fantasy isekai junk is like that. Normally I drop them after one episode, but for some reason I couldn't stop watching this one. That's not to say it's good. It's really not good. I think most of these kinds of shows are tuned to prey on specific weaknesses and past traumas by applying something resembling cathartic defibrillation. This show just happened to be the one that stabbed its electrodes into the miserable parts of my childhood in just the right places to manipulate me into watching more.
Even considering that, I'm bemused that it took me eight episodes to pull the plug. In more skilled hands, the idea of someone bringing his overpowered isekai RPG abilities back to the real world could have opened up some interesting story opportunities. That isn't this show though. Instead the protagonist just hangs around doing ordinary stuff in the real world, but being level 150 means he's amazing at everything and everyone swoons every time he lifts a finger. Meanwhile, approximately once per episode he will just happen to be in the vicinity when a girl is in danger, and effortlessly swoops in to save her. Cue more swooning and +1 to his harem count. Once the protagonist has turned all his former bullies into members of his fan club, the story doesn't really go anywhere. He just rattles through standard high school events, saves the life of every girl in sight, rinse and repeat.
There are only a couple of reasons this isn't a 1/10 review. First, the art is astonishingly good early in the series. Unfortunately, while it maintains solid figure drawing, the animation gets increasingly stiff later on. Also, as bad as the story is, it's not really aiming high and failing; it knows exactly the kind of vapid, manipulative trash it wants to be and hits that target. Learn from my mistake and don't even bother with the first episode.
3/10
