Bogus Skill <<Fruitmaster>> ~About That Time I Became Able to Eat Unlimited Numbers of Skill Fruits (That Kill You)~ ep1: The glossy visuals are decent but they can't make up for the storytelling. The hero is excited because the day has come for him to take his hot childhood friend to eat the once-in-a-lifetime magic fruit which will set their future paths in stone. From the way that she asks dithery exposition-laden questions and little else, his friend appears to have no mind of her own or knowledge of the scenario, and as soon as things go south she lets the clergy drag her away to become a destined warrior without so much as a farewell or overnight bag. Meanwhile, he's convinced himself that he's going to gain superpowers and is gutted when instead, he gains an affinity for fruit (I'm not spoiler-tagging the central premise).
In a world where all of your agency revolves around this weird coming-of-age moment it's strange that everyone seems so ignorant about what it all means, but after a brief spell of farming magical fruit with a little girl he's inexplicably been forced to adopt, the hero accidentally eats another fruit, which would ordinarily kill him (along with his young charge who has been innocently cooking with the extra magical fruit, but nobody seems worried about that). Sadly, he doesn't die, and instead gains additional powers while his pet girl gets the power to deliver more exposition with the ubiquitous Appraise skill, prompting him to don a white sheet, obtain a new, impractical-looking sword and revert back to his original plan to become an adventurer. Why he didn't eat even more of the magical fruit when he realised that he could, I don't understand. The rest of the plot plays out with all logic hand-waved as the hero goes through all of the standard rites of passage for a new adventurer: travelling to a big copy-paste city, hanging out at the guild, meeting a large blond man there who bullies him, humiliating the bully in combat... before bumping into his old, now-famous friend who is acting strangely and clearly needs a man to rescue her. It's all been done before. It's a little comical how the hero is called Light, looks a bit like a bootleg version of Lelouch and lives in a world with One Piece's Devil Fruit are the centre of everyone's lives, yet the resultant show ends up being utterly mundane.
Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective ep1: An inoffensive medical mystery show in the exact same vein as House (only with a petite cutie serving as the grumpy doctor). I found the lead quite annoying but she has potential and the central mysteries are interesting, so I'm willing to overlook how daft (or smug, in her case) everyone is and continue to watch for now. At the very least, I'd like to see the next episode because the first one ended partway through a mystery! This is how all first episodes should be; a limited amount of introductory scene-setting before hinting at an actual hook to show off what the rest of the series has to offer. Most of the shows I grumble about annoy me because they rely on their existing audiences and don't do any work to draw new viewers in with the narrative. Also, dinosaurs make everything cooler.
Headhunted to Another World: From Salaryman to Big Four! ep1: Easily the best of the copy-paste fantasy shows this season so far (admittedly, that isn't a huge compliment). The episode plays out as the title suggests, with the demon lord setting our salaryman a task to prove himself in order to persuade his other three generals that his new recruit is worth keeping around despite being a lowly human with no special powers. The task is negotiation-based, however, which plays to the hero's past life experience in dealing with unpredictable foreign business partners in his old job. I rank this one a little higher than the rest in spite of the standard-issue 'irrationally angry braindead redhead babe' taking up most of the oxygen in this first episode, and that's because it's clearly pitched at an older audience and proactively makes use of its plot elements. The hero's past life actually matters, and he's actually persevering instead of cynically narrating his way through everything, and the scriptwriter has the basic common sense not to have people over-explaining the generic scenario because that's not the story that they're trying to tell. It also avoids falling back upon open misogyny in lieu of storytelling, which is a refreshing break from the usual pattern (the ending then overcompensates by showing off the bikini babe lying in improbable positions). It's not my cup of tea but I think this show has some merit for isekai fans (as well as cynical salarymen who enjoy fantasy genre tropes).
Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time ep1: And then we have this. I don't really have much left to say. It's another uninspired 'milquetoast nobody gets reborn in a video game world' nothing-fest. I guarantee that you've already seen everything that happens in it elsewhere no matter how long you've been watching anime, and even the characters seem bored as they meaninglessly follow every trope in the genre and faff around with pop-up menus. There are hints at a wider plot but I cannot believe that it will be worth the wait, given how blatantly everything seems to have been telegraphed already. One for isekai megafans only.
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