Nitroxus Soulspin's Weekly Anime Review

[NitroSilverNigel 21]

Episode 1 - Spirit Chronicles (Seirei Gensouki) Both Season 1 and 2

OR Hero Who Fights Gaslighting More Than Villains

 

 

This is a weekly event that I will try to maintain for a while. I will be reviewing a lot of anime that I have seen in the past few years. So, I hope that I get at least 1 viewer who likes this format. This was an idea that I wanted to do for years. Since I'm honored to have a lot of free time to watch shows, movies and other things in my life to do. I hope this weekly series of review can help a lot of people to watch some good or bad shows from my experiences. So, let's get started.

 

BASE INFO:

Episodes - 24 (12 per season)   Subbed and Dubbed    Where to Watch: Crunchyroll (Both Seasons)    Genre: Isekai/Revenge Story   Personal Ranking: 8 Nitronic Stars out 10  MAL Ranking: 7.07 and 6.57

PLOT:

This anime is an Isekai with a Revenge Story as the secondary plotline. While the main plotline follows with the hero dealing with slight existential crisis of how they are a reincarnated being. We start with following a young orphaned child named Rio, who works and lives in the slums of the Beltrum Kingdom . When we meet Rio, he is just 7 years old, when he discovers he has memories of a young college aged man, named Haruto Amakawa. Haruto died by the combined powers of Train-Kun and Bus-Chan. Have to admit, the death scene has to be most insane way to die. Rio, completely stressing with this newfound problem in his life. Upon this revelation, the story our young hero starts to take place. The plot acting like an evil bottle of Sunny D, pretty much slams the plot into his face. Rio would stumble upon a group of 3 young girls and a female guard. One of these girls reveals herself to be a prodigy of magic, so powerful of a mage that at the age of 12, she is already an established teacher. These 4 has entered the slums, to find their kidnapped friend.

Mind you, if you were looking for your friend, who may be dumb for their age, and the first person you found was a homeless child. Would you, A. Accuse them of kidnapping. B. Ask for Possible Assistance. C. Ignore them completely. or D. Focus your efforts on what you can control. Spoiler, it wasn't B,C, or D. They accuse a 7 year old of kidnapping another child. Something that will never make sense to even the most insane of people. After this quartet of 'wonderfully mind girls' figure out that Rio wasn't the mastermind. The teacher, who's name is Celia Claire, uses her magic to sense our magic users, in order to track their missing friend. This is when Celia discovers that Rio has magic as well, with a potential that outclasses even her. Yet in stride, she isn't jealous of Rio, as she is mainly focused on retrieving their missing friend. When that spell was cast, Rio discovers magical his own magical sight. Which he will find beneficial later in the series.

Rio is rewarded a meager amount of coins to run along, as he did advice these 4 that they were overdressed, appearing to be nobles. Which is true, they were indeed nobles, yet not low ranking nobles. With the squad leaving to find more commoner clothing, to continue their search. Rio would leave and try to live out the remainder of days as a child of the slums. As if to set up a strong right hook, Rio actually finds the missing friend in an abandoned house. With a few corpses to sprinkle out the low decorum. This missing girl, is no other than the 2nd Princess to the Beltrum Kingdom. Rio would have his inner Mario, to tell him to rescue the princess. Yet, sadly the Beltrum Kingdom isn't in the Mushroom Kingdom. The princess, dealing with the trauma of being taken from her castle, and seeing the large mass of corspes around her. This causes her fragile being, to make her pass out. .After finding this princess, not even a a half-step goes by before he is wrongfully convicted to be the mastermind of the kidnapping of the 2nd Princess.  This kingdom was so set to punish this action, that they were set to even condemn a completely innocent child. Take note, this will be a repeated action, so this will be on the test.

Thankfully, after the princess wakes up from her 3 day coma, she looks for her hero, only learn that Rio is currently being held in the dungeon and those guards are doing their best to get a false confession out of that boy. While he may just be 7, that boy has the manliest set balls to hold out and not break for that long. Pretty sure he could hold on for about a week. He's pretty strong willed that one he is. After getting his freedom back, Rio is a bit jaded to the royal nobles, for good reason. I mean if you did a good deed and got beaten roughly 0.00000000000000001 inch of your life, you too would be a little miffed about the people who could have stopped that from happening to you sooner. Like I said, these royals aren't loyal. Dumber than a sack of rocks in concrete.

To save grace, the King decree that Rio to be allowed to attend the Royal Magic Academy. All of this happens in the very 1st episode. Which helps drive this point home would be the musical score of the ending theme. It has a spy master kind of vibe of a banger ending theme. Which did confuse me on the second episode. As this story isn't a spy thriller, its an Isekai anime.

Now, for the sake of saving your time. I will quickly explain the 2 major arcs of season 1 and 3 major arcs of season 2.

The Royal Academy Arc, Rio studies and excel in school. Yet since he comes from a commoner background, every royal in the school excludes him from all the best parts of being in school. You know, having friends, eating lunch with some cool pals, hanging out in the down times. Rio is systematically looked down as an outsider, an outsider that actually does good work class. This doesn't help him, since despite having access to magic, he can't use this magic system. His magic is more ancient and effective. He is later charged with a crime made by his classmate. Since experiencing how the nobles conduct their laws, Rio quickly leaves and go on the run. Only telling Celia, his only friend and main teacher about his plans. During this arc, we learn about Haruto's own past before his reincarnation. 

The Lone Traveler Arc, Rio basically travels across the neighboring countries. Amassing allies, some of which travels with him. 1 of which is a reincarnated person like himself, and even a spirit that makes a contract with him. We also finds out that Rio's magic is called Spirit Arts, a powerful and ancient magic system that is far superior to modern magic. Yet Spirit Arts has 1 flaw to it, unlike with modern magic which can be taught to anyone. Spirit Arts can only be inherited. We get to even learn about Rio's own history and family heritage in this new world. These travels also explains the revenge part of this Isekai, Rio's mother was killed by a rogue adventurer, who possibly killed his father. Rio double downs on his revenge on this man. Yet before we get to dive into that part of story, we get to see some good slice of life episodes that ties in the lore in a great tasteful way. This show somehow made "Exposition dumps" in a pleasant and helpful way. Should know that these travels do take some time, like a few years will go by.

In Season 2, Rio finds out that while he isn't the only reincarnated person in this world. With one of them being an ally in season1. We find that there were some heroes, summoned to this world. 2 of these people have deep emotional ties to Haruto's past live. A Former crush and younger sister. Now using his former name as a cover from the law, Haruto. Rio now has to play caretaker to these 3, while maintaining his former life from the others. It helps that he has allies on his side. While at this time, dark forces are amassing, and Rio takes the time to track a few sources to find the other summoned heroes.

The Ronin Arc, now going out as Haruto, he travels about trying to find any info about the other heroes. Which is actually fairly hard, its not like these heroes are just going to randomly stumble into his path. Sarcasm aside, he only finds 1 hero. Who has no connection his former friends. This hero, is an ego chasing otaku who thinks he been given the chance to have a power trip. Overall, while this hero is completely out of his field, he's actually a pretty decent guy. Just sucks that the people in charge of keeping him safe, aren't doing a damn thing of letting this hero have real life fighting experience. They want to use him as a propaganda tool for the nation's military. Like I said before, this kingdom is batting with a 0-3 average on having good ideas. Rio also gets some passive revenge on some of older classmates. Who has grown to be even worse people.

The Get Back Arc, which is the final arc of this season, basically all the planning and scheming of the evil faction of nations finally attack. There is just thing that they didn't account for, Rio and 2 of his allies. This arc, we get to see the result of Rio's training over the years. We see that this kingdom, having a few good nuggets of people, will always have a larger crowd of dumb leaders in power. Will say this, the final fight of this season, has possibly one of the most brutal one-sided beatdowns I have seen. There is only 1 series that has even more viscous fight than this. That series, I will cover next week. (Its Ragna Crimson)

Keep in mind, I did my best to explain this show with very little to spoil. These aren't the real names of the arcs at all either. I only talked about the surface plot. Not the finer details and plot points. So, if this does interest you, I recommend a watch.

 

Production Notes:

Studios TMS Entertainment and WAO World produced both seasons of this show. I believe this series was animated with their B-Teams, as the anime has the character models have glass eyes feel. Not to say that the eyes or animation is terrible. Season 1 animation is fairly fluid, which very few scenes of characters who stand around and just talk. There is one odd saving grace in season 1. This anime uses CGI on the monsters, and it helps make the monsters look out of place and otherworldly. This only applies to season 1. In season 2, the CGI on the monsters is somewhat lackluster, this is mainly due to recycling certain monsters textures, with even their stronger variants. They also use CGI on human soldiers to decorate the backgrounds of battlefields. This isn't a bad thing, just it somewhat sticks out if you're so hardcore on the animation. Since this is a Silver Link production, this means the possibilities of a season 3 are quite slim. Considering that season 1 came out in 2021 and season 2 came out in 2024, a long wait for the fans. Heck, I watched season 1 back in early 2023 and we didn't even word of a season 2 until very late in the summer of 2024, which it did get a delay for episode 10, 11, and 12.
The show has very great potential, yet since season 2 has a few drops of quality compared to its first season. A season 3 is even more worrisome. I hope TMS Entertainment and WAO World can work together again to make a 3rd season, or just let TMS Entertainment take over. As WAO World doesn't have the best track record with long form anime. This being highest rated productions. TMS may have worked with WAO World due to TMS being bombarded with higher rated series, like Dr. Stone, Rent a Girlfriend and Baki. Seriously, TMS take the reins and make season 3!

Fun fact, in season 1, CDawgVA voice a major character, yet sadly he didn't return for season 2. I don't know why he was recasted, yet I do like his replacement. They do a good job, that I thought it was the same guy.

This anime is one of a small list of anime that I enjoyed enough to read part of the source material. There are 2 manga adaptations, one of which was cancelled due to the artist attached had health issues. The second adaptation pretty much follows the light novel story, which mirrors a lot of the anime. Only changing the order of events of the anime, the ending of season 1 and opening of season 2, around. Which fits better in the narrative in the manga, yet doesn't suffer at all in the anime. It switch that doesn't hurt the plot, only just affect the pacing. Yet, still good. I didn't read the light novel. This is because I rarely read light novels, as I find them quite hard to read and the pacing of them are hard for me to get into.

The soundtrack of the show is nothing to write bad about. The openings and endings are a good bop. With only a slight gripe for the opening of season 2, to have brief moment that shows clips of the episode in the opening. Those moments distracted me during the opening, as both in the sub and dub, going from having a mini rave to hearing characters react and chat completely out of context, pulls me out of the hype. If you want hear the openings Season 1 and Season 2 . Note this Season 2 opening doesn't include the clips from the episode, yet when they do the zoom into the sword part, that's when the clips shows. The endings of Season 1 and Season 2 The 1st season pulls a note out from JoJo by having a musical hook at the end of episode before entering the ending theme. Season 2 has a slow hopeful vibe to it.

One thing that should be known, is that this anime does have some strange ways of telling its story. Its highly unorthodox with its storytelling. I don't know if it being held back with either its production, or source material. Despite having dark themes, the show takes great strides in keeping those elements in a emotionally tame way.

 

Final Notes:

So why watch this anime? Mainly 2 reasons, this anime is somewhat a hidden gem during both of its seasonal releases. As well this anime series tells a non-traditional isekai story. On the surface, it may look like a harem building power fantasy, yet in reality its a really slow burning isekai with a revenge story injected in it for extra flavor. In a way, this is like watching a world building isekai that has a hidden story in plain sight.

There one glaring elephant in the room, Rio does have the legally distinct Kirto black armor look, which I don't understand the cling to the design. Its one of the few things that makes no sense.

To many, this can be a good watch on a slow day. To few, this will be a series that will make you look for other series like it. Which is why I give it my Nitronic Stars. 8 out of 10 Nitronic Stars!

[ZiggWheelsManning 12,256]

Perhaps I should watch it.  I wonder if @RafaStaryStory knows of this anime  

[NitroSilverNigel 21]

33 minutes ago, ZiggWheelsManning said:

Perhaps I should watch it.  I wonder if @RafaStaryStory knows of this anime  

I highly recommend it. Or, if you want to wait until this Sunday, you can get my next anime review.

[NitroSilverNigel 21]

Episode 2 - Ragna Crimson

OR When Plot Armor is Necessary for the Villians, NOT for the Protagonist

 

I know I'm late with this week's episode. Things have gotten a little out of hand with my personal life. Yet, its all fair and good now. Now with that dealt with, I will talk about this banger of a dark fantasy anime with possibly the most devious beat down of an anime villain. The main protagonist means it, "Its on sight!" Holding a lot of black force energy in his frame.

 

BASE INFO:

Episodes - 24 (Just 1 Season)   Subbed and Dubbed    Where to Watch: HiDive    Genre: Dark Fantasy and Battle Shonen  Personal Ranking: 10 Nitronic Stars out 10  MAL Ranking: 7.55

 

PLOT:

 

Ever wanted to watch a battle anime where story and fights don't hold back each other at all? In fact, both parts make each other so more stronger. Yes, this series is peak, and I'm proud of it! Oh, its so good. The show makes a strong presence with it very first episode. Despite this show having 24 episodes, this series pull a banger of a premiere episode, with it having a full 45 minute long spectacle. Something I love being a hidden gem in some recent anime series.

This series, we have a dual protagonist deal. 2 Unlikely beings, who are paired with each other for the most dangerous of missions. Ragna, the battle master with a body of a silver sword and the heart of a wholesome body. Crimson, a um... I'm like 86% that they are male. Yet most of their time in the show, they do take female forms. Crimson is something more sinister than a shapeshifter, yet still have cruel plans that does more good...If you pull back far enough. As black-hearted as Crimson is, Ragna is good-hearted, possibly even more.

We follow one of the 2 main characters, Ragna. A white haired, blue marbled eye young man, who serves under a 12 year old master dragon slayer. Leonica. Leonica is a child prodigy when it comes to killing dragons. As you see, in this world dragons might as well be vampires on steroids. Dragons comes in many dangerous flavors, many of which loves to munch on humans. Yes, in this world, the dragons aren't beings of awesome wisdom and might on levels that humans will never reach. No, they are just powerful vampiric beings that have only 2 weaknesses compared a standard vampire of 8 or 9. (Depends on the lore). Besides the standard Sunlight being the major one, the second tool to be used against dragon is the fantasy element of silverine, which isn't a drink made Wolverine's claws being dipped into mint milkshakes. Silverine caused a powerful freezing effect on dragon, which will kill them. Armed with silverine, the humans in this world fight off the dragons.

However, if dangerous dragons wasn't enough of a risk of public safety for you, there is an even higher risk to your mortal body. There are Superior Dragons, dragons that are powerful enough to hold a human-like form. And above them are Monarch Dragons, who has the power to make Superior dragons with just a drop of their blood. Then the highest being Progenitor Dragon Monarchs, who holds the power to not only create even more dragons from their blood, they can create their own bloodlines in their 'children'.

And we have Crimson...who is a dark being unimaginable horrid power and resources. Even after watching the show. Without spoilers, I'm still not 100% sure what Crimson is. They aren't human for sure, yet they have some reason for wanting to kill dragons. It doesn't help that Crimson refer to themselves as male, yet there more times of them being in a female form. Its basically the old paradox of trap characters. Just turned to higher level, as they knw how to weaponize that confusion. As smart as they are morally dark, they will do anything to succeed at the mission on hand, even if it means that you will possibly die, 3 times over. Yea, Crimson is not the best person to be left in a room alone with. They would most likely use your organs as tools for their escape than to just work with you.

Back to the plot! As we find Ragna with Leonica. With Leonica serving as the leader of their bond, since she is able to kill most dragons in quite quick fights. She stays with Ragna, as he serves as a supernatural bait to dragons. Ragna is plague with knowing this, since he has lost friends, family and even villages just by existing. So this works in both their favors. Leonica gets a guardian that doubles as friend when she isn't fighting dragons. Yet also have a bait that allow her to better train her dragon killing skills. As for Ragna, he gets a friend that supports his nervousness, yet also a goal that he would want to reach. Truly a wholesome friendship. As expected, most people are either jealous of Ragna or view him as a social parasite on Leonica's good will.

While in this new town that they traveled to, and resided for a while. Ragna starts to get flashes of visions. With these visions, and vague messages about Leonica and the future. Ragna starts to worry about his sanity and how weak he is. Since despite being in the presence of a talented dragon killer, Ragna doesn't have the strength to slay even the smallest of dragons. He is a weak boy in a world of people who can jump at the minimum of 15 feet in the air. Despite this, there is a hidden power in Ragna. That power is an older and angrier Ragna. The very cause of his visions come from future version of himself, who finally is able to help his younger self. During the events of a superior dragon who invade the town, the basically air out that entire village. You should know, Leonica was the first person to jump into that fight with the Superior Dragon, and learns just how outclassed she and other humans are to that guy. Its more worrying when he tells the fighters that he is the weakest of the Superior Dragons. Imagine that, a being that is destroying everything in your sight, is known for being the weakest of their kind. That's a terrifying thought. 

Thankfully, making peace with his future self, Ragna is gifted/cursed with his future power. Now armed with Silverine Battle Arts, Ragna is finally no longer weak. In the present day, this newfound power comes at a grave cost for present Ragna. He has to aura farm with his silverine drip in every frame going forward. Oddly enough, it doesn't get old. There are moments where the aura farming is placed oddly. That is a spoiler if I talk about it.

So with this new power, to go Super Silverine Sayian at will, Ragna make quick work of not only the Superior Dragon, yet every dragon in a 15 mile radius with just his bare hands. Now with this power, Ragna is finally as strong as he wants to. However, it wasn't just the power he received from his future self. He has the knowledge about the future. With that, Ragna makes the difficult choice to send his bestie Leonica far away from him. Since he knows that if she stays by him, it only a matter of time before she will die, alongside other people that he will meet and come across. His next goal is to find the only being on this planet that can create the many plans and be the support he will need to slay all the dragons in the world. That being is Crimson.

Like I said before, Crimson isn't a human. So any hope for Crimson to have any sympathy most folks, might as well be the Titanic. 

From here, the TRUE show starts. We follow both Ragna and Crimson as the travel across the kingdom, killing all kinds of dragons. We meet some cool characters, bad characters, a character who I will go on record saying this. "She deserves every bad thing that happened and will happen to her. Don't you dare try to sway my heart to be empathic to her. I don't care about her origin story, that woman is pure evil!" 

You should know, there will be a lot of deaths in this series. Some deaths will be painful. Others will be somewhat pleasurable. A few would be straight up brutal. Also fun drinking game, take a shot for every time you see a death that is caused directly Crimson, you will not make it pass episode 4. I guarantee it. I mean just Crimson alone.

Now, having 24 episodes, (technically 25), to run around, this anime pacing is quite smooth. Considering how smooth the pacing goes, I actually couldn't tell if this anime even had arcs. I know in my heart, that there are arcs. Yet I can't even come up with names for them. Seriously, once it goes pass episode 5, you will not be able to tell if there are any arcs. It just works into new plots so well that you forget that the previous episode was probably in another story arc. Oddly enough, this anime double benefits for binge watching. For one, once you start watching, you kind of lose a track of time.  The second being the fights. Yeah, unlike most battle focused anime, where fights are stretched over a lot of episodes before they even come close to ending. For this anime, its not like that. Most fights barely last more than a single episodes. And the few fights that does span more than 1 episode, it for good reasons. When those fights happen, it due to the 'shift' of the fight. For example, for a fight that is fairly early in the show. Episode 5 ends on the beginning of a fight, where character A gets the jump on Character B. The entirety of episode 6 will just be Character A having the main power over the other. With the episode ending with both characters leaving the fight, with new knowledge and limits broken. For better or worst. 

Now there are some flaws, that is the hope of this show getting a second season is unlikely. This isn't the fault of the studio or show appeal. It due to the one that the completely out of their control. Its the source material. The manga series is only roughly 1.5 manga volumes a head of where the series end. This is because this series mangaka, Daiki Kobayashi, make really large manga volumes. And considering at the time of this review, there are only are 15 volumes and this series be around since 2017. Means that when this series came out in 2023, they covered 12 volumes of the series. That's roughly 2 episodes per volume. Meaning if they kept that same pace with a second season, there would have to be at least 24 manga volumes to be available, or the series would have to completely done in that second season. Considering how much of the story that is still left to go, the likelihood of a season 2 are even more impossible. I want Kobayashi-Sensei to still be alive afterwards. So I'm alright with no season 2, since its completely impossible to make it when it takes a while to make peak manga. If anything, maybe a non-canon movie would be nice.

Oh well, its a good battle shonen anime. One that suggest that you watch, since you will get pulled in by the story, and the fights will keep in. Which says something in my book.


Production Notes:

 

This was animated solely by Studio Silver Link, and I love how that works on both levels of the meta. One since the studio shares the same element namesake as the anti-dragon material. As well the level of detail that Silver Link puts in almost all their shows. Considering that their line-up of 2023, 5 of their 6 hits all was above 7.00 rating on MAL, says that they were cooking well. While they may not do a lot of anime per year, they know to make good with their selections. Seriously, this was the same year that a lot of anime had terrible placing with CGI and this show didn't even touch CGI. Having stellar animation for both parts of its cours. There only 3 weeks of a break between them, and they still hit the mark on each episode. Like this is quite the lightning in the bottle kind of deal.

As for soundtrack, the first opening was a shock and showcase for me. Considering that more than 50% of the lyrics were in English. In both the sub and dub. This was insane, which was more of an indicator that this show was very different. As well, the visual were very subtle, and played with that in mind. It made me wanting to get invested with these colorful characters. Cour 1 Opening . However the second opening doesn't have the same kick. Its not bad at all. It just feels more akin to something in the late 2000's feel of a battle shonen. Like something that could pass an opening for either Bleach or Naruto at that time. However there is something I find funny, it has the joke of removing the dragons out of the opening parts if that character is dead or will die in that episode. Stuff like that is fun to watch. At least is not as odd as the early openings to One Piece where they spoiled Robin joining the crew before she even did it. So Cour 2 Opening is nice like that.

Now for the ending themes, I liked them. Oddly enough, the endings act as mirrored image compared to their openings. The first ending is a slow burn of hope. Like an anthem of keeping the fight going on. Even with all the pain and lost, the hero must go on. Cour 1 Ending is a subtle hopeful song, in spite of the pain. Ending 2, I love it for ironic reasons. At this point, the story is dark and they give us this cheerful ending theme? Oh ending 2, you be silly. Cour 2 Ending , you stay silly for all the ironic reasons.

This show was dubbed by HiDive, they hit it out of the park! Its reasons like this why I want more anime to get picked up by HiDive vs Crunchyroll. Seriously, between this and another HiDive anime dub that is slightly more famous. I think HiDive is worth investing in. They need to pick up more series on their platform, and fast!

I for one will be getting the manga, to read what will happen after the anime. Considering that there will not be a second season any time soon. So, I will be enjoying that very soon.

 

Final Notes:

Why watch this show? Simple, bad ass fights and pretty dark good story. Also there is a lot good scenes that could be made into amazing wallpapers. I'm not even kidding, I have an animated wallpaper from this series. Thank you Wallpaper Engine community! Yet, if you ever have a slow day that you want watch something to get you motivated over something super dark and be engaging to watch with a good friend. This is your show.

I do love how Ragna goes from being heavily armored from the start of the show, to quickly just wearing a black covers, and a white poncho cloak. Yet when wraps that cloak over his waist, you know he is in serious mode. Its silly stuff like that makes it more bad ass. Which is why I give it my Nitronic Stars. 10 out of 10 Nitronic Stars!

 

Tune in this Sunday when I make 2 episodes to pay off this late episode. With 1 trash and 1 standard good. Those being The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World and The Daily Life of a Middle-Aged Online Shopper in Another World. Try to guess which is which.

Edited Sunday at 05:03 AM by NitroSilverNigel