Isekai Cheat Magician (Season One)
Rin and Taichi were on the way home when a portal to another world opened up and pulled them through. They struggled to survive at first but then discovered that they both have the potential to do so much more.
What did you watch?
So, this season we were flooded with Isekai titles. That’s where someone from our reality is pulled to another world, usually a fantasy world, but it can vary. Well, Isekai Cheat Magician is one of those. It follows a couple of high school students who suddenly find themselves in a fantasy world with monsters and magic. The premise is as standard as it gets, the only real difference is that there are two of them. Will this be enough to separate it from the others? Well, we are about to find out. Also, there will be spoilers and opinions… lots of opinions…
What happened?
With the help of a group of adventurers, Rin and Taichi survive the initial scare and make it to a nearby city. There they join a guild and hope to make some money to survive, but when they are tested for their magic potential, a standard guild initiation, things do go quite as planned. It turns out that they are both massively overpowered, Taichi more so, but they both have differing abilities. Rin is able to tap into all four elements whereas Taichi is a summoner and can talk with the spirits directly, using their power to the full!
They team up with Lemiya and Myura a couple of high powered magicians and beginning their training. Potential alone does not make one great! Well, in no time at all both have levelled up and are ready to take on some serious missions. Then, when their home town is attacked by hordes of monsters it’s up to them to help save the day. But who is behind the attack and what do they want?
What did you think?
This series was so bland that if it was food, it would be dry crackers. It’s the first time I’ve compared and anime to food and probably the last, but I just need you to have the image of someone trying to eat lots and lots of crackers and nothing else. The more you put in your mouth the harder it becomes to swallow. It’s not that they taste bad, they don’t really taste of anything. Well, that is this series in a nutshell. Each part was probably fine on its own, but stacked one on top of another it pretty quickly became boring and tedious.
What was your favourite moment?
This series had zombies in it! It was in the final battle where Rin and Taichi were struggling to overcome the fact that they were fighting people and not monsters, because monsters don’t have feelings… Anyhow, it turned out that the advisor to the rebel leader, the King’s brother was being manipulated into creating a situation where the advisor could activate a dark and powerful spell that would consume the entire country in time. Lemiya told Myura about the last time the spell was cast and how hundreds of thousands died. FYI, that’s the story I would have liked to have watched.
What was your least favourite moment?
Where to begin? We’ve established that Rin is incredibly powerful on her own. She made a sinkhole that swallowed most of the monster army, filled it with water and then dropped a massive ball of molten metal on top. So, later as she fought against a single troll, she suddenly became weak and needed Taichi to save her. This scenario seemed to reoccur over and over again. Rin is the second most powerful magician in the world. Come on. Stop turning her into the damsel in distress. This series would have been so much better if she’d been the main character and Taichi was a hapless loser.
Who was your favourite character?
I’m going to say Rin because she had the most potential to be interesting. Her relationship with Myura was interesting and it would have been a better use of time to have her develop that. Having her constantly worry about Taichi and needing to be saved all the time was annoying. I want to see her take control of the situation and use the power she clearly had.
Who was your least favourite character?
Easily Taichi. This guy was boring. He was hopelessly nice and incredibly nieve. There was the scene where the magical twins unleashed the goblins onto the city from within. One second they were celebrating this achievement, saying the goblins would eat the men and rape the women. Then, when the goblins turned on them too, Taichi saved them and instantly turned them into fine upstanding magicians. Things like that just seemed to happen all the time. Also, see the moment Taichi agreed to reduce his power levels to fight Cassim fairly… So, many weird and pointless moments in this series.
Would you like some more?
Haha! No. This season ended with a big setup for another season, but surely that can’t happen. There are so many more deserving shows that should get a second season before this one does. It was terrible, but it really wasn’t any good. As I said, it’s a mouthful of crackers.
What have you learnt?
Like most things, there needs to be a reason. You can’t have a character be overpowered one minute and then helpless the next without a plausible explanation. It just throws you out of the story. For the same reason, you can’t just make characters flip flop between good and evil because you want them to. If the story is to be believable, and when dealing with fantasy worlds it’s even more important, characters need to behave as real people would. You can throw in dragons and monsters as much as you want, but if the character does something unbelievable it all comes crashing down. Don’t confuse this with the character doing something stupid. That’s believable, but if they just keep doing it and continue to win there better be a good reason.
Other Posts in the Series
I didn’t write episode reviews for this series and I’m somewhat glad. Yomu over at Umai Yomu Anime Blog did and I’ve been following their reviews. If for whatever reason, you want to read more about this series, you should check these out.
- Episode 1 – Two Ordinary People Summoned To Another World!?
- Episode 2 – Magic Boot Camp
- Episode 3 – Expensive Fruit
- Episode 4 – Desperate Power
- Episode 5 – City in Danger
- Episode 6 – Stop! They’re Already Dead!
- Episode 7 – Taichi Becomes A Summoner
- Episode 8 – Looming Rebellion
- Episode 9 – Taichi of the Rebellion
- Episode 10 – Duel
- Episode 11 – Lunatic of the Rebellion
- Episode 12 – Unclimactic End
Thank you for the pingbacks.
Loved the dry crackers analogy, I hope you use food to describe anime more often to be honest.
And in a world with overwhemlingly powerful magicians / magic like this one, the idea of a zombie horde just doesn’t seem that dangerous. Lemiya could burn them to a crisp, Rin could bury them, they could be “drowned” (zombies can’t swim, right?).. Still would be interesting to see a fantasy zombie invasion play out.
No worries, and thanks, it seemed to be incredibly appropriate.
I think that’s part of the problem with everything in the show. Rin could just drop whoever into a giant hole and then jump molten metal on them. There’s no way a bunch of zombies should be much bother and why didn’t they also turn into zombies, because it wasn’t just the slain soldiers that were revived?
Yeah, Rin’s power was all over the place. Sometimes she was incredibly independent and capable and othertimes completely useless. The final battle sidelined her completely and all in all it was an incredible waste of one of the better characters the show had. I didn’t hate this, but it isn’t recommendable either as it is pretty bland viewing.
Bland like dried crackers…
Yeah, they really failed to keep Rin consistent and that seemed to be tied to whether Taichi is available to save her or not. It started very average and pretty much stayed there the whole series.
We could argue it gets points for consistency but I just wish it had built on its beginning rather than plateauing right there.
Definitely. Start safe and then push the boat out and be adventurous. I don’t think we’re asking for too much.
[…] isn’t an anime I’ve watched but I enjoyed reading the review. Lynn reviews Isekai Cheat Magician and compares it to eating a box of crackers. I can’t say I disagree. Keiko is taking on a 30 […]
Yeah, this show was just boring, had expectations for this a well. Lemiya is my fav
It started fairly average and just did nothing with it, including lots of bizarre interactions and switching of sides. Had a catchy OP though…
Yup, the OP is catchy. I agree the interactions power scaling are just bizarre. That fight with mc and his “rival”, bwhaaaa!!!
“I could beat you if you weren’t so powerful…” Haha! That’s hilarious.
You described it fairly — and up until the 7th or 8th episode, I really wasn’t interested in finishing it. But I figured I’d come that far. The last episode touched on (lightly) a topic I’ve always been interested in. If you’re OP and know it, what are your responsibilities? It’s one of the reasons I liked Chrome Shelled Regios so much. Layfon was a much, much better character than Taichi. But the idea was the same, and I liked that.
They didn’t do enough with it; and I guess it says something that a minor nod in that direction meant so much to me.
That being said, I’m not going to rewatch it anytime soon. Well, probably not ever.
Unrealized potential is so hard to accept!
Definitely. It had potential and never did anything with it. I remember watching the early episodes and thinking this is fine, but kept missing opportunities and really failed Rin as a character by making her into this overpowered damsel in distress that made no sense.
[…] In an attempt to exercise my creative muscles, I’ve introduced a new series of posts where I will take a series that I have previously reviewed and come up with an idea for a spinoff series. Generating ideas for stories is one of my favourite things to do and I often come up with full stories from the most random of things, so I decided to focus that energy into my blog and have a bit of fun at the same time. For my first Spinoff Saturday post, I have chosen Isekai Cheat Magician. […]
[…] from The Sword in the Stone. There’s potential and it already feels more interesting than Isekai Cheat Magician, so I’m […]