Arifureta: From commonplace to world’s strongest was one of the most anticipated anime shows of summer 2019.

While the show started out alright it quickly became apparent that the show.s quality would be heading downhill from there.

As fans of both the light novel and manga adaptation, would tell you, the anime adaptation of the series was a very big disappointment.

This can be attributed to many things; Skipping Important scenes, the crappy CG, the complete tonal shift from the source material , the portrayal of the characters among others.

ISSUES DURING PRODUCTION

Originally announced in 2017, the Arifureta anime was set to begin airing in April 2018 but received fan backlash due to the poor character design choices as shown in the the key image above. This led to the show’s release date being pushed back to 2019.

Before the huge delay, it was believed that a lot of the groundwork and animation for the first few episodes were already in production if not already done. That means that due to fan backlash, most of the work was scrapped and had to be redone from scratch, and that meant that production began with a good portion of the budget gone.

They also replaced the character designer/chief animation director with a director and character designer who worked on very mediocre shows such as Seven Mortal Sins and Big Order.

THE BAD ANIMATION

Unfortunately, rewriting scripts means that most likely means that most of the original work was scrapped. Rescripting the anime would require creating new storyboards and animations on a reduced budget.

This is most likely one of the reasons that the action scenes were so poorly animated and explains why the studio resorted to using such half baked CG for monsters.

THE STORY’S PACING

Upon release, I believe the show started out alright as the first five episodes were well paced and didn’t skip too much content from the source material. Hardcore fans of the series started to realize things were going downhill when episode 6 “Worthless Rabbit” was aired.

The rate at which the show was skipping and adapting volumes was astonishing. The first five episodes adapted Volume 1 of both the manga and light novel in OK way. Skip ahead to episode 6 and volume 2 has been adapted into just two episodes??

They even went as far as to make Hajime’s group clear a labyrinth in just one episode, as opposed to the five episodes needed to clear the first one, which is really bad pacing.

Fast forward to episode 8 and the show is already adapting the third volume of the manga, which was way too quick. A bunch of new characters were introduced with most of their character development omitted or completely left out, and don’t get me started on Tio’s dragon form……It was hideous,.. hideous I say(T_T).

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the show skips the last 60 pages of volume 3 just so episode 11 can adapt Volume 4 into the last 3 episodes. This puts the anime ahead of the manga.

This is a formula that feels incredibly rushed. If the studio was planning to adapt four volumes of the manga or light novel, it would have been better to make the anime 24 – 26 episodes long as that would have given the anime enough time to flesh characters out and establish certain facts rather than glossing over most of the story that it is meant to be based on.

THE TONAL SHIFT

Arifureta isn’t your typical Isekai. Its a dark fantasy about a boy who always kills his enemies and always has a bored expression, same goes for his girlfriend.

When the anime premiered they got this part of Hajime and Yue quite well until episode 6, when the anime basically became a comedy. Now I don’t have a problem with this in the slightest but it seems rather odd to switch the tone of the show after the first few episodes, after making Hajime seem like the emotionless guy that he is, same goes for Yue.

If the anime wanted to take the comedic approach, this should have been applied from the first episode, not midway through the first season.

It feels weird to start watching a show thinking “This is the kinda show I’ve been looking for” only to have the show do a complete 180 after a few episodes.

The Way The Characters Are Portrayed

As stated earlier, a lot of character defining moments and character development was cut from this adaptation, but that doesn’t mean that all characters were affected by this. Tio for example is pretty much the same, we were given enough information on her background to know what kind of character she was.

This might not apply to someone like Shea, as the anime skipped through most of her interactions with Hajime, hence an anime only might not be able to tell you why Shea fell in love with Hajime in the first place.

Hajime falls victim to this the most as his personality is quite different from what it is intended to be. He is meant to give people the Kind of Vibe that you get when you think of Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul(A nice guy who’s suffered so much pain that they’ve become numb).

 Unfortunately, the anime glossed over a lot of scenes that show you what truly caused Hajime to go through such a drastic change in his mentality, like not showing how long he suffered from the pain of hunger and blood loss while trapped in the cave.

Yue is relatively the same as one would expected other than the fact that she seems to smile a lot more frequently in the anime which I believe isn’t a bad thing.

Well, these are some of the reasons that Arifureta’s anime was such a bad adaptation. What are your thoughts? Feel free to let is know in the comment section below.