I Were given a Cheat Talent in Every other International Episodes 1-13
This anime is all about male strength and wishing things come true. Yuya is like every other nice kid who gets picked on. After going into the fantasy world and killing one monster, he changes into the most attractive guy in the world, with a supermodel’s face and a muscular body. In our world, there is a beautiful heiress from a wealthy family and a fashion model who want him. In the fantasy world, there is a princess and a dangerous assassin who want him.
Most of the time, he has to save one or more of these beautiful women from monsters, political intrigue, electrical fires, biker gangs, or bear attacks. Of course, every time Yuya gets through a tough situation, a lot of people talk about how great she is. Without a doubt, this is escape fiction. Because of this, a lot of the anime depends on how much you relate to Yuya.
The first episode does a good job of making Yuya a likeable character. His life has been so bad so far that he deserves a happy finish. From then on, though, Yuya is more of a stand-in for the viewer than a real character. As a normal “good guy,” he forgives those who hurt him and acts without thinking about himself most of the time. He’s also not sure what to do about all the women who want to be with him, which keeps his growing harem of girls in a state of permanent limbo. To put it simply, you should be able to see yourself in Yuya and think that you’re living his exciting life instead of your own.
To be fair, I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World isn’t trying to say anything important or look into some deeper part of people. As a 22-minute brainless vacation every week, it only wants to be that. This isn’t the first cartoon like this, and it won’t be the last either. The animation is what makes the anime a clear failure instead of just another escape dream in a crowd.
I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World looks great at first glance. There is a lot of style and care in the characters and backgrounds. If you take a picture of any scene from the show, it should look pretty good. There is a problem with the motion, or rather the lack of it. This cartoon uses every cheap technique known to man: extreme close-ups on faces so nothing can be seen moving; pans across single static frames to make it look like animation; and even sudden cuts to the scenery at important but hard-to-animate times. And when fast-paced action needs to be shown, a CG character model that doesn’t quite fit in with the scene is used. What it looks like is such a mess that the way it tells the story makes it seem even worse.
The song doesn’t do anything bad and is easy to forget. Only “Gyakuten Geki” by Tsukuyomi, the rocking starting theme song, and “Hachimitsu” by Shikao Suga are different from this. I liked hearing them every week, but neither would be my favorite cartoon song of the season.
In general, I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World is a bad anime, even for the “isekai with a harem” style. If you wanted an anime where the outsider guy becomes the hero and wins all the girls’ hearts, this would be a good one. The only problem is that the visuals aren’t very good in some of the most important parts. No amount of fan service with the large female cast will change the fact that it fails to tell the story it wants to tell.
