Category: Anime Reviews

Picked this one up mostly on the “not much else airing” logic again. It’s the one everyone’s calling Solo Leveling-adjacent: regression, revenge, magic relics, a protagonist who already knows how the next fight goes. Nine episodes in (three to go, finale’s the 23rd), here’s where I’ve landed. Watched dubbed, for what it’s worth.

The Solo Leveling comparison. It’s uncanny how much this feels like Solo Leveling, and I can’t fully put my finger on why. The systems are different (relics vs. leveling), the setting’s different. But something about it lands the same, and my best guess is it’s the protagonist: same flavor of quiet, already-knows-how-this-goes overpowered lead who the show builds everything else around. Once you notice it you can’t unnotice it.

The premise. Jooheon dies in the present, gets sent back to before “Tombs” and “Relics” started popping up worldwide, and spends his second run stacking advantages he shouldn’t have yet. It’s a clean enough hook on paper. The show just doesn’t do much with it beyond “he already knows, so he wins.”

The Jooheon problem. This is the actual issue, not the premise. He’s not an underdog with foreknowledge, he’s just better than everyone at everything, and his stated motivation is closer to “be pettier than my past self” than anything resembling a goal. There’s no fight in this show where I’ve believed for a second he could lose. Once or twice that’s fine. Nine episodes of it gets old.

Animation. Studio EEK is competent but not doing anything that’ll stick with me. Fights are readable, nothing more. Not a Heavy Knight-tier visual selling point here, it’s coasting on the source material’s popularity, not the craft.

The dub. Cast is solid enough, but there’s one genuinely annoying quirk: the glowing status-screen pop-ups (the game-like ability notifications Jooheon interacts with constantly) don’t get translated into English. So even watching dubbed, you’re stuck flipping subtitles on anyway whenever one of those matters. A couple of reviews also flag stiff facial animation and some inconsistent censorship as ongoing issues, for what it’s worth.

Worldbuilding. Genuinely the more interesting part, when it bothers. The relic lore (the Crow being a betrayed god-relic, the whole “abuser of relics” angle) is more compelling than the revenge plot wrapped around it. I’d almost rather watch the show about the relics than the show about Jooheon.

Where it’s landed for me: comfortable background watching, not appointment viewing. I’ll finish it since it’s short and there’s nothing else on, but I’m not champing at the bit for episode 10.

Picked this up mostly because there’s not a lot else airing right now. Another “disowned for the wrong class, secretly overpowered” isekai — a premise you’ve seen a dozen times if you watch this stuff at all. What’s carrying it: the animation and the lead.

Animation. GoHands goes hard on motion — hyper-stylized, constant camera movement, a lot going on per frame. Critics are split hard on this: some found it flat-out hard to watch, others called it the one thing that stands out in a season with forty-plus similar shows. I land in the second camp. It’s doing the heavy lifting for a plot that isn’t reinventing anything.

Elma. Tanks are usually the dependable background piece, not the lead. This show hands the archetype the hero slot, and it works — his refusal to accept the role everyone assigns him is doing more narrative work than the power-fantasy mechanics around him. Other coverage lands on the same read.

Pacing. The real problem. Recaps are eating real runtime — one episode-level review flagged nearly four minutes of recap at the top of a single episode, straight-up filler. Episodes are already short; that’s a big bite. Multiple reviews call out the same structural issue: flashbacks and exposition interrupting momentum instead of building it. When the show does slow down for the right reasons — breather episodes, exploration over another fight — it’s clearly got more in the tank than the recap-padded episodes let on.

Bottom line: great animation and a lead worth rooting for, propping up a familiar skeleton and a pacing problem that’s self-inflicted, not a content shortage. Trim the recaps in the back half and this could be one of the season’s better surprises.