Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything with Low-Level Spells

I got about seven episodes into this and couldn't really get much further. This one has a lot of the usual Isekai tropes. But just because something recycles ideas to a point doesn't make it a bad piece of entertainment. This had a lot going for it in terms of potential. I'm always up for a good revenge plot, particularly against a deity simply because there is a lot of growth potential in that sort of story. The premise was pretty interesting as well (but got thin quickly). Our combat mechanics were interesting as well, but became a bit inconsistent and, well, boring. I stayed with it in the hopes of improvement due to the premise, but wasn't rewarded.

Let's go.

First off, practically every relevant named character is a basically an a-hole or moron in some capacity. Once you get passed that, we learn that, aside from our male protagonist and one other character that I can recall, every single male in this one is either a rapist or an elf fetishist. This basically makes the world around the character uninteresting and probably requires parental permission for younger audiences.

Then there's our protagonist. Without giving away much, we'll say our boy had some potential. His existence up to the starting point in the series has been apparently miserable. In fact, the entire point of the first episode is to beat this into your head thoroughly with a blunt force instrument. Along the way, we learn that he actually had some nice points in life, which he later discards, then reasserts, then drops again, then... well, you get the point. Basically, his characterization is inconsistent. This did make for one very, VERY nice twist in episode three, but that's about it. In a general sense, the writer of the series couldn't really decide what they wanted to do with him. Basically, he's like the usual nice-guy-turned-harem-target without any appreciable depth beyond his flip-flopping "I am a hardass but really a nice dude inside I think" characterization.

But roughly about three episodes in, it begins to hit you that what you are watching is a self-insert power trip fantasy turned into an anime. Now, I've got no issues with fanfiction or self-insert stories. You do you. But if I wanted to binge that sort of tale, I would drop my local Anime streaming service and check out some fanfic website.

There is some storytelling whiplash, deus ex machina, and even writer arsepulls as wel. Without giving away spoilers, the entire point of one episode about the range of our male character's attacks and builds around his needing to draw them in closer so this modus operandi would be effect. Then after a particularly gruesome demonstration of our protagonist's abilities.... he gains range!

I was done after that. To the writer's credit, they did build this up some, but there didn't really seem to be a point after that. But it's really difficult to stay with something when the rules change in a world because of plot convenience. Our other fan-service protagonist has her own special power in this world, which I think involves her glowing and warping in some cool armor, but doesn't seem to have any actual combat value because the writer and animators couldn't be bothered to give us a demonstration of it.

There are some issues with the animation as well. For about half of the scenes in this series, this was done pretty well. But in other parts, the CGI overlay on photo-realistic backgrounds was actually jarring. In some parts, it's fluid and smooth, but others (particularly in the Inn scenes for some reasons), it feels like the video cards needed a driver update because the FPS was horrible. The action scenes were adequate, but not spectacular. Just.... Meh.

In summary, I can't really recommend this one. This one had potential to be something, but fell flat nearly from the outset and I can't really think of a reason to watch this unless you an animated OP self-insert story turned anime.

Judging by the rule of three episodes, this would be my last watch.

When watching the first episode this revenge anime has a lot of potential for an interesting story, but episode 2 and 3 has both slowed it down and made it less interesting.

It got a lot of production value with interesting creature design and the use of highlights on the characters creates a really beautiful design style but's cheapened by massive use of 3D that's poorly mixed with the 2D element. This is a problem when they use 3D on the main character which pulls you out of the immersion with how soulless and out of place it looks.

For what this anime has in style it lacks in character development, which means I don't really care for any of the characters after 3 episodes, and if I didn't have a neurotic need to finish shows I've started I would stop at episode 3.

I like how this anime was done and still being done! Love the story , the characters and all the magical stuff so the main character can survive the hard story.

Nice story at start that the main character was abused and Mal-treated, giving him enough reason to fight back and never to give up. I like how the drawings were made, the characters voice and lines are really amazing. I just hope to see the main character have some kind of normal relationship with for example,the elf. She is so pretty and kind hearted and loyal. I think he needs more interactions to the female characters since it cannot be just a one-sided massacre for revenge,since the anime is beautiful, it could ruin the whole story. It can be like while aiming to defeat the enemy, must have some relationships along the way and should not be a negative factor.

Cinematography / Animation

Animation was not the worst. But I did not care for it. It is along the lines of Berserk in terms of animation style... I won't say quality, but in terms of style... yes. (And I mean this specifically in reference to fight scenes, every fight scene is the same animation style).

Editing

The story progressed pretty smoothly. Each scene goes in the order that it needs to, leaving out no inconsistencies in continuity. There are on occasion backstories that exist within an episode, but there is no stand-alone backstory episode, at least that I can remember.

Mise en Scene

In terms of the setting of specific scenes, I think the coolest moment in the anime comes in episode 6, personally. There is another moment when the MC travels to a location which provides a similar cool moment. This happens around episodes 9-10.

Performance

The actors and actresses did a great job of showing the specific emotions of pride, ego, and anger. As much as it makes you dislike certain characters, they were portrayed really well. So... a shoutout to:

Ryouta Suzuki & Ayami Tsukui (Touka) Masaaki Mizunaka (Takuto) Tsubasa Sasa (Agito) Emi, Hirayama (Asagi)

Sound

The soundtrack was good, the only thing that bothered me was the noise you heard when the MC used one of his abilities.

Overall... I think the anime had a good story and good pacing. I didn't care for the animation style, but that was not enough to keep me from watching it. The MC actually is highly intelligent and basically does whatever will benefit himself and the people he cares about.

There are so many anime out there these days its hard to decide which ones to give a try. When i first came across this one I overlooked it thinking it was just another mid level anime about overly powerful characters that never see any growth and heavily relies on a strong animation style.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the story well written to match the decent story.

The character is actually weak but has mastered a small set of lower leveled spells as it says in the title. He uses this spells in conjunction with his strategic mind to win most of his battles.

The characters grow as the series progress, not just by themselves but as a group as they continue a quest against. Each character in the party has their own primary objective but work collectively to meet it.

All in all the series was fun to watch. At first I was thinking this was some kind of 2nd rate solo leveling type series but it actually did its own thing making it more of unique watching experience. Hopefully there will be a follow up season.