Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest is a 13 episode anime based on the light novel series. There are also two OVA’s to date that was released with the home releases. Arifureta is an isekai anime but tells the story in a slightly different manner. It begins by introducing Naguma Hajime in a life or death situation where he is trapped deep within the abyss of the Orcus Labyrinth. He’s only a low leveled synergist, not suited to combat, yet he finds himself alone with powerful monsters surrounding him. He is pushed into a corner and has to decide whether to try and fight to keep going, or just accept death.
Naturally, being the protagonist, Hajime decides to fight but there is nothing heroic about it. The anime shows how desperate he is and it is only through creative use of his powers that he manages to slowly transform himself from the weak synergist into an unparalleled attacker. His next step is to find a way out of the abyss. The first episode decides to constantly jump between Hajime’s progress within the labyrinth and the moments before. Through the short glimpses, we find out that he, along with his whole class, has been transported to this world and heralded as heroes to help defeat the demons. Everyone has some sort of class although Hajime was stuck with one that was seemingly not as useful or appreciated. The way that this was told felt messy and unrefined.
The story tries to incite the viewer to stand behind Hajime as he was seemingly betrayed and ended up fighting for his life in the abyss. It wasn’t done that well but it uses that reason to justify his descent into craziness which is a lot more understandable. He is being forced to fight through a dark dungeon filled with extremely powerful monsters by himself, anyone would go crazy. Yet you know that eventually he will get out, he will be the most powerful, and he’ll probably have some good karma coming his way, so all in all, it feels like it was a good thing for him.
Despite trying something slightly different in having the protagonist have to struggle to gain their godly powers, since it only takes the course of two episodes or so, it still feels as if they were gifted them. It’s not helped by the fact that Hajime has some overpowered innate powers that aid in his climb to strength.
Just before the midway point, the story settles into a rhythm where it captures several generic and predictable isekai tropes. For one thing, Hajime is having several characters he meets starting to join his party, and they are all exclusively female with an attraction to him. Despite the earlier darker, gorier (relatively speaking) scenes, the anime still manages to input plenty of fan service. On the other hand, it’s pretty interesting to see that while Hajime managed to sift through all those high leveled lower floors, his schoolmates, with their huge party, continues to struggle in the earlier floors. It does demonstrate that despite Hajime’s powers, he has a natural ability to push on and has talent.
While you know that Hajime will end up meeting his classmates again, you kind of wished that it doesn’t occur too soon. On the one hand, the classmates who had left him behind and continued to advance without him means they aren’t worth his while. On the other hand, you’d want Hajime to show off how much more powerful his is through all the trials that he had to suffer through. The resulting reunion isn’t as big a deal as it could be, and despite Hajime’s coldness, he isn’t a totally unreasonable guy.
The story moves along briskly and doesn’t dwell too long in a single area. This is beneficial in that it makes it much more engaging as you eagerly anticipate what Hajime is going to face next. It feels ironic that while his classmate’s party are still exploring the labyrinth (which seems huge and enormous), they are pretty much neglecting everything else that is happening in the kingdom. Hajime ends up uncovering various other evils, and while most of them are small fry, he does encounter the enemy of the war several times. There is a tendency for Hajime to use modern day weapons like guns and rocket launchers against the monsters. Since he is in a classic fantasy world filled with swords and magic, it feels like a cheap way out. This is part of the reason why he is overpowered since none of the world’s inhabitants has really encountered these types of weapons before.
The season leads up to a confrontation that has significance. While the pace towards that final arc only speeds up within the last two episodes, it does it well. The season finale is, as expected, a happy ending. The tone of the season changed from being darker and filled with despair to one that’s way too positive, with Hajime pretty much getting everything that you’d expect an isekai protagonist to get. Granted, he had to go through hell, and it was satisfying to see him show off just how powerful he is now, but it doesn’t excuse all the tropes and generic developments of the story direction.
The animation relies heavily on 3D CG, and as such, it can clash horribly when it is used extensively in scenes. This also means that the characters and monsters have stiff odd movements. The animation is definitely the weakest aspect of the anime and can be distracting in a lot of the fight scenes. The CG is so low quality sometimes that it can be hard to make out the details of the designs, which is a shame.
There are two OVAs, and both are less than ten minutes long. Despite that, both of them are excuses for the characters to recap the season’s events, as if the recap episode in the middle of the season wasn’t enough. There is some new animation but it brings nothing new, and is fairly disappointing, even as breather episodes.
Overall, Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest manages to overcome your first impressions to become a fairly enjoyable anime. The poor 3D CG used which clashes horribly with everything might immediately put you off, but since it is exclusively used for monsters, it isn’t as prevalent in the later episodes. While it slowly turns from an interesting semi-unique take with its story to one that’s more generic, it’s still fun to watch and at least Hajime had to go through some sort of trial before he gained all those powers.
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