Broken premises are the fast track to a disappointing story. A story that doesn’t have a reliable plot from episode to episode is hard to invest in. And a story that presents information that’ll become irrelevant five minutes later feels like it’s wasting viewers’ time.
I’m a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic breaks premises, but is it a waste of time?
Broken Premises from the Start
Like a lot of fantasy anime on the market, I’m a Noble (which will be the shorthand from now on), is an isekai. It doesn’t matter that it’s an isekai though. The protagonist, Liam Hamilton, is a twelve-year-old boy who wakes up at a party. He was apparently a man somewhere, but the show doesn’t tell you that. Even though the show starts out with Liam’s point of view and thoughts, Liam provides no information about his old world. He’s barely surprised to be a twelve-year-old noble kid! After a vague thought about having fallen asleep over a drink, Liam chats with people who speak curiously — as in unnaturally — to tell him what he needs to know, like that he’s a fifth son. Liam shows no believable curiosity or effort to sell his confusion.
Eventually, Liam references his old life by using the names of idols he liked as a spell chant. Once or twice, he thinks about how he doesn’t know how he got to this world. However, none of the events of this show depend on Liam being from another world. Nothing would change if he was just a naive twelve-year-old noble.
Title Premises
What about the show’s title? Well, Liam is a noble, I’ll give I’m a Noble that. Is he on the brink of ruin? The show spends multiple scenes explaining the exact mechanics of why his family may have their nobility taken away, but his family is ridiculously wealthy. They own land and control who may do business in settlements on that land. Later we’re told lands are not rewarded with titles, which implies land is separate from nobility. They’re in no danger of going broke.
Maybe the show wants us to believe Liam is at risk personally? That’s the title’s premise: Liam will need a trade, so he seeks out magic. Only magic is less a trade, and more an RNG reward. We’re told that few people can even do magic, and then we’re told that even fewer mages (think 1:1000) can do the special-awesome multi-casting magic that falls into Liam’s lap. Magic is so rare that a modest talent in it means making money, and Liam is self-sufficient by episode two. Money never matters in the story though, so the time spent making it is wasted anyway.
Broken Magic
Liam doesn’t have to master much. Often, lucky breaks help him spend less and less time learning magic until he can learn any spell he encounters in about an hour. Tops. But the ‘mastering’ gets worse than that. I’m a Noble’s premise about magic is completely broken after a couple episodes of pretending learning magic is hard. Although Liam can master any spell within a minute or two of showtime, we soon discover that he can invent magic.
What is the secret? Imagine an effect — translated by the English subtitles as ‘causality’ — and you make magic. Mastery, learning, what are those? You can just imagine something is possible and it is so. Liam invents telepathy this way to talk to a friend secretly during a negotiation. That’s especially useful. You could use telepathy to get scouting reports without anyone returning to report. Or to stay in touch with distant friends.
Liam must become a brokenly strong party leader, right?
Worthless Premises
Nope. I didn’t finish the show, but from episode five — when he invents telepathy — to episode eight, he never uses telepathy again. Liam could communicate with his friends at a distance but he doesn’t. He even ignores his original party members until he can meet up with them to explain what’s happened over the last few episodes. Multiple spells are treated like this; convenient until they would be too convenient.
I’m a Noble breaks the premises and potential of its own magic often, and quickly, to get to the next supposedly cool idea it has. That makes all its ideas boring and learning about them a waste of effort.
Broken Show
Establishing a premise requires follow-through. It takes effort that I’m a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic doesn’t want to make. The show doesn’t want a plot about poverty, so it gets rid of it. It doesn’t care to have believable rules for magic. Neither does it have Liam mastering skills over time. So, it hand-waves solutions and makes Liam more powerful from episode to episode. With no effort. There’s no plot in this anime, but especially no plot about someone struggling to achieve financial success or status. Stuff happens to Liam, then no longer matters as other stuff happens to him.
Have you been broken by an anime that leaves you disappointed, or better yet, angry? Leave a comment so your fellow fans can share in your pain — or avoid your torturer.
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