Overly long isekai titles have made Japanese high school kids into kidnapping victims to another world for years now. More recent versions, like The Rising of the Shield Hero and TSUKIMICHI -Moonlit Fantasy-, add a revenge plot against their respective summoners. Failure Frame, the new anime adaptation of the light novel series (Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything with Low-Level Spells, Hazure Waku no [Joutai Ijou Skill] de Saikyou ni Natta Ore ga Subete wo Juurin Suru made), takes these same elements for its tale. Is there enough here to justify investing your eyeball time? Read below for info that might give you pause but also reward the patient viewer.
Failure Frame Has Unlikable Characters
Touka Mimori (Ryouta Suzuki, Red from Banished from the Hero’s Party) is a bullying victim in the class of high school students the Goddess Vicius kidnapped. All these kids are terrible people except for one girl, Ayaka Sougou. The director and writers (Michio Fukuda and Yasuhiro Nakanishi) from Studio Seven Arcs (most recently of Chained Soldier fame) attempt to paint Touka in a sympathetic light. Still, the lead character comes off as a whiny brat with a persecution complex.
The Goddess Vicius (Ami Koshimizu, Holo from Spice and Wolf) resembles pure evil. She uses her beauty to entice and fool men but is petty and jealous of women. The foul deity punched Ayaka in the gut to shut her up after Touka’s classmate complained about sending him to a trash heap. How do we know the Demon King she fights against is the villain of this world? We shouldn’t take the shrew at her word after we saw her actions and attitude on display.
Cheap CGI Detracts from Failure Frame’s Action
Touka learned how to survive and use his allegedly weak skills in a dungeon. Vicius called the place “The Ruins of Disposal,” which proved how the goddess operates in her world of magic and monsters. Unfortunately, Failure Frame presents frames of failure in illustrating Touka’s action scenes. The anime even puts a CGI version of Touka in the anime that is worse than the monsters. Viewers should remember that anime studios frontload a season’s quality to hook an audience, so you’re already looking at the best Seven Arcs can do.
Three Episode Rule Brings Hope for an Elf Waifu
Readers of Failure Frame’s source material (light novel series and a manga adaptation) know Touka’s story changes to world-building and harem collection after the revenge-seeking hero successfully escapes Vicius’s trash bin. The first friendly live person he meets is Seras Ashrain (Saki Miyashita, Siesta from The Detective Is Already Dead), an elf who came under the dark eye of the capricious goddess. The first episode gave us loving looks at her naked, wet skin. But I’m less of a fan of her CGI treatment in the end credits. Still, viewers have better than even odds of watching beautiful blonde elf fanservice.
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Thank you for reading this blog post about a new summer anime. What do you think? Do you see enough in Failure Frame to catch your attention? If so, Crunchyroll streams the revenge fantasy isekai in Japanese audio and multiple language subtitles. Let us know how you feel in the comments below.
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