#REAL BORING POLITICKING DIALOGUE HEAVY ONE THIS ONE

[joelletwo]

[spacing out] sorry whos getting defrocked

[yurisorcerer]

I have some notes that I'm half-considering turning into a proper review of this but honestly I don't think it's worth the effort.

Here:

Essentially, this is a whole episode of voice actors absolutely dying in the booth to try to work with the material they've been given. These speeches aren't even bad, and I can imagine them being effective---once again---in the original format of the novel, or even a voice drama maybe? But the visual element actively drags the show down; why is everything so fucking dark? Like, literally dark? I keep harping about this but the general look of this show is just ugly beyond belief.

If you look, you can find real themes in here. The idea that everyone is just SO over all of this, that these people really do just need a hero because the world has been this fucking grim for this fucking long is a compelling one in a vacuum. The problem with ISHURA, as always, is in its execution. A quiet, dialogue-heavy episode does play to this show's strengths, and it might be the best episode of the show, but we're talking in relative terms here. There are so many moments that SHOULD work, but none of them do.

The fact of the matter is that despite the strength of most of the vocal performances (Exceptions; Elea's VA Noto Mamiko really has just phoned it in the whole show, and this isn't a standout performance from Aoi Yuuki either).

The standout line probably goes to a random bearded man tending to some coffins in the aftermath of the attack; "once you're dead, it doesn't matter which country you fought for." That this comes from a random gravekeeper, rather than one of the show's superpowered isekaijin, feels like it might point toward how this story could improve over time. A better-written series would have greatly condensed this entire introductory plot, reduced the number of characters somewhat, and focused on these core themes. Instead, ISHURA is basically the introductory chapter to what is clearly a much longer story. I am cognizant of how often I'm saying this, but this is an approach that works fine for the series' home format of the light novel, but adapting it 1 to 1 in an anime like this is bonkers. If the show looked way better and had way more going on writing-side it could justify this. Slow, political character pieces have a place in anime after all, I don't want to come off as denying that, but it would need much better direction, a significant amount of editing, and just stronger visual language overall than ISHURA has.

We should also consider ISHURA in a broader contemporary context. Why bother to take the time to properly adapt this story---to change around, to riff on, to reconfigure, to really make it shine in its new medium---when just adapting the buildup straight with no changes will do just fine in terms of moving copies of the original books and, if Studio Passione is lucky, some BDs on top of that? And of course, they're making more. Will I watch it? Probably not, but maybe if it's an exceptionally dry season I'll be bored enough to give this a second shot.

Overall, this truly felt like a complete waste of my time. I'm genuinely sorry to anyone who likes this show and happens to come across this post, since if you have WAY more patience for fantasy politick I can imagine getting more out of this, but like....I just cannot get there.