The Laid-Off Cheat-Granting Mage
Enjoys a Second Lease on Life
Short Synopsis: An Enchanter gets fired from his guild and goes off on his own journey.
Mario: Here’s the thing I can wholeheartedly recommend about this show: Laid-Off Cheat-Granting Mage is a breeze to watch. It doesn’t really take itself seriously, which works for its benefit. All the main characters are fun, and even though our boy Rein runs crying and screaming because he gets betrayed, his energy serves as a good foil against the other characters. But for all its spark, it’s still a show that follows the same well-worn fantasy anime formula: guilds, stats, hero class, and the main character becoming overpowered way too quickly without doing anything. To top it off, many details from this episode don’t really add up when you think about them: if Rein feels as though his old guild was keeping him from pursuing his dream, why does he immediately join a new one after getting kicked out? He also receives these enhancement points, but technically I don’t think he can just apply them to his blade or his clothes because they would break, right? Also, any character outside the main cast is laughably one-note so far… If you don’t want to think much while watching an anime, though, then this show does its job.
Potential: 20%
Horemajo
Short Synopsis: She’s a witch and her crush wants her to make a love potion.
Wooper: Both the Japanese and localized English titles for this show are prohibitively long, so I’ve (very professionally) opted for its hashtag. The Japanese title starts with “Doumo, Suki na Hito,” and if you want to know the English title, just change the third person pronouns in the synopsis above to first person. The main character is indeed a witch and her crush does indeed request that she make a love potion for him. Why does she have a crush on this guy? Well, it’s because he cleared the unbelievably high bar of not being racist! The flashback toward the end of this premiere reveals, via a frankly horrendous dialogue scene, that he doesn’t discriminate against witches for their magic or their secretive habits. Part of what makes the scene so terrible is what an obvious analogue it is for real world racism without having to address it as a real world issue, but who cares, he’s a handsome knight and not a weird bigot! Witch-themed anime are on the upswing right now, but this one doesn’t make great use of the supernatural elements inherent to the trend, so in addition to being unromantic it’s also generally dull. I’m sure it’s someone else’s cup of magic-infused tea, though.
Potential: 5%
Psyren
Short Synopsis: A high schooler is handed a mysterious red telephone card which transports him to a dark world.
Mario: I reckon that so far, nothing in this episode surprises me. We all know our blue-haired hero will use the phone card (mentioned above), and we can tell the moment his friend disappears that it won’t be the last we see of her, yet we’ve still learned next to nothing about the Psyren world. The characters are forgettable so far; even our protagonist doesn’t have any real standout personality, except for his hatred of Earth. In fact, that’s one of the only aspects that draws my attention here, as I think the show would connect that to the larger Psyren world. As this is yet another 90s-00s manga adaptation, we see a dash of old school stuff in here, like the telephone booth (those have almost gone extinct now) or the literal “knock some sense into you” trope from his sister. I bet that the show will kick off once we learn what the hell Psyren is about (the parallel world, not the series), and how our boy and his friend plan to survive in that world, but personally I am not keen to find out.
Potential: 10%
