Remember when we discussed the first volume of this light novel? Well, now that the anime adaptation has started, naturally we have to take a look at that! We do already have some first impressions from TWWK, for those who want a more concise review; in this post, he joins Jeskai Angel and myself in looking specifically at how the anime adapts the light novel. This one has some pretty significant changes from the novel, so let’s dive in!
stardf29: So there were a couple of odd things about the first episode. First of all, they start right away in the “Mile” part of the story, though that in itself isn’t too unusual; the manga adaptation does something similar, showing the story up until Adele first finds out she has powerful magic and then immediately cutting to the Mile part of the story, with the rest of the Adele story covered later on in a flashback.
However, for the anime, the first episode is practically all anime-original content, which is not something I see often in light novel anime adaptations.
TWWK: That’s good background—I wondered if this this direction was an entirely original decision or if the manga took a similar route. I imagined something like this would happen because the first half of volume one doesn’t fit the typical anime structure at all. Still, it’s pretty shocking.
And the enemies in this episode—these were basically the B ranks the group faced near the END of volume one, right? They seemed similar in style if not exactly the same.
stardf29: It more or less fits the general running gag of Mile surprising higher-ranked adventurers with her power, and it should make for an interesting comparison later on, when the other girls have also gotten stronger.
The biggest issue I had with the episode was that it just used straight exposition for the basic story concepts, which isn’t that interesting. Granted, there’s not much you can do with Mile’s previous-life backstory, but explaining her magic power was a bit much here; I definitely liked how the novel did it better when she just tries using magic one day and then finds things out. Definitely a case of showing being better than telling.
That said, this part was pretty good:
TWWK: That was good, but I get what you’re saying. I got the sense that the episode was acting like it was clever without really being so. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the falling out of tropes was funny, but I’d rather have some smarter setup and exposition—more like volume one of the novel.
Jeskai Angel: Hmm…surprised at the choice of starting point, in terms of how much it skipped over. Enjoyed the addition of Nano-chan as a mouse-type familiar. She talks to the nanomachines in the books of course, but I can understand why it was necessary to anthropomorphize them and have a visible character on screen to interact with. Mile herself was…a bit more genki than I envisioned, so it was interesting to see her as a slightly different take on the character as I’d imagined her. The episode was effective at introducing all four members of the Crimson Vow, though the actual plot was new, so I guess it worked fine as a first episode. The story had a quite a bit of humor, especially from Mile’s genre savviness, which is in keeping with the overall tone of the story and presumably foreshadows the tone of the rest of the series.
stardf29: Yeah, I thought the portrayal of the nanomachines as Nano-chan was nice. He’s still invisible to everyone else, too, so you could say that’s just how Mile is imagining the nanomachines she’s talking to to look like.
To wrap things up: this is technically from episode 2 but I have to say, the OP is stupidly catchy:
Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! is streaming on Crunchyroll. The light novel is available through Seven Seas.
Don’t forget to join our next Light Novel Club discussion in November!
