A sinister cloud spreads through a swamp. Office lady Sei arrives home after working extremely late, only to be transported to another world…along with some other random girl. The local prince ignores Sei and immediately decides the other girl must be the magical Saint they were trying to summon to drive out the monster-spewing miasma. Weeks later, Sei is bored out of her mind living in the palace with nothing to do, goes for a walk in the palace gardens, and chances upon a section used to grow herbs for potion-making. A friendly researcher named Jude shows her around the Medicinal Flora Research Institute, and Sei starts spending more and more time there, before finally becoming a researcher and moving out of the main palace into the institute’s dormitory. Strangely, Sei’s potions all seem to be about fifty percent more effective than normal. I wonder why that could be…? Months pass, and one day, a unit of knights returns from a mission with many gravely injured; the institute staff rush to administer their spare potions to the wounded. Sei uses one of her superior potions to save the life of the knights’ captain. Finally, the institute director talks with a palace official about Sei’s fifty percent bonus and whether she might be the real Saint.
I always struggle to evaluate anime adaptations of light novels I’ve read. Will I be too hard on the anime because it’s exactly like the book, or too lenient because I love the book so much? This episode felt surprisingly fast-paced to me, like it was leaving out quite a bit of material, but I’m unsure if it really was that fast or if I’m just bothered that it was different than the book. I felt like this episode skipped over stuff a bit too much. I’m also concerned about the subtitles, which were kind of wonky at points. Sometimes it was just weird, such as spelling “Sir” (like you’d call a knight) as “Ser.” However, there was also a glaring typo: “Save travels to you!” obviously should have read “safe.” On the bright side, I found the visuals quite nice. I love the novels on which this show is based, so I think I’m likely to keep watching, albeit with concerns.
The Saint’s Magic Power Is Omnipotent! can be streamed through Funimation.
Whenever I watch anime adaptations of light novels I’ve read, I always treat them as fanservice (not the ecchi kind). Just a chance to see that characters and moments I love be animated.
So I checked and the anime adapted about 1/4 of the first volume, which in and of itself isn’t a terrible pace. That said, they did remove the part about how Sei was so overworked from our world that she had collapsed. Also, this opening part of the novel admittedly was mostly exposition and whatnot, and the anime basically glossed over most of that.
Probably most interestingly, they completely removed the part about how Sei could check her numerical stats, almost as if they didn’t want to have the concept of numerical stats at all to make things less cliched…
Oh, and those timecards that use overly stylized cursive in black-and-white are… something.
Beyond that it was a reasonably fine adaptation. I basically agree with jaszunai about how these anime adaptations are just “fanservice” to me.
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