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First Impression: Yandere Dark Elf: She Chased Me All the Way From Another World

Josh

We kick off this foolishness during a decisive battle…in another world. Yes, that’s right, friends! Our hero, Hinata, having been isekai’d to this fantasy world, has just laid the finishing strike against the final boss. Who is this bad guy? Who are the other girls in the show? How did he even get here in the first place? Doesn’t matter! It’s time for our hero to return to the real world, much to the dismay of the voluptuous Mariabell, a dark elf who was a member of Hinata’s party and has taken quite a liking to our hero, wanting to marry him. Hinata awakens in the real world and reintegrates into his peaceful school life, his head in a fog but still content with living his ordinary life. He even has a sheepishly shy classmate who undoubtedly has a crush on him. Everything is coming up Millhouse for this dude, until one day after school, he comes home, and Mariabell appears in his apartment…naked, of course, because this show has no shame whatsoever. Mariabell explained that she was bored with all the accolades she and her teammates were receiving after the battle. Life was not worth living without her orange-haired dope, so she used her powers to isekai herself into Hinata’s world, determined to stay by his side no matter what…whether he liked it or not. Cue the shenanigans.

Oh, have mercy; it’s yet another of these ecchi elf shows that have popped up in the last few seasons, only this one is combined with the bog standard isekai trope. Even though they tried to add some razzle dazzle by making it a REVERSE isekai, it’s still an isekai pointing in a different direction! A train wreck is a train wreck, no matter what direction the train was going. And here I thought Plus-Sized Elf would be the lowest we could go. Studio Elias said, “Hold my sake—we can go LOWER.” It’s been a while since a show made my eyes roll as hard as this one. I’ve seen some lousy shows in my time, but this one…yeah. This one is bad. It’s like Tenchi Muyo or Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon without any of the warmth and all of the fanservice. And brother, there is a lot of fanservice in this one. It takes talent to make a 12-minute anime so mediocre, but they somehow pulled it off. Our female lead, Mariabell, is on screen for all of 10 minutes of this show at 12:01 runtime, and she spends most of her time naked, with her only thing being that she loves Hinata so much (to an obsessive extent) and wants to make love-love time with him—nothing else. She’s just there to be ogled by the audience. Our male lead, Hinata, is about as interesting as a tax return. He’s just your typical hapless hero with something special that makes girls fall for him. It would be one thing if he’s supposed to be a self-insert-style character, but he’s even too dull for that! And, of course, he lives all by himself with little to no supervision because his parents have caught a plot-convenient case of death.

Speaking of dead, this show’s animation is flatlined. It’s just so dull. It would be one thing if it were a well-animated farce of a show; at least I could say, “Hey, it’s trash, but it’s well-animated trash,” but this show doesn’t even get THAT right as the character designs seem flat and uninspired. Even the final boss looked REALLY pathetic—just a random dark-cloaked guy in a throne, and that ending sequence after the battle…please. I could’ve come up with something better! The only place where the creators decided to throw all their attention was the naked scenes with Mariabell. The animators put more detail into her character design while naked than they did for any other character we’ve seen on screen. And, of course, all the ecchi bits are shielded by white splotches, which makes me think there’s an unedited version of this show out there somewhere. Unedited crap is still crap guys. The ending song (which I assume is going to be the OP from here on out) is “Omoi Ai” (Heavy Love), performed by Miyabi, and it is just so bland and forgettable.

See, this is when I would ask, “Where does that leave us?” with a certain show, but let’s be real—we all know where I stand with Yandere Dark Elf: If you enjoyed this one, if you have a taste for sexy elves, more power to ya, and I genuinely hope you like it. But for the rest of us, I would highly, HIGHLY recommend that you stay the heck away. You will find NOTHING redeeming here. To me, this show is trash. Ain’t two ways about it. Straight-up trash. The uninspired storyline, the trope-filled fanservice characters, and the sub-par effort put into the animation are not worth wasting 11 minutes watching this one. Use your 12 minutes doing something better like, I don’t know, having a prodigious walk with your dog, taking out the trash, starting on your taxes (by the way, Tax Day is Tuesday, April 15th), playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons for a while, ANYTHING but watch this absolute garbage show. “But Cajun Samurai,” I can hear you cry out from your keyboards, “This is a junk food show. You should just turn off your brain and enjoy it!” to which I say, “Come on, you can call me Josh. We’re friends here.” And then, “If you’re going to consume junk food, ensure it’s in a decent container. Go for the bag of Doritos that doesn’t have a layer of dust, the Snickers bar that doesn’t look like it’s been beaten up, or the Fanta Orange Soda that is one day from expiring. Junk Food can still have quality.”

Yandere Dark Elf: She Chased Me All The Way From Another World is available to stream on HIDIVE.

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