Anime: Saihate no Paladin

One of the worst anime's I have ever seen! Isekai? More like an diss-this-kai because they "forgot" to put in the part where it actually matters that the MC got into another world. They make a very vague and pathetic attempt at it but fails to convey WHY that is important and WHY that happened in the first place. Yes they have a scene which explains a few things here and there but still lacks the overall information. How the fuck can someone make a mistake that's this colossal and not bother to fix it?! You have to be a giraffe to reach these levels of oversight. This whole anime is like a train-wreck of being slow, methodical, political, tedious and boring so fucking boring. With dragged out scenes that explains most things and yet explains nothing in the long run and they run with that and think it's acceptable. This anime has the depth of a sheet while they PRETEND that it is as deep as the ocean. Overly long still-shots of characters faces or were they hardly move to save on both money and time, while wasting your time. Anyways let's continue the review before my sanity becomes depleted and I'm forced type fan-fiction... you know, things only an insane person would do.

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STORY

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For unexplained reasons our MC finds himself in a new world where a war has happened between Gods, demon beasts and mighty warriors (seems good on first glance but just you wait). This war took place 200 years BEFORE our MC comes into the picture book, however after the cast gets introduced to us we get the full synopsis of what is going on... over 5 episodes. No I'm not kidding. Despite knowing what we need to know they feel the need to repeat everything again and again until your brain either a) know it better than your own parents names or b) short-circuits from being annoyed - it will most likely be the latter. Anyways later on once most of the things are revealed for our MC (because they feel the need to "hide" things because yeah, that's what they needed - to make it even slower) he has to find himself in this world and make a name by making the world a better place. He has also sworn an oath to take down the "evil" God. Also if it wasn't obvious I'm avoiding spoilers in my reviews unless they are 100% absolutely needed to convey something so you'll have to make due with that.

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CHARACTERS

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These characters are beyond annoying:

* William G. Maryblood - The main character (MC) is the most annoying of them all with his constant whining and bitching throughout the whole series, GROW THE FUCK UP!

* Meneldol - An emo reclusive male elf which only purpose is to fill the "friend quota" for the MC but is rather obtuse with the whole friendship thing and very bland.

* Robina Goodfellow - A carefree bard girl with a go-get-em attitude and is always positive the problem is that they forgot to make a character for her so she is just there as filler.

* Antonio - Is also here.

I swear the MC is written like someone who never grew up and has the emotional mentality of a 10 year old. Also, I guess the Japanese have never heard of or doesn't know about puberty when your voice changes with age, because we are stuck with the same fucking annoying voice for the MC all the way through to the end and his voice is like a cheese grader being shoved into your ears. There is no connection between the characters and while the MC feels like they mean something to him the anime itself treats them as expendable. Everything feels false, forced and like a throwaway. While they might show emotions of gratitude but it feels hollow, so you never get or feel attached to anyone.

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PACING

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The pacing is that of a broken tricycle with a fucked-up wheel. It goes for a little bit and it feels connected then all of sudden BOOM here is this new thing that was never mentioned before and now is a gold plated staple for the show, which will make most people go: "OK? I guess this is fine, I mean surely this only happens this time to throw me off my game, the element of surprise and all that" but no at every fucking corner they feel the need to implement things that throws you off. It's beyond unreasonable to set a president for the show and then change the entire thing only because it doesn't fit the narrative for that particular moment or episode. Take for example the training that our MC is doing; it's nothing too specific and not anything special and yet he can overthrow a God with little to no effort, how and why... because shut up and enjoy the shit show and don't ask questions. It is so fucking obtuse with absolutely everything. They keep dumping exposition on you but it means nothing when you don't got the context to fill out the empty rows. What's even more confusing is that this anime doesn't know what it wants to be, like at all. In one moment it can be a comical action adventure and in the next shot it's a drama-show filled with gore, like what the actual fuck is going on here?! It's very normal for an anime to change tones but that comes with the mutual understanding of the both the viewer and the "rules" within the anime itself, it's not something you throw in as a bait for false representation, to hint that there is more to it than meets the eye. If you don't care about the characters nor the situation that they are in then you would certainly not care to understand something that has no build-up and only a false premise.

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ANIMATION

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Flat, boring, lifeless, muted colors and just overall bad on all levels, it's uncomplimentary and brooding in an unflattering way. With low animation status, bad CGI, drawn out scenes which yields nothing turns this anime to the perfect sleeping pill at the cost of your happiness. The art-style is very attractive though because it reminds me of the "Tales of" games -- I should punch myself for even typing that but on the other hand that's the only positive thing I can really say here so I think I'm off the hook... for now.

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MUSIC & SFX

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Look, I understand that music is subjective and all that but the music in this anime is actually really good. It's well matched with what's going on on screen and doesn't feel forced. Some jamming tunes when the action starts and somber tunes when it gets serious. However the intro and outro could have been much better that's for sure. The sound effects are fine they do their jobs but between the music choices and the sound effects of the show the music wins out.

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CONCLUSION

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This anime was a slog to get through normally a 12 episode anime takes at most a few hours for me to get through but this took me 3 days because I kept postponing it, I had to really fight to push through it. For people that are a fan of isekai's just do yourself a favor and skip this one. It's boring with a lot of talking and very little and poor action. With dragged out scenes combined with poor execution of both the story and the pacing, you'll find out that everything feels like filler and just isn't worth watching.

ISEKAI… NOT
The Faraway Paladin is one of those shows that don’t know what they want to be. It’s supposed to be an isekai, although that doesn’t play any part in the plot besides making a few vague references to our world. In essence the author threw it in there because isekai sell more than clear-cut fantasy stories. Oh, and also because it’s a cheap explanation for why the protagonist is overpowered. It’s not because he trained hard all his life, it’s because he’s an otaku loser from our world.

PACING? WHAT IS THAT?
The pacing is also messed up, since there is close to nothing going on in terms of action in the early episodes. Instead of that you get prolonged infodumps in an area that is empty of life and with nothing to look at in general. Then, out of nowhere, the protagonist can defeat gods with not much training. Supposed this was done for giving the viewer the time to get to like the main characters before the action adventure portion of the story begins, but it was done in a very dull way. There is nothing special about the protagonist you haven’t seen in a myriad other shows, the support cast of monsters won’t follow him when he leaves so you getting to like them amounts to nothing, and when the action part begins you are eye-rolling with how out of left-field it is.

OLYMPIC GAMES TONE JUMP
Even the tone of the plot is wrong, as it starts like a grim slice of life and then abruptly becomes a light-hearted action adventure. It’s not the first show that has sudden tone jumps, but the amount of things happening in each episode is too small and unimportant to excuse their duration, and the jump to a different genre altogether is way too sudden. He just pledges to a deity and gets a power up that lets him beat the demon lord. Most viewers gave up on the show because of it, and were instead watching Mushoku Tensei, a different isekai that did the exact same things ten times better.

BEING PATIENT FOR GETTING A GENERIC FANTASY SHOW
But even if, for whatever reason, some people didn’t jump ship to Mushoku Tensei and kept on with the show after the boring slice of life part was over, all they got was a generic fantasy show where, as I said, the isekai part doesn’t matter and it’s just a bland overpowered guy going around, easily defeating all the enemies, and getting constantly rewarded from the local population. I mean, why wouldn’t he? The very first enemy he defeated was the strongest monster in the world, and he did it with no battle experience. What can possibly pose a challenge after that, or be a worthy enough reward?

THIS AIN’T DEMON SLAYER
But even if someone is pleased with all that nonsense, the anime just doesn’t look so good. The production values are subpar, the CGI is awful, the colors are flat, and the character designs are bland. In the post-Demon Slayer era that means nobody will remember it after a couple of weeks. Thus, as a whole, The Faraway Paladin did nothing right. All its chances to be remembered for something it did better than any of its contemporaries were squandered early on, and what was left in the second half was a by the numbers fantasy adventure.

I really enjoyed this but there are some points to note...1) The main character considering they are a re-incarnation (not sure on the age but at least high school, probably office work age) is very childish/innocent. The innocence I can handle but they ball their eyes out when things do not go the way they planned, earlier in the season this can be forgiven but later it continues. Thankfully it's not constant but there are a few instances of this.

2) The pacing is very unusual, the first sort of isolated with undead in the city of the dead slice of life section takes over half the season and then the rest is blasted through at blistering pace.

All in all I enjoyed it an look forward to a second season but if they could fix the pacing and if the main character could grow up (considering he had done so twice already) that would be great.

<EDIT : The negative point I made regarding the immaturity of the main character is now a boon to the show as a whole now that series 2 has finished. There is some excellent character progression and the main character goes from strength to strength.

Highly recommend this show, though push yourself to watch both seasons, looking forward to seeing more of this.