She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man

A good way to judge the quality of a show is seeing how many characters or plot points you can name off the top of your head. The fact that the only character I remember is Mira, and I don’t remember any plot points except the utter abomination of the first episode speaks volumes about how forgettable this series was to me. The first episode of any series is an extremely important one, you hit it, the watcher will be hooked, but if you miss it, the watcher will either leave, or continue with less enthusiasm. I would be someone in that latter category. I wasso put off by the back half of the first episode that the sour taste it left lingered on throughout the rest of the show, but even if I overlooked the first episode, there’s not much to praise about the show. The jokes don’t land, the characters are bland, the world is boring, and there isn’t much to be excited about. My grading criteria: Story: /25 Art: /10 Music: /10 Characters: /20 Enjoyment /15 Thematic Execution /20 STORY: 3.8/25 Now we’ve seen this formula before, someone gets reincarnated as an overpowered character in a game, but in this case, Danblf, which is definitely not a lazy renaming of Gandalf, one of the nine wise men, becomes a little girl named Mira, who inherits most of Danblf’s abilities and shines in the world she lives in, solving any and all problems the world throws at her. There isn’t much to the story at all, and its fundamental problem is introducing all these plot points up, like the Soul Howl, the nine wise men, the Chimera Clausen, plus a lot of other filler, and not really resolving much of it well. Otherwise, there are no details I remember from the story at all, as the finer bits and pieces are just too forgettable. ART: 1/10 Deplorable use of CGI, and poorly executed action scenes really detracted from the immersion. Most of the action scenes took place in stills, which really isn’t all that interesting. MUSIC: 6.3/10 Brownie points for music because I’m a sucker for any anime music to give it a bad score. Pretty generic music for a fantasy. CHARACTERS: 3.5/25 The characters besides Mira really added nothing to the story, King Solomon was just there to spout random facts about the world. For the rest of the characters, let me spout some names for you: Luminaria, Zeph, Tact, Fricka, Leticia, Emera, Asval, Frone. Could you tell me who was who in this story without looking it up? Probably not, and that goes to show how interesting they were. Out of those characters I listed, you might remember who Fricka is, yes, that glasses girl whose only gag was being overly obsessed with Mira. Speaking of gags, the comedy was just so mind-numbingly bad that the main character’s only comedic bit was that she apparently needs to pee a lot (don’t we all?), which was just so… off to me. The only half decent character was Mariana, Danblf’s aide, because there was that emotional moment between Mira and Mariana that was probably the only good part of the show. ENJOYMENT: 2.7/15 I checked out pretty early here, but I got through it. THEMATIC EXECUTION: 5.5/20 A typical power fantasy theme that at points were pleasant, but it was mostly boring. The world-building was dealt with using too much dialogue, a case of telling instead of showing, and that really didn’t help building the fantasy theme up. OVERALL: 22.8/100 I’m sure most of you are just going to criticize the animation, and use that as your main complaint, but there is basically nothing good about this show besides that even. It is generic, boring, and just not funny. Just a forgettable show with not much going for it. However, except for the animation, there’s not much honestly that is inherently “wrong” with it, it’s just not an enjoyable experience overall, it was a project adapted so awkwardly I don’t really have much to say, except that there are a whole lot more better isekai out there.

Why am I even reviewing this? I have to say that this is a prime example of one of the worst shows I have ever seen to this day, and I purposely watch shows that are the lowest rated on MAL from time to time. First I’ll go over the one redeeming factor for this entire show. The main character is cute, and they make a point to force the story to dress her up in as many ways as they can in a short timeframe. Outside of that, I cannot think of a single thing that someone would really enjoy about it. If you like powerfantasies then this might work out, but you also require other perspectives to enjoy it too: 1. Ignoring terrible cgi and horrible fights that reuse nameless monsters 2. Don’t mind lack of characterization and 1-dimensional stock characters everywhere 3. Watching the epitome of “We know the Isekai genre is doing great right now so let’s make another terrible one about literally anything” If you want to watch a power fantasy isekai with a cute character, just go watch Sword Art Online. I recognized this show was bad in the first episode, but nothing could prepare me for how much worse it could get.

I'm not sure why there are so many abysmal reviews here on MAL. I thought it was a wholesome enjoyable little series. Fun to watch and easily bingeable. I do wish they'd made somewhat of a bigger deal about everyone being trapped in the isekai world, not being to log out, what's surely happened to their bodies in 30 years, and so on. Those facts are utterly glossed over and all but ignored. And I don't really like that. That aside, it was an enjoyable watch. Though expect somewhat more of a wholesome entertaining experience like Bofuri rather than something hardcore and super serious like Overlord. I canunderstand why some people complain, as not a whole lot happens if you're looking for X and Y major plot points and resolutions and such. It's somewhat more of an adventure, and still very much still working on the primary task having not really made much progress as of yet. Sort of like you might expect in a 200 episode shōnen but of course this is only 12 episodes so they haven't gotten all that far into it. They've only really just begun unraveling some of the mysteries, and barely brushing the surface of some others. The main character's absolutely adorable by the way. Maybe not quite Bofuri adorable, but still pretty darn cute.

The show where the "old man transforms into a loli" story plot becomes a reality, and all that nuttiness...amounts to nothing. Tuesdays in the Winter 2022 season are allocated to gender-bender Isekai (well, except for Tensai Ouji) shows, and having 2 series go head-to-head against each other and airing one after the next, was a real treat: Fantasy Bishoujo a.k.a FabiNiku vs. Kenja no Deshi wo Nanoru Kenja a.k.a She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man. While FabiNiku ultimately won the battle being the better executed show, Kenja no Deshi lost the war badly by being a somewhat worse adaptation of the source material, andit's not for lack of trying consider the staff behind this. The story in a nutshell, is that if you take the SAO narrative, pureed it in a similar fashion to this season's Shikkakumon no Saikyou Kenja a.k.a The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest, gave it a makeover similar to Leadale no Daichi nite a.k.a In the Land of Leadale, and mash them all to make this show. And for one, you might think that novelist Hirotsugu Ryuusen took notes and copied ideas from similar series to make it his own, only 2 out of 3 "inspirational" works made it here (SAO and Leadale) since those works came before Kenja no Deshi started its publication in Syosetu in April 2012. This source is easily a decade old, and it seems that an anime adaptation of this was really in no hurry to come out...until now, and somehow it flopped even harder than the source material which is decent to say the least. With the world's setting done, let's introduce the characters...or rather, the only one character that really matters. The MC is Danblf Gandagore (a pun on names derived from Lord of the Rings's Gandalf and Harry Potter's Dumbledore), one of the 9 Wise Men of the kingdom in a yet-similar SAO rip-off VRMMORPG. He is respected as the strongest Wise Man magical sorcerer hero, helping out a similar friend: Solomon, whom like Danblf, is a player and king whom created the in-game kingdom together with the Wise Man. For some strange programming reason, Danblf uses a cash item in his inventory, only to be transformed into a silver-haired, blue-eyes-blue, cute and petite girl, that to add some nonchalance to it, the retainment of his powers. Obviously, anyone whom has relations to the original Danblf will instantly recognize the OP powers, so she has no choice but to profess herself as the pupil of the Wise Man while taking on an alias name: Mira (which is a derivative of the the real-world player's family name, which means mirror). All that is fine and all, but the series really has one overbearing "fanservice" in common: and that's the peeing scenes. In a strange twist, for all the work that Danblf has built during his time, in every crevice there exists a toilet that Mira can use, or even doing the deed outdoors. Like, why is this a thing? Sad to say that I can not give two flying fishes about the other characters, they're just very basic and work as what would be expected of them to do. Any work that Studio A-CAT tries to do, there is but only one word that rhymes with all of the production: mediocrity. It's safe to say that quality was never the word when it comes to the studio's mission and vision, because it just looks like crap that's indicted because of the crappy CGI and a hefty amount of still shots. Director Keitarou Motonaga can be a chad when he does things right, but as an in-house studio director, this really is the lowest of the bottom of efforts given as the show is butchered of its source content right from the get-go, that it feels like the show is literally D.O.A. I kinda wished the music segment can hold up, but it's the same story with the rest of the anime. Don't get me wrong, Asaka CAN create good songs (as evidenced from series like Yuru Camp), it's just that for this show, while "Ready Set Go!!" is a good song I'd like to listen to more on its own, there's just this feeling that the back of my mind, isn't the same Asaka-like quality that I've come to expect. Idol group Erabareshi has been around for more than a decade, though their roles in anime are less than desired, and it's no wonder that it feels like a throwback when they did the ED for Hajimete no Gal back in Summer 2017, like damn. They're very forgettable, as well as the totally lazy ED visuals of just a simplistic PowerPoint-like video. I never doubted that works done by studios with bad reputations will be avoided by most people, and Kenja no Deshi happens to be that anime whom got the boot to working people whom didn't care about the source material at all, making significant changes that only degrade the anime to be the inferior version. Take my word that there's absolutely nothing unique about Kenja no Deshi, it's just tropes copy-pasted, spliced and re-hashed again and again. But I guess you can say that if you like being baited or catfished by a loli, then by all means, enjoy this "Isekai" for what it's worth.