Forum - View topicREVIEW: Demon Lord, Retry! R Anime Series Review
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18570 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Although I found the first season of this one to be passable, I bailed on the second season after episode 2 since the new season didn't seem like it was going anywhere. Apparently that was the right call.
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The_Daytona_500
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The first season of this was a rare good isekai, but this was complete crap that I can't even understand the point of why it was made. Had barely anything to do with the main plot of the first season too.
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beaverusiv
Posts: 23 |
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The first season was far more entertaining for me, I was quite disappointed as I was really hoping to enjoy season 2. It wasn't so bad I dropped it, but like the review says there isn't so much a plot as just one thing happening after another so there was never any excitement for the next episode
My main draw for this series has been that it has an actual protag with a personality, and at least that carried over to season 2, though he never really gets anything interesting to do |
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BalmungHHQ
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The number one issue with this season, more than any of its other issues, is the fact that it was bad at conveyance.
This is what results in the "stuff just happens" impression many are seeming to take away from watching it. The anime didn't properly convey how all of these random events are connected and what they had to do with each other, nor how they built to the conclusion we watched, or what any of it had to do with what Kunai was even trying to do. (The loose outline of the reasoning was there, but from what I saw, many viewers definitely got lost somewhere.) If you understand, then Season 2 really isn't so bad for what it is... But the issue is, the anime makes very little effort to give said understanding to anyone that doesn't already know the story. I think the biggest example I can think of is the final scene of the season, with the big reveal that XXX is spoiler[not only the president of the mysterious company that hired Akira, but also seemingly has to do with the world he'd eventually find himself in as Kunai by referring to him as "My Lucifer".] The issue with that cliffhanger reveal ending is that the average viewer would have no idea what this show is trying to tell them with it. XXX was only mentioned once in Episode 1, and shown briefly in a flashback in Episode 11. Viewers of the anime barely have any idea who she is, or what her connection to Akira is, so there's no way that reveal would make any impact unless you understand. A lot of this has to do with Season 1's faults too, like gutting the entire real world side of the story for some reason, and Season 2 does kinda try to fix this by bringing that stuff back in, but it wasn't particularly successful in doing so. Most viewers didn't understand the purpose. It's really a shame, I do think there's plenty to like about this series, both Seasons 1 and 2, but in the end, you'd have to be someone who knows the story (whether via the LN's, which season 1 was based on, or the manga, which season 2 was based on) and enjoy the show as a kind of companion piece with goofy animation. It's rare to see a series so completely inaccessible for newcomers. I do want to say that this series and its world building are insane and absolutely fascinating. Intentionally so. It's a very fun story. If anyone reading this finds the world & characters interesting, regardless of the impression you got from the anime, please try to check out either of the source materials sometime. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 14671 |
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I remember enjoying season 1 enough to be looking forward to this but I was disappointed in season 2 on several fronts.
Recasting everybody but Kunai so nobody but Kunai sounded quite right. The plot felt way less coherent. The animation was pretty much abysmal. The character designs compared to season 1 felt off. Aku and a lot of season 1 characters were practically no-shows. The 50% recap in episode 1 that just muddled/confused things. I feel like this franchise deserved better. |
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Greed1914
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Season 1 was ok, but this... Despite the rather simple premise, I found myself getting lost because, as the review says, things just sort of happen without a lot of connection. The quasi-reboot, which is something from the source material, as I understand it, might have put them behind the eight ball. Spending early time on that, and then having to hit certain plot points might have resulted in it jumping from one thing to the next.
The end result wasn't even so much that I was confused by what was happening, but that I was bored. Things happening with no connection or character motivation is dull. |
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BalmungHHQ
Posts: 479 |
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My prior comment came off a bit more negative than I would've liked. I will say that I'm one of the rare people that actually enjoyed Retry R a fair bit more than the original anime, despite that it seemingly had more negatives going for it.
There other thing is, I kind of want to go over the story here to help think about why Retry R ended up the way it did.
I think you landed on some important things here. But this first thing I feel that should be clarified is that Demon Lord Retry's premise is very deceptive, because when you look at the scope of things as a whole, I wouldn't really call this a simple story. When explaining the core of the story plainly, Demon Lord Retry is a comedic fantasy-action political drama taking place in a slapdash game-like world, starring a protagonist who was reincarnated into said world in the form of a final boss character from an online game he made, framed within the context of a mystery story regarding his real-world self Akira and two former friends who he'd made games together with in the late 90's-early 00's and how those relationships tie into his current situation. If anything, it's more of a mystery story framed in a world that's like a parody of an isekai. It's a very unique premise, but for anime-only viewers it can be difficult to understand what the premise of the series is trying to be due to issues with both seasons. Let's start by look at exactly what each season actually adapts. Season 1 took things rather slow, starting from the beginning of the story and ending, well... somewhere around the beginning of Vol.3? But despite taking things slow, that adaptation did cut a few notable things (Such as the aforementioned real-life flashbacks, in addition to the introduction of the Queendom of Xenovia, which got carried over to Season 2 instead). Season 2 (while switching to using the already-abridged manga as the source) roughly had to: Finish adapting LN Vol.3 (mostly done in episode 3), and then adapt LN Vol.4 (the Eagle arc) and Vol.5 (the Organ arc). (For the record, the Retry R manga itself started towards the end of LN Vol.3, beginning with Akane's summoning. The Retry R anime had a lot of catch-up to do.) Looking at Season 2's first three episodes, I believe these didn't set a good precedent for getting fans prepared for what was to come. Episode 1 spent its first half trying to compile many of the real life scenario pieces together, which I don't think they did particularly well. See, these scenes are meant to be little pieces sprinkled into the story to add to the mystery of how Akira ended up in this world as Hakuto in the first place. But they seem like a total non-sequitur when bundled together like this, with the individual meaning of some segments removed altogether. After this, the second half of Ep1 adapted the manga version of the story's introductory scene, for some reason... Episode 2 was a reintroduction to the characters (aka, an excuse to give screentime to many characters who wouldn't be particularly involved in the story of Vols. 4 & 5). And Episode 3 was all cleanup to rush through some plot points leftover from the rest of Vol.3 (which honestly should've been in Season 1), resulting in even Vol.3's climax battle being cut. In addition to spending 2 episodes mostly on reviewing characters/info, I think Vol.3 being gutted so much and the general bizarre state Season 2 had to pick things up in (due to the source material switch) resulted in this feeling of being lost/bored in Season 2. Here's a brief rundown of the overall story trajectory, separated by arcs: Introduction Arc (LN vol.1): The introduction to the story. Hakuto meets Aku and Luna, and summons Yu. They travel together, etc. They eventually confront enemies like the Satanists and the demon Oluit. Introductions to other characters like Holylight's Killer Queen and the adventurers Yukikaze and Mikan occur. Organ and Mink take part in quelling the Satanist's attack on the town as well. Rabbi Village Arc (LN vol.2): Hakuto begins building up Rabbi Village in earnest, earning the suspicion of Holylight's nobility. He overcomes them in various ways, including winning over one of the top nobles Shrimpfry Butterfly with his hot spring development, as well as the head of the holy sisters Angel White. Tahara is summoned. Luna, seeing her village prosper reflect on her origins and lost childhood friend Eagle. Once the village reaches a certain level of prosperity, Hakuto begins planning his journey into other territories in search of a way to defend against magic, after meeting Yukikaze and Mikan, they accompany him to show him the adventurer's life. Dungeon Arc (LN vol.3): spoiler[This arc depicts Hakuto's adventures in a border town, where he learns about dungeon crawling in this world and meets the hero from the Tsardom of Right. During his absence, Rabbi Village is attacked but is well-defended by Hakuto's summons, displaying that the village doesn't need him to get by. Organ makes contact with Hakuto for the first time, requesting his assistance in defeating her father Belphagor. Later, after defending the town from an outbreak from the dungeon, Hakuto ventures into its depths where he has his first encounter with the Game Master. Meanwhile, via a plot from Xenovia, rumors spread of Luna's lost childhood friend Eagle being in a slave group, leading to Luna departing Rabbi Village as well.] Eagle Arc (LN vol.4): spoiler[Hakuto continues his quest with Organ, Mink, and the freshly-summoned Akane, all exploring the Beastman territory that borders the Demon territory. After saving the Grand Priestess' children from one of Belphagor's servants, Hakuto earns her favor. Meanwhile, Xenovia's plot to engineer a conflict between Holylight and the Tsardom of Right unexpectedly becomes a three-way conflict when the Satanist's strike again as well. Hakuto learns of this and briefly leaves to deal with it along with Tahara. In the end, Luna's feelings for Hakuto are solidified and Eagle is saved.] Organ Arc (LN vol.5): spoiler[Hakuto returns to the Beastman territory and, working with the monkey men via the Priestess' blessing, begin their invasion of the Demon territory. Along the way rescuing captives such as Princess Cake (who ended up in slavery after Xenovia caused her kingdom's fall), and Hammer (who Hakuto originally met at the labyrinth in vol.3). Oluit, eyeing the developments in the area, deduces Hakuto's identity and challenges him to a rematch. Eventually Hakuto defeats Belphagor, and obtains an item that helps him deal with magic (his personal goal for the outing to these other territories). Afterwards, he finally returns to Rabbi Village.] So, yeah... There is a logical throughline to the story's progression from one section to the next. Even with these short summaries I wrote up, it sounds like a fine story outline on paper. But the execution between both anime seasons ends up making it very hard to follow. When you have so many layers on top of its deceptively "simple" premise, and limited runtime following a bizarre jump in source material, I guess it really is easy for casual viewers to get lost in the sauce, and leads to some moments losing any impact they should have. (With the very limited animation already presenting things in a fairly bland way.) I really love this anime, conceptually... So it's a shame that nothing about it really came together correctly. It takes having a very specific view of the show to enjoy watching it, the way I did. And even then, its flaws are apparent... :/ Like I said, I did enjoy this series, so I don't want to be too negative. But I also think it's an interesting case of analyzing how the circumstances of an adaptation can effect the average impression of a story.
For what it's worth, I highly recommend checking out the English dub. They brought back most of the cast from Season 1, and even just that level of extra continuity helps Season 2 feel much more how the creators probably intended it to be.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I think the character designs in Season 2 are way better than the designs in Season 1. ... The issue is that the animation struggled to make them look correct a lot of the time.  \
Aku had some bonding moments with Shrimpfry which were cut. But yes, on the whole she didn't really have much of a role in the particular story arcs Season 2 had to adapt. So you can't really blame stuff like that on them, and in fact if the story were presented in a more appealing way I don't think many fans would've minded the absence of some characters. I'd be willing to believe that the lack of Aku in this part of the story might be why they chose to re-adapt the beginning of the story the way they did in the second half of Episode 1. |
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egozi14
Posts: 109 |
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Did anyone mention how not just bad the art was but also the effects and mainly the sounds,
The music there played in more higher volume than the voices which made hearing anything harder, Sound effects were so cheap and bad and also had funny volume rates, The entire thing felt like it was handled by people who dk much in term editing direction tbh, but the result sure hurt my ears (if you have good hearing try watch it with headphones if you haven't already and you may get what I mean) |
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