The Spring 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Re:Monster

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Tomokui Kanata has suffered an early death, but his adventures are far from over. He is reborn into a fantastical world of swords and magic-- as a lowly goblin. Not content to let this stop him, the now-renamed “Rou” uses his new physical abilities and his old memories to plow ahead in a world where consuming other creatures allows him to acquire their strengths and powers.

Re:Monster is based on a light novel series written by Kogitsune Kanekiru and illustrated by Yamaada. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

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James Beckett
Rating:
Re:Monster very nearly managed to intrigue me with its opening shot, a shlocky and blood-drenched murder ripped straight from the edgelord anime heydays of the early 2000s, only to devolve into the equally derivative (yet exponentially less interesting) monster-isekai shlock that continues to plague the 2020s. I am almost tempted to throw the show a bone and say that I was, at the very least, kind of interested in the central gimmick of the hero being reborn specifically as a grimy little goblin, but I've been down this road too many times before. I know just as well as any of you reading this do that the gimmick is the only thing that Re:Monster is going to try and use to make itself just legally distinct from every other crappy isekai light novel adaptation and avoid litigation. Other than that, the mission statement is the same as it ever was: Stick to the formula, play things as safely as humanly possible, and don't ever dare attempt something unique or risky. That's what will guarantee the bare minimum of return on investment needed to keep the horrid isekai machine churning for another season.

If I sound bitter about having watched the first episode of Re:Monster, it is because I am. Not because anything about it was particularly offensive or godawful; it's just such a boring show, and getting through just twenty-odd minutes of it was so much harder than it had to be. The sleepy narration from our dull-as-dishwater protagonist, combined with the repetitive nature of the story's montage structure, actually induced a Pavlovian effect in me. Each time that “Day [X]” title card popped up, with that awful “dum dumm *rattle rattle” sound effect, I physically winced and instinctively reached for the sweet, merciful distraction of my phone. At this point, I may be a perfect candidate for a long-term study on the psychophysical damage that is incurred by absorbing too many bland isekai anime in a single adult lifetime. Harvard Research Labs, if you're reading this, give me a call.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I definitely do not recommend Re:Monster to anyone other than the most desensitized of hardcore isekai fans. There is absolutely nothing here that other shows haven't done better before, and with there being so little time that any of us are afforded on this Earth, why would you want to waste it on something as completely forgettable as this?

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

In a world where we have anime for everything from being reincarnated as a spider to being reincarnated as a literal vending machine, being reincarnated as a goblin is almost passé at this point. What helps this one stand out from the pack isn't the world where our hero has been reincarnated (i.e., cliché video game-based fantasy world #3982) but rather the world he is originally from. Rather than Earth as we know it, he's from a world where psychic powers were commonplace. There, he was not only seemingly a villain but also an ESP vampire of sorts—able to steal the powers of those he ate.

Because of this, his cheat ability isn't something given to him by god or the fantasy world, it's something he retained from his first life. It then combines with the skill system of the fantasy world to make him overpowered. It's an interesting little twist that adds a bit of flavor to the tropes in use.

The other highlight of the episode is its clashing of tones. On the other hand, it's lighthearted and jokey. The goblins have to eat bugs and the cute goblin girl has a crush on our hero! On the other, this episode has more bloody violence than any isekai show this side of Goblin Slayer. (I mean, did you see what they did to that orc, shattering his fingers and leaving broken bones jutting out his arms and legs?) I'm not sure if the clashing tones are good for the long run but they certainly kept me interested for this episode.

And lastly, this show did a good job of setting up the conflicts to come. The raiding party will be back soon—leaving Gobrou to deal with not only the tribe's strongest members (who likely won't be happy with the new status quo) and a new set of prisoners. Needless to say, I am down for episode 2.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

There is entirely too much drool in this episode. It's even dripping slowly from the opening credits in great, viscous strings, like a Newfoundland dog is just standing above it after having their turn at the water bowl. And if that isn't bad enough, there's even more drool within the episode itself, some of it enhanced with grub juice as the little goblins chow down. As someone who finds saliva disgusting visually, that made this a really tough sell. The fact that our hero (and I may need to use that word loosely) finds pregnant, captive human women in the back of the cave system where he lives with the other goblins, if drool is the worst this series pulls out, I maybe shouldn't complain.

Saliva aside, this doesn't do a whole lot to make itself particularly engaging. It feels like isekai in fast forward – “Kanata” is murdered and then wakes up as “Gobrou” in a fantasy world, complete with the inevitable stats and levels. He apparently had some sort of magic skill back in what otherwise looks like our world, and that's carried over, so he can shortcut becoming the most powerful goblin ever. His skill? Absorb, which means that he gains the powers of whomever he eats. Was he a cannibal in his past life? Who knows! But now when he eats other monsters he gains their awesome abilities, like “venom,” “evil eye,” and…”libido?” Do goblins not normally have one? But then how are little goblins born? And what's with the pregnant captives we see once and then never again? There are so many questions, and so very few answers.

Mostly this episode is concerned with taking a day-by-day approach to show how amazing Gobrou is. He learns skills at an alarming rate, teams up with Gobmi and Gobkichi (Gobjii isn't a creative namer of babies), and levels up to a hobgoblin all within two weeks. He also apparently learns how to make clothes once he does that, as well as smithing and other forms of weapon crafting. While I don't think we needed to see him do all of these things, it still feels awkward that he simply can do them, especially since he notes that none of his other skills transferred to his new life. While I appreciate that the story doesn't want to linger on his lesser goblin days, it does feel like it's moving at the expense of the plot making full sense.

It doesn't look terrible, provided the drool isn't a dealbreaker, and the English dub has a nice bit of sarcasm to its delivery where Gobrou is concerned, but this isn't going to be for everyone. If I'm remembering the manga correctly, it will also veer into some questionable sexual territory later on, so this may be one of those series that is strictly for genre fans without much to offer anyone else.

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Nicholas Dupree
Rating:

The most common problem with the isekai trend is that it feels like every show has to start off the same way. Sure, each new entry has some gimmick it explains in the title, but every first episode inevitably involves a character going through the same motions as countless other isekai melvins before them. That's especially true here, with Re:Monster's premiere being structured as a day-by-day montage of our protagonist hunting monsters, gaining new abilities, and eventually leveling up so he can hunt more monsters and gain more new abilities.

It's painfully uninteresting, lacking in the overactive exuberance of So I'm a Spider, So What? or the casual likability of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Gobrou hunts, eats, reads his internal stat sheet, and then repeats a good four times across this episode, and it is never interesting to watch. Gobrou himself is a cipher, acting more as narrator than an active character in his own life, and seeming totally detached from his inadvertent yet inevitable rise to dominance in his goblin clan. Outside of enacting violence on anyone who disobeys him, he doesn't seem to care about his new companions/family or really think much of being in a fantasy world so different from the high-tech science-fantasy world he was previously from. There's no real tension or conflict for the characters because they're barely characters at all.

The only flavor (heh) comes from the show's haphazard attempts at being dark and edgy, showing flashbacks of Gobrou's previous incarnation eating people to gain their powers, and really focusing on the bloodshed of his hunting. It's hard to tell when so much else going on is standard isekai filler, but it seems like they're trying to make this a more serious, gritty take on leveling up as a monster. There's also at least one reference to that hoary old idea of goblin procreation, and considering our hero gets the “Libido” ability midway through this episode, I suspect sexual assault isn't too far away. That's not exactly great storytelling, but it gives this premiere some amount of personality, even if that personality is just role-reversed Goblin Slayer.

Granted, occasionally grimdark isekai pablum isn't much more appealing than unseasoned isekai pablum, and that's all we really get in this first episode. The animation is at least competent enough to function with its action, so if you're down to watch boring monsters hunt other monsters and turn into taller, equally boring monsters, this seems functional. Otherwise, it's an easy skip.