Given the unenviable circumstances of its rocky start, it will always be generally impressive how far Arifureta has come. The anime has soldiered on for multiple seasons and extra ONAs, and even carved out a solid story identity for itself beyond the "dark vengeful power fantasy" it was codified as early on. It's got an entertaining, irreverent tone and a solid structure anchored by its lead having an actual goal of going home with a tangible plan for pulling that off—something exceedingly rare in the modern isekai space. This third season of the anime facilitates a huge leap forward in that plan for Hajime and the gang, with the series now apparently doing so well that the production netted a boosted 16-episode length to show itself off.

The question immediately becomes how effectively Arifureta Season 3 earns that extended episode count. To be sure, there's a fair amount to get through at this stage in the story and a fair amount of characters getting through it. Reuniting with his classmates has brought several of those people properly into Hajime's fold, necessitating him flying the cast around in a giant airship to conveniently get the cast where they need to be (RIP Hajime's Hummvee, you did your duty admirably). The entire class doesn't become full-time cast members, thankfully, but the addition of Hero Party members Kouki, Ryutarou, Shizuku, and Suzu means there's a somewhat bigger cast to contend with. So the overall development and effective screen time of everyone could threaten to get kneecapped, something the series seems to consider, as it comes up with some solutions that are…well, I'll get to them.

The first arc of Arifureta Season 3 sidelines virtually all of the primary cast in favor of bringing back Shea's beefcake bunny tribe to follow up on some story threads and give the comic-relief rabbit girl some much-needed development. For a group that came across mostly like a weak punchline in their original story, the Haulias do have a much better showing here. Getting to see them act out their ridiculously hardcore guerilla tactics punctuated with unnecessary ultraviolence and self-censored swearing is honestly pretty funny here. It plays up the irreverence that has driven Arifureta as it's gone on, working well with the chuuni angle of the show's edge lord tendencies instead of any attempt at seriousness.

It's extra impressive given that this story winds up dealing with some serious social elements, as Hajime guides and motivates the tribe to get the empire that's oppressing them to outlaw their enslavement. It's a win in-story and for the series itself, as Arifureta of all shows demonstrates that an overpowered isekai protagonist, given the opportunity, can and should influence the world for the better in abolishing slavery, rather than just going along with it. It's also notable in that Hajime isn't even particularly attached to this world, desiring to return home, but still recognizes that influencing the Haulias to overthrow an evil system is a net good.

Hajime's stated loyalty only to his and his allies' interests while still being overall decent to the rest of the world feels like a nice groove for him to settle into after being vindicated and no longer needing the "I'll show you all!" pseudo-vengeance mindset. But that tone of the authorship still comes through in some of the story developments and levels of wish-fulfillment therein. That comes in the remaining two-thirds of this season, and the arcs around the final two labyrinths the party needs to clear to open a path home. This leads to the show's solution to developing the now-expanded party I alluded to earlier, as these are effectively Character Development: The Dungeons.

Technically it's not a bad idea; this kind of character focus within adventuring is a staple of storytelling in this space. Previous Arifureta seasons were no strangers to dropping Hajime down a dedicated hole with the likes of Shea or Kaori to do some focal foiling for a bit. But both labyrinths in the third season here are molded around mind games, serving the heroes' hallucinations of tempting and/or taunting varieties, or manipulating their emotions. In Hajime's case, these mostly serve to reinforce what a badass he's become, as he willingly bails on the angelic days of being a regular student where all his girlfriends are also regular or defeating his negative doppelganger by having his awesomeness outweigh the vanishingly few flaws he can admit he has. There are some amusing aspects to seeing some of these play out, like an instance where everyone's emotions get reversed, leading to scenes of lovebirds Hajime and Yue viciously sniping at each other during combat while everyone gushes over how cute the horrifying bug monsters are. But otherwise, it just means that huge chunks of these stories are spent on characters simply talking about their development before denser world-building plot details get dumped on them.

This seems to be a way to speed development for the team members added this season. For whatever reason, the writing fixates on Shizuku as the one getting the lion's share of this. I liked Shizuku in the previous seasons, as she worked as an interesting aside foil to Kaori. Bringing her into the main party propels the writing to foist upon her the only methodology it has for developing female characters in this show and having her fall in love with Hajime. Her feelings on this issue are largely couched in concerns about her femininity, underscoring her road to ending up acting more like every other girl in the story.

Shizuku's developments occur parallel to Kouki's eventual path, which is even more unfortunate. The official Hero of the world ends up developing an inferiority complex in the face of Hajime, compounded by his childhood friend/crush Shizuku falling for the ol' edge lord. It's an odd choice, since Kouki previously hadn't been part of the anti-Hajime ostracization outlet, and as mentioned the series has since moved far beyond that element, with Hajime himself repeatedly reinforcing that he doesn't care what other people think about him anymore. Rather, Kouki's fall, finding out how much he sucks, and having the girl he likes not want to kiss him mostly comes off like the author, punishing Kouki for the crime of…being a basic-ass popular guy. From a mechanical perspective, it effectively shows what one "failing" the test of a labyrinth can look like, but overall it's a misplaced, mean-spirited revenge fantasy in a series that had since seemed to move on from such things.

The others are fairly disposable. Ryutarou is such a nothing-burger of a character that most of his labyrinth situations get skipped over, and what he describes of his character-development visions play into that. Suzu gets thoroughly shortchanged, casting most of her personality at the feet of her relationship and desire to recover the turncoat Eri, but that's all technically on the back burner as that confrontation won't come until a prospective fourth season. It's frustrating, because what little is seen of Eri this season shows that she could still potentially be an entertaining antagonist, but she has screw-all to do as the demons seemingly politely wait for Hajime's party to finish up their business before launching their next attack and story arc.

That's the sense of all these character development dungeons filling out this season. The characters taking turns to fight their doppelgangers in the final labyrinth leads to long stretches of them describing what their personal growth entails, so the audience can be aware of it once the actual plot kicks in. It's egregious that this is what virtually all of the extra episodes in this season are given over to, and it certainly doesn't feel like it needed to be this decompressed. It's the most flat, noninteractive way to explore this expanded cast of characters.

Speaking of flat, it's not surprising that Arifureta's looks haven't improved after all this time. I understand that, for better or for worse, this is just what the show looks like, but it's still hard to distract from the wobbly character models and particularly janky, inconsistent faces. The editing is also oddly all over the place, with several sequences cut in ways that make parts feel conspicuously missing. At least it feels like there are fewer awful CGI monsters encountered in this volume, and I want to say the ones that appear look slightly better than previous efforts.

It all means that for an extra-special extra-long helping of Arifureta, this season feels mostly obligatory. Perfunctory. It brings the current cast together to dutifully detail what their deals are and shuffles ahead with resolving the overarching labyrinth plot with the energy of checking off a grocery list. There's little of the knowing energy that kicked the season off with the Haulias plot—just Hajime and pals going through wooded and icy dungeon halls, then turning directly to the camera to tell the audience how they feel about it. After the whole stretch, it feels like a lot of housekeeping to set the real final stage. If you're a dedicated Arifureta fan, you're probably invested enough to see this, and you might even glom onto some of the new character developments, however blunt. Still, this is a chunk of episodes that might lose the mildly Arifureta-curious. It's still not the worst isekai, and it's better than it was when it started, but it doesn't seem too interested in doing that much better as this season goes on.