There's no way you didn't notice it: even in a world full of anime with long titles that double as a basic plot synopsis, Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>> ~About that time I became able to eat unlimited numbers of Skill Fruits (that kill you)~ is still an excessive title chaotic enough—dare I say, perversely extravagant enough—to stop you dead in your tracks. You can't help but wonder: from what cursed oven did this discordant fruit casserole of 19 words, 29 syllables, and 116 godforsaken characters emerge? To try to remember the whole thing is a fool's errand, so I'm just going to refer to it here as Fruitmaster. This is partially because that's the only part of the title I can be bothered to remember, and partially to keep this review's word count from reaching a threshold where it could be considered a novel unto itself.

So on that note: based on the web novel series of the same, Fruitmaster follows childhood friends Light and Lena as they seek to enter the next chapter of their lives by eating skill fruit. In the universe of this show, everyone gets one—and importantly, they only get one, because if you try to eat more, the fruit poison you and you die. Light wants to be an adventurer, so he's immensely disappointed when he ends up with the pathetic-sounding skill of fruitmaster. Lena, meanwhile, just wants to be with Light—so you can imagine the reactions it draws when she gets a high-ranking sword ability that gets her immediately whisked away to an S-rank party. But after a while (and with the help of a little girl named Ayla who's around for no clear reason), Light learns that as part of his fruitmaster ability, he's immune to the poison from skill fruit. Sure, it hurts a bit when he does this, but as long as he paces himself he can eat as many skill fruit as he wants. And so he… proceeds to sporadically eat only a few more, and become an adventurer who's soon rejoined by Lena.

There could be an isekai out there where this series is a fantastic over-the-top comedy in the vein of Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto? It practically writes itself: Light, now able to eat as many skill fruit as he wants, eats a ton of them and becomes comically overpowered—think something along the lines of Saitama from One Punch Man. And the show is about him effortlessly breezing through perilous quests that even S-rank parties have struggled with, making said quests look easy peasy lemon squeezy. But instead of this, we got yet another generic adventure anime.

If Fruitmaster can be said to have a story, it's only barely. Pretty much all of this show is just a standard issue adventure anime, with Light and co. going on adventures more or less just for the sake of it. To its credit, attempts are made throughout Fruitmaster to give it a little more oomph. For example, there's a few episodes toward the end where it's just Lena adventuring sans Light and Ayla, it makes an attempt at a villain redemption, we get some worldbuilding, and without spoiling anything, there's a sense that not all is as it seems. But by the end, we haven't seen any of these hints at a bigger, much grander, story bear any substantial fruit.

Maybe I would've enjoyed the story, no matter how flimsy it is, more if any of our protagonists were more likable. But try as I might, I just can't find it in myself to give a fig about Light, Lena, and Ayla, who somehow have less personality than, well, a bowl of fruit. They have no backstory, no hopes and dreams outside of an abstract desire to go on adventures together (for no particular reason), not even any noted likes or dislikes outside of pizza. Are they boring because we know next to nothing about them, or do we know next to nothing about them because they're boring? It's anyone's guess!

I think a lot of this anime's problems can be directly traced back to how bland and poorly thought out Light, in particular, is. In addition to everything I just mentioned, he also has a weird amount of restraint when it comes to turning the lemons he's been given into lemonade. Which is to say, you'd think that learning he can become as overpowered as he wants would, you know, affect his psyche in some way, but no. He paces himself tremendously with his power, not eating the fruit regularly. Sure, it hurts him to eat more than a few fruit at a time, but all that means is that he just has to either space out his consumption more, or at least get more creative about the way he eats them. We actually don't see him eat skill fruit anywhere near as often as you'd think you'd see in an anime called Fruitmaster. In fact, we really only see him do it when he's in a pinch. Since his skill is so powerful (and we haven't been given reason to think that the skills ever break, even if only temporarily, in such a way), I don't think the idea that “maybe this time he's afraid the poison will work on him” is a strong way to deter his eating more fruits. So bearing that in mind, the next best explanation might be a sense that he values staying humble or to keeping himself in check, but we have no reason to believe he feels that. So his not eating more fruits—and again, this is all happening in the anime called Fruitmaster—ends up making no sense.

And what else could be the cherry on top of unremarkable storytelling and characters, if not equally unremarkable overall production value? I was never wow-ed by these visuals, which even in their best moments look, eh, fine I guess. I liked the bright and vibrant color palette; I just wish it was used on more stylish forms. There were low moments as well, of course, but for the most part, the visuals never rose above being serviceable. And the intro is cute and upbeat, but I can't even remember what the background music sounds like. Similarly, while there's no bad apples in the bunch, none of the voice performances stand out as being especially peachy.

In many ways, that just about sums up my thoughts on this anime more broadly: you could do way worse than Fruitmaster—it's not actively unenjoyable. But it's also nothing special, nothing new, and nothing I ever found myself craving the next episode of. It feels like low-hanging fruit to say this, but “nothing” really does feel like the right word to describe this anime equivalent of somehow-fruit-flavored TV-static. It's so neutral in everything that it does that I could see this anime being a good yardstick against which you measure whether or not you like other adventure series. It's a textbook example of an anime whose title is more fun, exciting, and memorable than the show itself.