Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!

Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!

Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! anime series cover art
Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!

Overview

Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life!? (Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne! / 私、能力は平均値でって言ったよね!) is an isekai anime with a female protagonist. Yeah, you don’t really get too many of those (though there is another one in the winter 2020 season).

This time around we have a girl who excels at everything, but doesn’t have many friends because of it, who gets reincarnated into a fantasy world. Upon her reincarnation, she requests that her abilities be completely average this time around so that she can live the normal life she always wanted.

Unfortunately for her, while her abilities are average, they’re the average based on the world as a whole — which isn’t exactly what she meant. This means that while her abilities are right between those of the strongest and weakest beings on the planet, that still puts her own abilities far above those of the “average” person.

In her new (second attempt) life in this fantasy world, she decides to become a mundane adventurer and joins an adventurers school. There she meets three friends, and together they form the adventurers party known as The Crimson Vow upon graduation.

Basically, what all this means is that Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! is a fairly standard isekai anime. Our protagonist, Mile is completely overpowered, and this is used to solve any conflict she and her friends may find themselves in.

I get that having overpowered isekai protagonists as a joke is supposedly “in” right now, but there’s really not much of a difference between that and what they’re making fun of.

The Crimson Vow

Mile, formerly Adele von Ascham, formerly Misato Kurihara, is just your normal, average girl who happened to be reincarnated into another world and then forced to create a new persona for herself after revealing her true power. So, yeah, just a normal, average girl.

She also retains her memories from her previous life even though she was reincarnated “from scratch” in this new world. By that I mean she was born as a baby and grew up to her current age. When you think about it like that, it’s a bit weird for her to have her old memories.

As a baby did she have the cognitive ability of a teenager?

Mile in bed from the anime series Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!
Mile in bed

The other three members of The Crimson Vow are Reina, Pauline, and Mavis von Austien. None of these girls are all that interesting in particular, but I guess I’ll go over them anyway.

Reina is the best one of these three simply because she’s the tsundere of the group and the only one equally as small as Mile. She specializes in fire magic and has a dark backstory which I would discuss, but that would count as a spoiler. All you need to know is that she was raised by a traveling group of adventurers.

Pauline is the daughter of a well-off merchant family and is always scheming for ways to make money. She also excels at ice magic, but tends to beat opponents down with her staff instead.

Mavis is from a noble family of knights, and because of this she always wanted to become a knight as well. But since she’s a girl, she was told she’s not allowed to be a knight, and so became an adventurer instead.

Cute Girls Doing Adventurous Things

If you’re into the “cute girls doing cute things” subgenre, or any further derivatives of that, then you might like this series. However, I don’t think it actually does anything that makes it stand out from the crowd.

As far as CGDCT series are concerned, there are many others with cuter girls doing more entertaining things. And if you’re looking for a well written story or characters, you also won’t find that here. The main thing this series has going for it is that it’s a fantasy adventure series.

But, if that’s what you’re interested in, I would really just recommend you watch Endro~! Everything that this series does fine, Endro~! does pretty well. And Endro has better characters, better plot, and better art too.

The Crimson Vow from the anime series Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!
The Crimson Vow

It’s really a shame though that this series is the one that comes closest to a true fantasy adventure with a female protagonist. Honestly, what else is there? I’m sure there’s an anime I’m missing, but every good fantasy adventure has a male protagonist. And even among the not so good ones, there aren’t that many with female protagonists anyway.

But, maybe that’s partially my fault for thinking an isekai series of all things could be the fantasy adventure I was waiting for. I did think the same thing when Endro~! first came out, and that happened to not live up to those expectations either.

Conclusion

Overall, Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! is a 5/10 from me. At the very least Mile can be happy knowing that the score I gave to her anime is completely average. I actually didn’t even notice that until just now.

As for the OP and ED, I don’t actually remember the ED at all, so it probably wasn’t anything special. The OP, however, was just alright. The song was okay, and the visuals weren’t anything special. I do remember the entire song though, so I guess that’s a good sign for the OP, but it was also a bit annoying — very repetitive.

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