Isekai Cheat Magician
Overview
Isekai Cheat Magician (異世界チート魔術師〈マジシャン〉) is a new isekai anime that’s exactly like all the other standard isekai anime you’ve seen. Before even watching it I already knew it was going to be a 5/10 at best, but as you’ll find out, even that was an overestimate.
Starting off with the studio that made it, Encourage Films is their name. I don’t expect anyone to have heard of them before, because I certainly hadn’t. I’ve also never heard of any of the anime they previously worked on — which there aren’t that many of anyway.
But hey, just because I’ve never heard of a studio or any of their work before doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t good at what they do. After all, this series has Rie Takahashi voicing one of the main characters and an OP performed by MYTH & ROID (like every other isekai) so it can’t be all bad, right?
Unfortunately, even Rie and MYTH & ROID couldn’t save this series.
But at first glance there’s nothing offensively bad about the series. It seems to be your run of the mill isekai series which happens to have two people from our world instead of one. They learn magic, find out they’re overpowered, save the town, all the things you would expect from this kind of series.
The problems with this series, aside from the fact that it doesn’t exactly do anything different, are many. The plot is painfully generic, the characters are about as interesting as watching paint dry, and the developments within the plot just seem to happen without any real reason behind them.
Dual Magic System
We also learn a bit about the magic system of the world which is always a nice thing. However, we don’t get an in-depth understanding of it. What we know are that there are two kinds of magic: one which relies on the user’s magic and one which relies on the magic of spirits.
These dual magic systems are the only unique thing about the series, but they also aren’t all that interesting because we know so little about them. But because I enjoy breaking down magic systems, let’s do it anyway.
First up we have the standard mages who rely on their own power to cast spells. I don’t know if all the different types of this magic were explained, but we at least know Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water magic exist. There are also other spells we’ve seen which may not fit into any of these categories.
It’s also stated that a person must have an affinity for each magic element in order to use it. Obviously the more affinities a person has, the rarer and stronger they are.
The second type of mage is a summoner who relies on spirits for their source of magic. Summoners must forge pacts with elemental spirits in order to command them — which means they aren’t actually using magic themselves, they’re telling the spirits to.
Again, there are a variety of elements available, but in this case the summoner will have to forge a pact with each spirit whose element they want to use. And again, there are affinities, but it’s unclear if a summoner can forge a pact with a spirit whose element they don’t already have an affinity for.
And while summoners are rarer, they’re more powerful.
Characters
Taichi Nishimura is the male protagonist for this series, which basically means he’s the only protagonist. He’s a summoner who makes a pact with a Wind spirit by the name of Aery — though her name changes towards the end of the season for no apparent reason.
Aside from being able to control a Wind spirit, Taichi also specializes in hand to hand combat. And by that I mean he powers up his physical strength with magic and then punches things until they die — which usually happens after the first punch.
The female protagonist who might as well be a background character is Rin Azuma. Rin is one of the standard mages, but she’s still powerful in her own right. She has a massive amount of mana and is able to use four unique magical elements — often combining two or more. Rin is also voiced by Rie Takahashi.
Myura is one of Taichi and Rin’s friends in the fantasy world. She’s an elf who’s a powerful swordswoman, not an archer — nice job dodging that trope. Also I don’t actually know what her name is. I’m pretty sure it’s Myura, but a few episodes into the series the Crunchyroll subtitles started calling her “Muller” instead.
I think the Crunchyroll translators just really wanted her name to be in English for some reason even though it’s clearly not.
The fourth and final character I’ll mention is Lemia (or Remia, because Ls and Rs are the same thing as far as the Japanese are concerned). Lemia is a powerful mage who trains both Taichi and Rin. Before their summoning, I believe she was the strongest mage in the kingdom.
Conclusion
Isekai Cheat Magician is a 1/10 if you couldn’t guess that from how this review went. The animation was bad, the plot was boring, the characters were flat (not physically), and the OST was nothing special. The only thing I would say was alright was the magic systems, but as I mentioned, those aren’t fully explored (yet).
Of the two other 1/10s from this season, at least Demon Lord, Retry! had a hilariously bad OST and Arifureta had the best girl of the season, Shea.
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2 Replies to “Isekai Cheat Magician”
Your statements are pretty bold but they are strong and you’re correct. But the animation wasn’t bad, rather the animation and art style were good. The plot was plain and boring but in the later episodes it became a little interesting. Well the action scenes were dumb. But the last episode was a quite enjoyable. I’d say that you’re right and wrong. Because the light novel was actually very great and it has a good rating. The anime was dull because the production studio couldn’t present the series properly. If the studio was good and renowned, I’m sure the anime would’ve been great.
There’s a lot to unpack from this comment, but I’ll just respond to each of your points in order.
First, the animation was pretty bad. Animation quality isn’t as subjective as art style. Bad animation is bad animation, and this series had pretty bad animation. But that’s not to say they can’t make bad animation look pretty sometimes. I’ll agree that the art style isn’t inherently bad, but it is extremely generic which doesn’t help this series out.
As for the light novel having a good rating, if you liked, that’s great. But you do have to consider that most people won’t give a bad rating even to a bad series. When presented with a 1-10 scale, most people consider a 5/10 to be a failure (at least in the US, because that’s how school grading works). This means that even a mediocre series gets a 7/10 (the light novel currently has a 7.07). I work with the full 1-10 scale though, and from what I watched, that show was a 2 at absolute best. So I find it extremely unlikely that the novels are actually “good.”
Finally, the studio isn’t as much of a problem as you make it out to be. In some cases you can get a rough estimate of the quality of an anime just by seeing which studio it’s from, but not always. For example, if you see J.C.Staff as the studio, you’re generally in for a 6/10 at best. However, Encourage Films actually only has one anime series rated lower than Isekai Cheat Magician. They don’t have any standout anime, but overall their ratings aren’t that bad all things considered. So to say it was the studio’s fault entirely is ignoring the fact that the source material simply doesn’t appear to stand on its own anyway.
Let’s not forget that part of the reason Encourage Films got to make this series was either because nobody else was willing to touch it or it was never meant to be a good anime anyway. Many times, the anime series are basically viewed by publishing companies as extra long commercials for the source material.