What makes Arifureta the best show of 2019 (accidentally)

I love Arifureta. It’s dark sometimes, it’s cute sometimes, and it’s action-packed sometimes. But most importantly, it is absolutely hilarious. 

You may avoid this show immediately just the tags. These types of isekai shows have never really be well received. And many may have heard about how bad this show is. Even from the episode list, something beyond belief will appear on your sight: the show has a recap episode after episode five. Five weeks in and they are already behind schedule. The best way to describe Arifureta is that it’s a real life incarnation of Jiggly Jiggly Heaven from Shirobako. Behind schedule, ugly, and deserving of criticism.

But is Arifureta really as shallow as it may seem?

By all means, Arifureta did not leave a good first impression. In any other show, I would have stopped watching after the first 5 minutes. The show had nothing going for it other than the violence which frankly wasn’t very shocking, it had horrible shot composition that made it really confusing to watch, and worse yet, the setting we were introduced to was horrendous: a dark cave that is so dark that you can’t see the surroundings even with full brightness in a dark room. But this show was different to these other isekais.

After a confusing opening sequence of blue rocks and flames, Hajime, the main character, runs to some hole to protect himself from the animals trying to kill him. After going through a torturous experience in the cave, Hajime finally loses it. In the most edgy sequence that I have seen in my life, Hajime goes crazy. Seeing his reflection in the water, he starts yelling “I don’t want to die. DIE!” Witnessing this craziness, I slowly started to understand. 

This beautiful oxymoron being yelled obnoxiously by Hajime is where I finally understood that Arifureta wasn’t an edgy isekai show; Arifureta was a self-aware caricature on these types of isekai show. By self-aware, I mean accidental and it is amazingly hilarious.

There are also other signature yelling moments of Hajime such as: TRANSMUTE TRANSMUTE, Get away, get away, get away, I’ll frickin eat it, and Shut up! I’m pissed off cause I’m so damn hungry.

It doesn’t end there. There is, of course, Arifureta’s most signature moment: the CGI. CGI has always existed in anime; ranging from horrible dance sequences in love live to gaudy pedestrian walking in bad rom-coms to moments (or rather every single moment) of Berserk that makes your eyes go Berserk. But Arifureta manages to one up all of these shows. The CGI monsters in Arifureta are so gaudy in their movements to the point of hilariousness, that you can’t believe that this thing is happening in front of you. That’s right. The monsters in Arifureta moves like actual monsters. The head first dive of the monster head, crashing into the ground on the first episode was a spectacle to behold. In fact, the CGI monsters in the show were so monstrous that they decided to commit a full episode in to fighting one! 

This was only the first episode. From here on out, Arifureta takes similar shape and remains consistently hilarious most of the time. The only significant thing that changes how the show is presented is the addition of new characters.

But at the core remains Yue. Arifureta’s best character.

I know for a fact that Yue was manufactured to be that perfect waifu character -cute, obsessive over the main character, and sexual aggressive. This was the type of character that was meant exactly for the type of people that would willingly watch shows like this. And while I’m not usually one to willingly watch these shows, I will say I fell for that trap. Yue was so loveable that it was the centerpiece of what held the show together from falling especially when the show started getting ever-so-slightly better (in the right way). I even bought the seventh volume of the manga just because it has Yue on it. 

No, I did not open the plastic cover yet. 

How did you feel about Arifureta? If you haven’t watched it yet, I recommend you avoid it and never watch it unless you wish to entertain yourself on the limits of how bad a show can get.

Thanks for reading!