Review of The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?
Summery: Skips a lot and is very rushed, it should have been at least 24 episodes. But the animation, BGM and story from the perspective of someone who hasn't read the manga or novel were well done. Overall, a poor adaptation, but a good anime. Details: Story (7): The story was somewhat lackluster and rushed. It may not be as noticeable for someone who hasn't read the source work but for someone who has it's very prevalent due to all the world building and character development that was skipped over. For someone who's never read the source work the story might be more enjoyable. Art (8): Aside fromthe main character, whose eyes were too big and the clunky 3D model Bone Dragon, the art basically captured the essence of the story. It was pretty close to what I pictured in my head when I was reading the novel.
Sound (9): Aside from the story, what I consider most important in an anime is proper use of sound effects and background music. Although I wasn't very fond of the opening theme The background music and sound effects were used in the right way, at the right times and always fit the scene (except for one time in episode 5 or 6).
Characters (6): A lot of character development scenes were cut from the anime so I'm rating this pretty low. Some of the most important characters had the scenes where the friendship/relationship between them and the main character develops cut making their friendships/relationships with the main character seem arbitrary, cheap and shallow.
Adaptation (5): as an adaptation the the art and sound get a passing grade, but the story and character development fall way behind due to how compressed it is. they should have had at least twice as many episodes to allow the story to unfold at the proper pace.
Enjoyment (7): I am a fantasy lover through and through especially High Fantasy therefore it's not likely for me to rate any fantasy very low, unless they're the worst of the worst. So for those who don't like the Fantasy or the Isekai genre especially I recommend not watching this, I mean if you know you're not going to like it from the start why would you watch it anyway. For fantasy lovers like myself go ahead.
My policy on reviews: Though I rarely write reviews in the first place, I only write reviews for either stuff that I like or stuff from a genre that I like. I feel that writing a bad review for as genre which I don't like is wrong. Most people normally watch only from the genre they like in the first place, so writing a bad review on an anime from a genre I don't like could dissuade someone who is a genre fan from watching that anime. No matter how stupid I feel most Mecha anime are there are people who love them as much as I love fantasy. This is how I try not to be biased in my reviews but it should be understood that bias is impossible to completely avoid. Therefore readers of my review should know I probably would rate any fantasy higher.