Review of World Trigger

People are too quick to call a series a “underrated”. This is because it’s not easy to gauge the popularity of a series in relation to the following you think it "should" have. If I were to make a list of underrated series, that list would be incredibly short. It would also include World Trigger which isn't a label typically attached to a Weekly Shonen Jump series. An up and comer in WSJ that drew interest in the when it began to air from the mere fact the it ran in that magazine, that interest almost immediately dissipated in the first couple of episodes. Suddenly,everyone remembered that it's Toei animating the series, and being surprised that a bad animation studio badly animates TV shows, they dropped the series. This is a reminder of how heavily influential the actual animation of an anime is for viewers.

As per most WSJ series, World Trigger starts off slow introducing its world, concept, and characters, before kicking off into the actual conflict. Enemies come from another dimension, people set up an organization to stop them, right, yes, whatever. Fairly straightforward Jump exposition dumping. Mainly bizarre is the anime’s weird name sense, though does get better later. The series starts out as main character Mikumo Osamu finds out a neighbor, Kuga Yuma, transferred into his school. Things gets more interesting around 10 episodes in when Border finds out what he is and attempt to deal with him, and even more so later when Border comes into conflict with other Neighbor worlds.

Osamu is extremely weak but he’s well worked as a character. Initially introduced as a morally righteous individual, it was shown in initial scenes that simply being righteous was useless when he gets his ass kicked pathetically by his classmates while Kuga watches. He never gains anything undeserved and doesn't win just because he's more virtuous or emotional than his opponent. He struggles with his lack of strength and his goals in the story, often fearing inadequacy and failure. This is really one of the big things that Jump has traded away over the past few years. I certainly do not expect some inner turmoil on par with shows like Evangelion and others, but seeing protagonists struggle with themselves and make mistakes is always welcome. This combines with Osamu's efforts to improve which are well thought out and interesting to watch. Though somewhat smart his honesty, despite the potential self damage it incurs, is appealing. It creates a good underdog character. And most of the characters run along similar lines of characterization.

Shonen Jump has a tendency to constantly have the MC in the spotlight before all else as the recognizable face of the series. Whenever there’s a big fight, the MC is always in the lead, even if the fight has little to do with him. He may or may not give a big speech rebuking his opponent, often with little actual relevance to that conflict. Osamu is the antithesis of this. The MC doesn’t preach to the opposition, or the viewership, which gets highly annoying and silly if not meaningful. Characters are no longer shoved into some the unnecessary “good guy” and “bad guy” categories.

This means that characters have to more be defined by their thoughts and actions as people, not just as a hero or villain. This helps the author bring attention to the vast cast without having the audience first watch a huge amount of content. It’s frequent that a huge cast is introduced and only really make a small amount of that huge cast is interesting, or they all end up boring even if a huge amount of time is spent on the characters. They're all just there to make up numbers, but it doesn't feel that way with World Trigger. This is because they don't take up huge amounts of screen time or hold big 1v1 battles involving irrelevant characters.

The power system is actually quite interesting for the series. Fighting series are defined and remembered by their power systems. World Trigger is no different. Jojo, One Piece, DBZ, Hakusho are all examples of this done positively. Usually most shonen series which involve abilities usually center around everyone having their own unique ability, but that's not the case. The system is simple, but the way it's implemented makes it a great system as it still allows creativity but does away with individual gimmicks of one character having a silly overpowered ability, or powering up until he has one.

World Trigger’s trion system resembles a video game in its use. The show places tangible importance on the skills of the individual user, how they use what they have, the situation they are in, and how they fight with those around them. This is what make the battles truly exciting in World Trigger. They rely more so on strategy and very rarely if ever is there an outright power battle between two characters. It enticing to see how each character uses the weapons along with their own skills. And even if you're stronger, it's possible to lose in a way that's not an asspull designed just so the protagonist can win. While I do love to see a couple characters duke it out and try to kick each other’s ass every now and then, this is fun and refreshing in its own right.

I bring up Jump, the target Shounen demographic, and other shows that make these strange errors frequently because that’s the standard. Those are all the tropes and oft-used clichés. Those are all the unnecessary additives along with the annoying detractions that appear in this specific genre, particularly recently. These series hold a lot in common with each other and end up stiffly adhering to a formula to satisfy an audience and they fail to hold the entertain value that they strive for because of it. There’s definitely good in World Trigger, but that comes out because it doesn’t do basic things improperly. It doesn’t do things that are unnecessary, out of character, or out of line.

As for the animation, I mentioned that the first 10 episodes are quite slow, but any further pacing issues come down to how this show was animated and directed. World Trigger's first 10 or so episodes look god awful, plain and simple. Stills, the rehashed Trigger activation animation, and occasional strange lack of frames in scenes contribute to this. Luckily, they managed to get rid of 2 of these problems as the show goes on.

The main issue that persisted is the stills. I found them strangely endearing at times and they got me to laugh at their placement and how unbelievable it was. There are frequents moments in each episode where the frame sits on a character's face for several seconds as they say/do absolutely nothing. In most other anime, you'd see panning shots and some sort of camera movement or change in perspective when there is no dialogue to keep the viewer occupied.

Various scenes are also censored even though most action takes place in a fake body. It’s annoying, but bearable. Even with these problems World Trigger may be the best animated of Toei's TV works of the current century, particularly with how underwhelming One Piece is and what little I've seen of Dragonball Super. This should be fairly embarrassing. All fight scenes are done pretty nicely and it's nice to see that Toei at least doesn't slack off here.

This is the first time I've seen an OP/ED stuck in the middle of an episode. They're good though and for the most part the OST is as well. Toei still uses the same old not so dramatic sound effects that we've heard all the way back since DBZ aired. You'll also find it in One Piece. This helps to draw out various stills and take up episode time.

Really I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed the anime as I was expected to eventually drop it and just go with the manga like with One Piece, but it worth at looking into.

The filler sucks so don't watch it. It’s genuinely like they tried to put Pokemon battles in World Trigger. It’s insane.