Review of The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?

This is about as generic as you can get. It's merely handwaving and going through the motions in 12 episodes -- discovering magic, going to a special academy, forming a party/harem, fighting a few battles, participating tournament, etc. All stuff that you've seen before if you've watched this style of stuff for very long. On the downside, the protagonist and most of the supporting cast are all quite boring. They're bland, uninspired, and don't have enough time to establish personalities to make themselves interesting. I think part of that is due to the stilted pacing. There are many scene transitions that imply a lot of detailshappen offscreen, and there are several rather jarring timeskips forward. Most shows would at least have the wherewithal to have a quick montage to even things out somewhat, but this series just hard-cuts out of nowhere. This even infects some of the battle sequences, which are already bad enough with the terrible CGI. The fact that some of the battle sequences also have hard-cuts to where the good guys are banged up *without showing how that happened* is a level of sloppiness I don't think I've seen before.

On the upside, this show does the power fantasy aspect decently enough. It balances challenge and indulgence pretty well, with the MC gradually rising in the ranks. This show also manages to snap out of merely re-enacing tropes for the last 2-3 episodes to create a story that's at least somewhat interesting with plots and subterfuge, even though it's not executed in the best way.

I'm a glutton for isekai which is the only reason why I'm giving this Mixed Feelings. I'm being generous here, and if you don't like this genre too then there's just nothing here for you.