Review of The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?
Jealousy, pride and facades are the main themes of this anime and I think they are handled quite well. The protagonist is a rarely powerful mage in a world where mages are rare and OP, but for once magical powers are not genetic but instead totally randomly assigned. What follows is the MC's adventure in trying to ensure that his powers do not spark jealousy among his family of impoverished minor nobles and eventually the higher nobility as well and trying to maintain the proper facade of a heroic mage. There are a few legit violent threats to the MC, but the main threats arepolitical in nature, in part because the MC is bad at politics and gets wound around the fingers of some of the big players in the setting.
The regular animation is pretty good, the spell animations are pretty weird, they look too game-like for my taste and the monsters and horses are mediocre 3d. There is very little fan-service which I hugely appreciated given the age of the characters, I'm getting a little old for loli fan-service.
The OP is good enough to listen to several times, not quite good enough to save on Spotify. The vocal performances were fine, none were excellent enough to interest me in finding out who the performers were.
I really liked the characters, from the MC having the charm of a wet rat to his eventual party that all have something to prove to the MC and their families and the main love interest is adorable in her earnest good nature.
The story had a few heartfelt moments that I really liked and often uses the MC as the butt of a joke. The fights despite their sub-par animation were still enjoyable enough because I grew to love the characters taking part.
[Spoilers]The record skips when the main character asks his fiance of a couple of weeks if it's okay if he has mistresses, a grown man having been isekai'd asking his child fiance this felt very wrong and wish-fulfillment-esque, not to mention stupid since if this weren't an anime she would probably break off the engagement at this blundering comment. On the other hand it kind of makes sense, the MC has lived 7 years in this new world, trying to fit in and not cause a fuss and he's starting to experience puberty again, can him being a cum brain be excused? I think so. The female party members not wanting the money they're entitled to because it'd be too much hassle stretches imagination a tonne since they were willing to go through the hassle of being concubines to live in comfort and achieve their dreams.[/Spoilers]