Review of Summoned to Another World for a Second Time
[JP, subtitle quality is ok~, includes honorifics, sometimes the wording strikes a different impression from what the speaker has said] To start, this anime is not amazing. It is underrated but it is not a hidden gem. What is a gem is the absurdly good selection of what to animate and how to animate it. Everything is animated with purpose. You might think that is a given but you would be wrong. It is a rarity in these "throwaway" isekai. The type of isekai that you will not remember a week after seeing. The type that have a 50/50 chance of being dropped. This is oneof those isekai.
However, what sets this isekai apart from those others is that it is a self contained story. Everything you need to know is presented to you. This anime is not for the phone diddling crowd. The exposition is not fed to you mouth-to-mouth, what does get stated will not be repeated, and you are expected to be looking at the screen at the anime. It is also assumed you understand human emotions and will deduce what is going on in a character's head by their actions and how they express themselves. There is not much complexity in it here, only a lot of stupid viewers. This is especially important to episodes 9, 10, and 11.
This anime is more plot driven than character driven. Characters are not stuck in undeveloped states. They lack screentime. The point of view shifts as the story requires and because of that you do not get to appreciate the characters much.
The one critical flaw shows itself early on in the form of a an attempt to resolve a conflict which comes off as extremely naive to the viewer. Avoiding spoiling, the reasons for this are the perceived naivety of what should be an important strong character, and how hollow the promise looks in the face of the conditions required in the agreement. At face value it appears to be stupid writing. But if you use your brain for a moment to consider 1) the perspective of the important character and what they believe the source of the war is, and 2) the significance of the item from the previous episode. The reason this flaw is so critical is that you do not expect this form of presentation from a cheap isekai and it results in almost 100% of drops and those who continue then believe the writing is too low of quality to merit immersion meaning the significance of what is shown to them becomes lost because they are no longer putting thought into it.
And it is not until later that it is made clear nobody knew about THAT person's abilities at the time.
How the anime handled the war is impressive to me. They did not make the mistake of blowing the budget and their time on trying to depict some grand stage. Instead you get shown concise events and actions that communicate the intentions, purpose, and procession of those involved with high efficiency. Once more everything is animated with purpose.
This is, by far, the best produced of the budget isekai bin. For what faults it has, animation is not one of them. I wish this was standard approach to animating scenes- ensuring that what is shown is delivering information or connecting to neighboring cuts. This would have received an 8/10 if there were more episodes. 12, with the staff's approach, was too few to get enough time for the characters. Of what we do get, I love the protagonist, the kemonololis, the antagonist, the childhood friend, and the chair.
In the face of how many treat it like shit I wanted to review this because if A-CAT or EMT had this approach to animating on a tight budget their shows would be watchable.