Review of The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made

'The Fruit of Evolution' is surprisingly enjoyable: it's light-hearted fun in a fantasy world that knows when to use an anime trope and when to subvert it. You'll laugh at the joke, and you'll laugh that they even made the joke. I think it has a lot of heart, and it might surprise you more than once with a serious moment. But the show doesn't really find its footing until episode two, so you have to give it a chance; you can probably give up if you're not having a good time by the end of episode six (which is delightful). The competent storytelling may comeas a relief to fans of fantasy and romantic comedy. The characters behave consistently. The jokes land. The serious moments don't contradict the levity. There's no time-wasting tournament arc. The story keeps moving forward at an appropriate pace without feeling like it's checking off boxes. You can generally count on 'The Fruit of Evolution' to do the obvious right thing.

The first episode is the weakest: the comedy isn't supported by character development yet, so it feels a bit too silly. Also, instead of telling the story in order, it starts in the middle of the action, then switches to a lengthy flashback: you see this a lot in anime, I never like it, and I think it was an especially bad choice here. Still, I'm glad I stuck with it.

The animation is serviceable, but I don't really care about that: I just want to see fun, well defined characters interact in entertaining ways, and I'm willing to overlook a lot of technical details. The voice acting is pretty good, the music is fine, and the English subtitles have to be taken with a grain of salt, all of which is normal.

The overarching plot is mysterious by design; sometimes it's well integrated into the episode, and sometimes we just cut to the villains being villainous for some reason. Either way, it was enough to get me invested, and I'm looking forward to watching the whole season, however ridiculous it gets. I'm happy to rate 'The Fruit of Evolution' generously.