Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest – Worth Watching?

Other names: Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou

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Arifureta airs every Monday at 3:30 PM for 25 minutes.

About a boy who is weak, and then eats demon meat and becomes powerful, Arifureta has a generic, and boring, storyline. It certainly reminds me of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Afterall, both main characters start of normal, but soon become overpowered and able to defeat anything, and copy the ‘moves’ of their victims. In addition to this, Arifureta has the some of the slowest pacing of any ‘action’ anime I’ve watched. What was spread out in a 25 minute anime could certainly have been put into 12. The main character spends around five minutes repeating how hungry they are, in what I assume was an attempt by the writer to emphasise the moment that they snapped. However, it just lasts too long, and takes away any suspense/excitement.

Characters are given little detail. For the main character, all we know that he is made fun of for being weak – nothing else is given about his past. We don’t even learn the names of the other characters that appear here and there in the anime. There are a few flashbacks in the episode, splashed here and there, which simply serve to cover up holes in the storyline – they didn’t really provide any information on the supporting characters, or about the main character.

Now, animation. This anime uses CGI – a lot of it. Whilst I do like a bit of well done CGI, Arifureta has Berserk 2016 levels of it – perhaps even worse. It’s terribly done – stiff, out of place, and looks like they simply added some cheap movements in Blender. Allow me to scar you with the following image to emphasise my point:

The same level of shoddy CGI is used throughout the anime, and makes it somewhat painful to watch. It’s used in the skills that the main character uses, the monsters – it’s everywhere, and you can’t escape it.

Art is somewhat lacking too – static scenes are overused, showing that the budget for the anime is smaller than the cost of a trip to McDonalds – and characters lack refinement and definition. Scenes in the background often fade to darkness, allowing the anime to get away with less background quality.

Avoid Arifureta. It’s a slow paced, and terribly animated anime, which isn’t worth 25 minutes of your day. The storyline is boring, the character structure overused, and going for a walk would be a better use of your time.