Yes, yes. Very traumatizing.
Impressions:
None of these shounen things are really singing to me, as much as I want to appreciate original shows. The obnoxious ‘hot blooded’ protagonist is already a big stone weighing this show down, but the wild swings on its mood are also killing it. It’s almost like Bravern, except none of it feels intentional. Be hotblooded and fight like a real man! No, this is deadly serious and traumatizing and you need to take it all very, very seriously because it’s life and death. And now, our very serious despair bringing foe is a goofy pig head with magic drums. That was awesome and cool, right? NO. It was serious, for serious people, like these snarky children tagalongs.
This is Back Arrow level of awkward incongreguity, without its charmingly off the rails story careening out of control, because that ain’t going anywhere. After spending a third of the episode to figure out that he’s gone back in time, he spends the rest of the episode demanding to Prove His Worth™, which mainly means sitting through a bunch of exposition about the world and this particular flavor of magic. Then a monster attacks, and he Proves His Worth™ by one-shotting it, twice, because the first one didn’t count because it wasn’t with the power of teamwork. Worth having been Proven, he can now start his training arc, but for real this time. It’s so insubstantial, and yet, the only character focused things were the awkward bits about how no, it’s actually super duper serious, so even that is being contradicted by the protagonist having been proven right all along and everybody else fools for not believing in him despite all him doing is claiming that he’s the special chosen one. Which he is. Because of course he is.
