After living a life devoted to serving his country and people, Inglis’ one wish to be free of a king’s
burden and to train was actually heard, but as a beautiful girl! Reborn in the far future as a
daughter to renowned knights, Inglis can now focus on mastering the martial arts. A wish has been
granted, and Inglis will be on the front lines fulfilling the dream of becoming the strongest knight.
(Source: Crunchyroll)
__Reborn to Master the Blade: From Hero-King to Extraordinary Squire__ is an isekai-fantasy light novel written by [Hayaken](https://anilist.co/staff/123654/Hayaken). It was adapted into a 12-episode anime by Studio Comet. ~~~img290(https://s4.anilist.co/file/anilistcdn/media/manga/cover/large/bx122737-IXSoXTRCG5aP.png) img270(https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/zrnUnV0PFWnJ1G6wDvzkQL2HL9d.jpg)~~~ I will cut to the chase.. this anime sucks. I first saw it while overviewing the Winter 2023 season, the premise was generic, but I did get interested in its gender-bending gimmick. It sounded like fun. I was open to giving it a try, especially when it had an above 75% score.. for some reason? I thought it would be some dumb fun like Season 1 of How Not to Summon a Demon Lord. Nothing great, but fun enough to keep you entertained. But nope it is incredibly boring, so boring I would rather watch Naruto filler. This is the type of anime you use as examples when trying to list bad Isekai to someone. This is a generic power fantasy. A reincarnation story of an old king reincarnating as a busty silver-haired girl named __Inglis "Chris" Eucus__. His main goal in his second life is to become the strongest person possible... but it’s so booooring.. It reminded me of The Strongest Sage with The Weakest Crest, as each episode kept getting duller and duller. World-building? There was world-building? Umm, let's see monsters attack people, some people get crests on their hands to use magic but our OP MC can gather mana from the atmosphere or some shit. Some supremacists called highlanders look down on common people, and some resistance groups forms trying to kill the highlanders. While our MC goes to school and wants to fight fight fight. ~~~img720(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IiilfaBv3m0/maxresdefault.jpg)~~~ Chris is one of the worst main characters I have had the displeasure of watching. Watching her is the equivalent of self-harm to the brain. She is dumber than Goku from Dragon Ball Super and her key personality trait is that she loves to fight.. and she reminds you over and over again. More in a single cour than a majority of battles Shonens. She is incredibly smug with no humility or weaknesses. There is no purpose to her even being gender-bended into a female body, except for an internal monologue or two. Incredibly powerful no less. She no diffs every single character in the series. Despite being called Reborn to Master the Blade, she never uses a sword! Instead just throws her hands and shoots Kamehameha waves as a baby. Whenever I hear the term Mary Sue, Chris will pop into my brain from now on. The side characters are not worth mentioning in the slightest, all of them feel like Oblivion NPCs that you can summarize in a single sentence. ~~~img720(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/blpcnrjDbtA/maxresdefault.jpg)~~~ The production values are what you usually see out of J.C. Staff's C team. The art style is appealing to me, but the animation is bad. Punches have no weight behind them, half of an episode you have characters just moving their lip flaps in a room with uninteresting dialog, and the CGI for the monsters is exceptionally bad. The sound design wasn't anything noteworthy, and it felt like even the voice actors just wanted to quickly record their lines and bail.. but at least the opening is good. Would I recommend this anime? Hell no. It is boring, uninspiring, and has a truly terrible main character.
__Reborn to Master the Blade: From Hero-King to Extraordinary Squire__... I have been waiting for like an eternity on this anime to finish. So let me begin how i even came to this anime. Looking through some website for potential interesting new manga, i came across this one. I read the tags and was like, why not. Some gender bender stuff sure sounds interesting. Include magic and isekai and voila, you got my attention. After some time I heard about the making of the anime for this and now here we are. The anime finished and to be fair, it didn't deliver at all. Going about some of the keypoints. __Animation & Style__: Hmm.... you got your drawn stuff and then your 3D animation and if you can't figure by now... the 3D animation part is absolute horrible. Not only does it look hand animated by an intern that learned it in a span of 2 days, but it is simply sloppy and feel like the animations are lagging behind. I would compare it to the CGI from [Overlord III](https://anilist.co/anime/101474/Overlord-III/). But where I have to give credit is the hand drawn style. I never seen it before and actually I quite like it, but this may only be my own oppinion. __Characters__: Oh wow, so you got your MC, which is... OP and then your background characters. And even while they are listed as supporting. They are simple filling the landscape. They feel like some NPC the MC picked up for be able to go on a quest that requires to be more then one person, and thats because how much they actually support. Not at all. Generic weapons, generic lines and generic looks. Going back to the MC, which, while having an again generic background story, basically stole their move from other anime. One specific move: The Kamehameha. While the anime actually is called "__Reborn to Master the Blade__", blades are not really used and fighting is done hand to hand basically. Or mostly hand to blade. __Story__: Hahahaha. Where do I begin? Person gets isekaied multiple years after while gender bending into some white haird big breast girl (Not that im complaing about that), wants to be the strongest in the world. __Is __ already that in the very first episode, and simple repeats it all over again, and again, and again, and again. So Simply said, nothing new or interesting is added to the story after episode 1. So in general I'd say, after watching episode 1, you could mark it as complete. Nothing new will be added to the story in general and it repeats itself every episode. Story building stopped there too and character building practically never existed. I think TL;DR: Watching this was not worth it, like waititing for a new episode each monday. Take your time and watch something else. Like [Another](https://anilist.co/anime/11111/Another/).
Just felt like writing a review right after watching. I found it to be an enjoyable anime. The story follows a hero king Inglis? who is reborn into a new world with his memories intact. There, he begins training to become a master swordsman for which he couldn't due to his previous reign of king, with all the political strife and lacking enough time to indulge in what he truly wanted. The story of the show may have been engaging, suspenseful, or emotionally compelling. I found myself invested in the plot and eager to see what was about to happen next. One of the things that impressed me about 'Reborn to Master the Blade' was the quality of its animation. The fight scenes were particularly well done, with fluid movement and detailed choreography. The character designs were also unique and memorable, with each character having their own distinct style. As much as I really appreciate this anime, at times I find Rani to be quite annoying, whether its me getting used to japanese audio or it was something intended by either author/Director, This is my one and only complaint regarding the show. Either way, The animation style of the show appealed to me visually. Perhaps its high time you appreciate the artistry and creativity that went into the design of the characters and settings, after having done watching. You can find this show quite funny and amusing at times, and in my case I enjoyed the jokes and comedic moments From the very beginning, the show does an excellent job of building a sense of K.O -ness, (although some of you might be bored to Earth, Having watched very meagre anime this year, I find it to be balanced enough to not negate the entertaining part) and developing the story at a steady pace. Each episode is carefully crafted to keep the viewer engaged while advancing the plot (There are moments of intense action and suspense but given the predictability due to protagonist's past and his way of OP-ing enemies some find it quite mediocre and un-inspiring) , as well as quieter moments of character development and world-building. Although most of the isekai's portray the storytelling and plot in a similar way to one another, the count something that comes close to this show must had been more than of what I'm aware of, Unfortunately I haven't gone through them all. so that's one of a reason, why I don't find this show to be Monotonous and Stale. That being said, the plot could be a bit slow at times, and some of the characters felt underdeveloped. Additionally, some of the dialogue could be a bit heavy-handed, particularly when it came to explaining the world's mechanics unless you read LN beforehand. Overall, though, I would recommend 'Reborn to Master the Blade' to fans of action anime and sword fighting(not much tho tbh) and the source material. It's not without its flaws, but it's a fun and engaging watch that will keep you entertained throughout.
#__Summary__ This season had its fill of Isekai anime, and I will add this one to that pile. Yes, I can already hear you saying; "but this isn't an actual Isekai." Sure, you may technically be correct, but for all practical purposes, it follows the same general line of story and plot beats, so it may as well be one. The old king dies after a long and honorable life building up his nation and making it prosperous for his subjects. As he dies he gets a favor from the goddess for a life well lived, and onto his next life he goes. Or rather, onto the next life she goes. Not sure why they made the MC into a female in the next life, as I do not think it has served much of a purpose in this first season, but sure, alright then. Yes, there are some callbacks to how perspectives are different now that he is a pretty girl vs previously being a man, but nothing much of anything is done with this potentially interesting plot point throughout the first season. Another apt thing to mention is that while this show is named "reborn to master the blade", our MC does practically nothing of the sort in this first season. She uses a blade perhaps once or twice, but otherwise, she just shoots laser beams and beats the shit out of her opponents using her brute strength alone. I can only assume and hope that in a potential second season, we may actually see her master a blade of some sort, hah. #__Characters__ We get introduced to our MC and main supporting character from the get-go, before getting a small group of additional supporting ones introduced over the next half-season. I personally never really cared much for most of the characters in this first season outside Inglis. Her battle-addict personality and the humor around that kept me engaged enough and entertained me enough to the point that I thought, okay, sure, she isn't terrible. To a smaller extent, I would say the interplay between her and Rani was also fine, and a slightly positive note in the season. Outside these two though, none of the other characters I cared for in any way whatsoever. I don't feel we get to know them well, I don't feel we explore much with them, and they barely exist for certain story purposes, if any at all. While Inglis and her whole shtick is fine enough, and while it fulfills my power-fantasy appetite, everything else could have used a lot more work to try to pull me in. #__Plot__ So the plot is nothing too complex either. Inglis is reborn and all she wants is to master her skills and the blade, while staying out of politics and everything of the like, as she was so saddled to death with in her prior life. She does nevertheless get involved in some things throughout the season, as is only to be expected I suppose. The main driver for the plot seems to be whatever Inglis gets herself involved in for the sake of being able to battle strong opponents and improve her skills, with some random events sprinkled on top. I do not expect much from this sort of Fantasy Isekai anime, but I would have liked a more fleshed-out world and a deeper story as a whole. Or at the very least more of a hint toward that. I will be fine watching a second season of Inglis kicking ass though, as I am sure many of you also will. #__Summary__ Everything in this anime seems average at best, with good reason. - The animation style is fine - The combat scenes are lackluster - The characters are average at best, with many being barely more than NPCs - The plot is far from deep, nor clever, or especially engaging, it's just there, to an extent Most everything in this anime is, at best, average. And while I watched it all the way through, and while I would most likely watch a second season, it barely kept me engaged, especially by the end, so I am happy it is done for the season. I would not recommend you watch this unless you are unhealthily into this sort of anime, as I am. If you are in the mood for a battle junkie anime though, you may check out Black Summoner instead.
_Reborn to Master the Blade: From Hero-King to Extraordinary Squire_, is an excellent little light novel and manga. It is a disappointing anime, but it can't fully ruin what makes the story great. I'll be writing from that perspective. There is a moment watching this show, somewhere around episode 5, where you will sit back and think to yourself "Hmm, something is missing. Something has gone very very wrong." And you are correct to think that way, I believe. Part of this is the simple realities of budget, and while it looks like _Reborn to Master the Blade_ has a bigger budget than most isekai shlock, it isn't by a lot if that's the case. So one of the things ruined is Inglis' bloodlust. Looking to the manga adaptation, Inglis is often given what can only be described as "Crazy eyes" and some very expressive, threatening faces throughout the series (the manga only reaches about Episode 7 of the anime at time of writing). Inglis doesn't just find joy in battle she finds _lust_ and her righteousness (briefly) warps into a kind of sadism. I've seen some people argue Inglis is a genderbent Goku, and that comparison isn't entirely unfair when only looking at the anime. But animating a different face would cost money, so I can at least _understand_ why that might be cut. But the true problems are the "Marvelization of Isekai", where story and character beats are dropped or outright reversed in order to make Inglis a more generic, blander, "safer" isekai protagonist. This is the Disneyfication of media on full blast, rearing its ugly head in the big moneymaker genre of contemporary anime. These are deliberate decisions that make the main character a more bland and boring power fantasy, rather than distinguishing her as her own person. For example; early in the series Inglis subjects herself to the Dune-box for her rune, and while she doesn't receive one in the source material, that is because her magic is incompatible with the modern magic around her, an oil-and-water sort of reaction but mana. In the anime, Inglis just __chooses __not to get a rune. Why? Because she's just so super strong and powerful she can out-fight a BOX. I guess. And unlike the previous example, the anime stretches this scene out. That feels like it would cost __more __money to emphasize? Other character motivations are dropped entirely. In the anime, Inglis is going to the big city to go to Isekai fighting school because that's what the kids do. Her motivation to do so because the city will have the largest library in the kingdom, where she hopes to find SOME record of her previous life or the kingdom she left behind? Gone completely. And the gender euphoria beats are almost completely excised from the show, whittling more of Inglis' individuality away in favor of a blander, more generic self-insert, which can probably be down to the studio sterilizing all the queer subtext that pops up from time to time. And Inglis' source traits of being more socially suave and manipulative, like twisting her dad's arm to let her fight, are brought way down, presumably to make the character less confrontational and polarizing (i.e., less self-insert). For me, the last twist where the connections I had to the earlier Inglis snapped and tore away was in Episode 9. The last fragments of joy had really left my watching the show at all as at one point I facepalmed and groaned, "This is such man-writing." I'll admit I watched the last three episodes out of obligation. But...I still love Inglis and I still love Rafi and even if their characters are buried deep behind layers of "lolsorandom isekai", I still liked seeing their reflections in what I was watching. So I can't say this was a _completely_ unenjoyable experience. While the limitations of budget are showing (and hurting) it's still, on the whole, a very pretty show, and a good amount of the humor lands. But this definitely falls more on the junk-food side of your anime food pyramid.