Yogiri Takatou missed out on a few things while napping during a school trip... mainly how his entire
class got transported to another world and how a curious sage gave everyone special powers! When
Yogiri wakes up, he and classmate Tomochika Dannoura must defend themselves against a dragon. Out of
options, Yogiri reluctantly agrees to team up with Tomochika and fend off danger with his Instant
Death ability. If he can keep his eyes open, that is...
(Source: HIDIVE)
When you think about isekai surely one of the first things that come to your head is that it has an OP MC. This show is completely about this, about an OP MC killing things, that’s why it’s called Sokushi Cheat ga Saikyou sugite, Isekai no Yatsura ga Marude Aite ni Naranai n desu ga aka Instant Death, and just as those other shows where the OP MC makes every single battle uninteresting because they have no stakes, this series is no different, actually, it is even worse because of how Yogiri is designed to be, he is designed to try to be the strongest character, and not just from his own series, the author of this very clearly tries to make Yogiri the strongest when compared to other characters from other shows. Actually, Instant Death is not a show, it is VS debating brainrot. If you don’t know what’s VS debating is I’ll give a little explanation, have you ever seen people asking “who will win Goku or Superman?”? Well, VS debating is taking that question and actually trying to answer it, people will search feats of the characters, use physics to calc their speed and destructive power and even classify every single one of their abilities, and while classifying them you will get to a tiering system to put the characters in some tier of power level. What do I mean with VS debating brainrot? Well, obviously, some characters will be created unintentionally powerful to the point of being ridiculous, but then what if someone knows about this kind of stuff and decides that he wants his character to be even stronger than them? Well, this series happens, that’s why you get some really specific details about how Yogiri’s instant death ability works, to make it able to affect characters when compared to him in VS debating, that’s why there are random scenes of people saying “oh, he killed my avatar and was also able to kill my real self” or introducing a character to kill their external power source that was in another dimension, this is to showcase his feats, because the creator of this series knows about VS debating, so as I said before, this isn’t a real series and it is more a wanking fest of a character to make him the most powerful fictional character. This makes the series completely worthless, as it doesn’t tell a real story, the characters are just there to have different powers and abilities to be defeated by Yogiri so someone can say “my character can beat this other character” in a discussion. Honestly, even if you watched it because the main character has the ability to kill people and see stupid people “paying the price” for what they did, it would still be a waste of time, the way they die is so instantaneous that it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t feel satisfactory to see idiots die because they just drop dead on the spot. You can’t watch it for the animation because it is terribly done, none of the battles between other people matter because the protagonist can kill them with a thought and they just drop dead. This series is a pit of nothingness, there’s nothing here, it doesn’t exist, because it’s complete and utter shit, it’s the meme of the OP isekai MC but taken to the absolute extreme, so it is just boring to watch. Honestly, the only reason why I knew about this series beforehand was because of hearing about Yogiri in VS debating posts, because there’s nothing more to discuss about this show. Thank you for reading.
*Sokushi Cheat* takes a more extreme approach to the "overpowered protagonist" concept; the protagonist Yogiri Takatou not only never loses, but he also rarely showcases internal conflicts or opinionated goals to work towards. Author Tsuyoshi Fujitaka mentioned in an interview that this is exactly what he wanted to play with — a protagonist who never struggles until the very end. Fujitaka's concept naturally alienates many, for by design there is little to get attached to in the story's journey, and there's essentially no tension. However, this idea has potential to carry out a more lax attitude regardless of the intensity of scenarios. The nature of nothing in existence being able to threaten Yogiri enables him to engage with the fantasy world in a detached and reactive fashion. The most cataclystic of world events become moments that simply happen; Yogiri is there but effectively doesn't interact with it save for when he or his group would be threatened. The absurdities of Yogiri's capacities offer a license to examine a world filled with chaos and metaphysical absurdity without placing emphasis on the scope and extremity of such things. It establishes an avenue by which any fantastical concept can be framed as unimportant. In this way, I find the work conceptually intriguing. Like many other Narou works, a lot of *Sokushi Cheat's* interactions are centered around self-awareness of its genre. Characters will make fun of the oddies of the setting and the absurd trajectories that arise from Yogiri's powers. There's an occasional amusing joke every once in a while, but rarely does the work standout in its self-awareness. One edge *Sokushi Cheat* has in its making jokes about its own concepts is that because there's no limit to the scope of power the other characters can have (by virtue of no level of power mattering against Yogiri), the work is able to take certain concepts to a more peculiar conceptualization and make fun of them. An example is a character whose base power is "cooking", but this power can be stretched to have unreasonably versatile applications from the holder's framing of everything in the lens of cooking. Elements like this are compounded left and right into the series, leading to a chaotic mess that couldn't really fly in a setting where the interaction of characters would have to be more stable, but *Sokushi Cheat*'s world is able to as unstable as it wants by virtue of the protagonist's foundation. Any unstable element will eventually be nullified by Yogiri's intervention, opening the door to interactions of components far more absurd than in more conventional works. Many Fujitaka works (e.g. *Sokushi Cheat*, *My Big Sister Lives in a Fantasy World*, and *Harumi’s Legacy as the Strongest Mimic*) have a particular absurd identity to their character interactions, as it's quite common for them to engage in conceptual discussions that feel too peculiar for regular characters to be conversing about. The conversations can sometimes feel too absurd to be organic which can be a turn-off, but at the same time, there's a particular charm to these overly conceptual conversations by virtue of how aberrant they are compared to conventional discourse. The anime adaptation for *Sokushi Cheat* unfortunately loses much of this, as the adaptation goes at a brisk pace and rushes towards the larger plot events. There are still remnants of these moments, such as the scene in episode 1 where the main heroine Tomochika Dannoura probes Yogiri on what his stance would be if Tomochika were to hypothetically betray him, but these are still far more tame compared to the more absurd conversations that were omitted. Consequently, the anime's conversations don't stand out as much as they could have, which is fairly unfortunate since with a lack of tension, character interactions and jokes are some of the main ways the show would be able to draw interest. Some of *Sokushi Cheat's* more interesting moments involve characters trying to gain insight on the nature of Yogiri's powers. The clash with vampire sage Lain offered a fair bit of info on how different conditions interact with Yogiri, many of them failing and some at least offering an indirect way to survive. Such moments provide another avenue of interest, because while viewers may be aware of how futile dealing with Yogiri can be, characters in-universe will cling to possibilities. This enables an amusing information game that, while it's destined to fail, the way characters approach the herculean task of overcoming Yogiri's powers can be interesting to see. Unfortunately, the last third of the anime chose to rush its way to the more eventful moments, which led to the omission of one of the most compelling instances of such moments. It's with decisions like this that I feel the adaptation fails to fully captatilize on how the work retains interest in a tension-like environment. The rushing to eventful moments has less weight when these eventful moments have such anti-climatic moments to begin with, by virtue of Yogiri's invincibility. Tomochika has some amusing straightman moments, but a lot of her banter doesn't add anything new. She does have one standout moment when she describes how she conceptualizes Yogiri's powers in relation to her morals, and Yogiri's reaction to this is one of the most standout aspects of her dynamic. Save for that however, her more notable conversations and self-reflections that existed in the source material did not make it into the adaptation. As such, she doesn't have a whole lot going for her apart from her standard straightman jokes. While I do bring up a few ways in which the adaptation lacks some of the source material's best merits, that isn't to say that the core source material fully capitalizes on its concept. Although I admire Fujitaka's ultimate vision and some arcs have amusingly satisfying and chaotic payoffs, some of the shortcomings of the anime stem simply from certain arcs themselves having a trajectory or conclusion that doesn't offer much. The series has shown its capability of creating amusing constructions with the concept, such as conflicts that have been resolved before they have even begun yet the unknowing characters still take events seriously, or events piling onto each other in a way that feels incomprehensible by virtue of the main characters being outsiders to the unfolding scenario. However, for each of these more interesting trajectories, there's conclusions where characters simply come across Yogiri and die. Many occurances lack the thoughtfulness to be satisfying. As someone who is willing to engage with tensionless fantasy works, *Sokushi Cheat* is a work whose concept I respect, and I commend the author's commitment to the lack of a protagonist struggle throughout. Nonetheless there are plenty of shortcomings both with the core work and the work's adaptation. I do hope that more authors experiment with the degree of lack of struggle that *Sokushi Cheat* does, as if capitalized with more creative trajectories, this sort of idea could be fascinating in challenging the standard storytelling constructions writers use to appeal to an audience.
Well, the title is slightly sarcastic, because I looked at another review, and that reviewer...well, me insulting people would be wrong. If you're looking for a battle anime, for the love of god, look somewhere that makes sense. Would you look for battle in a high school romance? No? Don't look for it here, either. Honestly, this Anime is a thought experiment, in my opinion. For that, I do love it for what it is. The premise, as in the title, is that the main character can instantly kill anything. If you've ever watched an anime with a fantasy story, surely you've seen a scene where the MC punches a wall, and all the villains are intimidated, and then there's no fight, right? Well, this main character could probably slay gods- but he can't, or won't, shatter a wall with a punch. In fact, his killing ability leaves no trace at all. There's an animation the anime added, but that's because it's impossible to understand the plot visually otherwise. Would you be intimidated if someone dropped dead with no sign? Probably not, you'd just be confused. What happened? Is it a trick? This story is about a main character who can't intimidate anyone. In other words, he can either kill someone, or do nothing. Once you kill someone, you've effectively started a war with their faction, and caused all sorts of trouble. In other words, once provoked, he will always be forced to start a conflict with a faction. Side note, there's several scenes that I thought were excellent from the light novel, that got completely cut because they couldn't find a way to animate it (Characters who have the ability to pause time, or have a system tell them information, were largely cut). In that sense, if you want to fully enjoy the series, I do recommend the light novel. In this fantasy world, fighting against crazy abilities is common, and many people have crazy abilities. I don't want to spoil any specifics, but essentially, these factions that want to kill him go about testing if they can kill him in different ways. It's suicidal against an instant death ability, but by collecting information, they hope to gather enough to eventually kill him. That is the plot of this series. It's the author, creating countless overpowered abilities, and having all of them face off against the main character, and seeing if anything could kill him. "What if you stay out of sight?" "What if you send someone else?" "What if you attack without intent to hurt him?" That is the plot to this series. It's wrong to say "There's no suspense." Obviously the main character is going to win- how many anime have the main character lose? The real question is "Can he deal with something like this, or will he reveal some other card?" The animation isn't great. It's kinda cheap, and they don't do much, honestly. As mentioned, many light novel scenes that would be too expensive to animate seem to have been cut. Honestly, this series could have been significantly better if it had better animators and more effort put into it. For that reason, it's a 7. Personally, I rated it an 8, because I already read the novel, and seeing stuff come to life is extra nice. Also, the anime actually does a relatively terrible job of fully explaining the main character's existence, who he is, how he works, and the things he's done. Read the light novel. But, if you want to watch a simple lighthearted fantasy anime, this is great. At least I didn't have to watch a reincarnated "30 year old man on the inside" pretend he doesn't feel love just because the author thinks it would create social controversy, and have him struggle to realize his emotions or have any sort of normal human conversation. There's nothing annoying about this series, and all the conflicts will be eventually dealt with, and everyone will get their just deserts in one way or another. Personally, that's what I want in a series. If you only like dramas, battle anime, or weak to strong growth- look elsewhere. Otherwise, give this a shot.
We've had an influx of shitty isekai powertrip shows for a while now, like Arifureta, but usually those shows pretend to have a semblance of challenge for the main character. Meanwhile, this show asks the important question: what if we took the power tripping of the main character to its logical extreme? what if the main character literally one shots everything with a thought? And the answer is, expectedly, not great. The fights are awful, most characters are completely irrelevant and forgettable, the world-building is also awful, and even the jokes are quite poor. A lot of these issues comes from the mishandling of its premise, and let's take a dive into the repercussions of power tripping on the rest of the show. First, let's establish the boundaries of the main character here. Yogiri can and will kill anything. His power works at a thought, has no limits on distance, has no cost, no upper limits, works on both living beings and inanimate objects, and can be narrowed down to destroy specific parts as opposed to the whole thing. Not only that, he can detect killing intent, which also has no limits on distance. In other words, if someone tries to attack him with, say, a sniper rifle from a mile away, he will destroy your trigger finger, then kill you, without ever even looking in your direction. img(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1253176897903525920/1253177062102011995/image.png?ex=6674e796&is=66739616&hm=04826c3f523e01f307b978b09614c6704c3a791dc870f3e7c6568c03f785a3c7&) Oh, and for whatever reason, stuff he damages can't be regenerated, even if you say, rip off your hand and grow a new one, however that works. img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1253176897903525920/1253179444193918986/image.png?ex=6674e9ce&is=6673984e&hm=776f63269d8cece810c1e6257403154a8de401bf3f759efad8f270f8d23d3d94&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=1195&height=670) It's not hard to see why this guy is said to end power level debates: his entire power set is basically "no LOL", and the show revolves around characters of varying power sets challenging the MC, only for them to get nonchalantly one-shotted. With that comes the first problem: the fights aren't in any way interesting. Every single fight is over the moment Yogiri starts caring. img (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1253176897903525920/1253186308659220540/image.png?ex=6674f033&is=66739eb3&hm=dfa7d0b427be029fdfc30507d7139e39fdfab36cb5665481a851c1b062023293&) Regardless of any power sets, regardless of any potential factors, the only difference it makes for Yogiri is if he's feeling generous that day. There's some praise for the varied power sets in this show (if you like that, PLEASE watch Jojo's bizzare adventure, don't look for it in this garbage), but any power sets or power levels or how they are used are completely irrelevant because the usage of any power is always going to be framed in the context of being used against Yogiri, who is immune to everything ever. For an analogy, you could pull any gun you want with any sort of trick shots or modifications, that means absolutely nothing if your opponent is ~~Goku~~ Vegeta. There are no fights that lasts more than 30 seconds, there's no trick that goes anywhere. What's more, opponents that should be conventionally challenging are often killed instantly as a joke. img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1253176897903525920/1253189892184342609/image.png?ex=6674f389&is=6673a209&hm=2df1c885ba23f0e4c0e1db3a9db8ba1750332fe34a4b22f514f7d4280d7693f1&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=1203&height=670) There's no indication if any fights are going to actually be played out or be a joke, and therefore there's no reason to care about any given fight. This scene was from an arc that spent 2 episodes building up to a world-destroying dark god, and he was killed off, off-screen, as a joke. Speaking of jokes, let's talk about the second problem, which is villains. A villain is always framed against a character, and they must present a threat to a character in some way, whether physically or psychologically. However, because all the threats are focused on the overpowered main character, and all threats are presented as fights, it's impossible to actually establish anyone as a threat. They actually do several attempts, like making a character who might be totally immune to the MC's bullshit- img(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1253176897903525920/1253197567001624596/image.png?ex=6674faaf&is=6673a92f&hm=e69907f9d93db12b0b561f8be6ab86a6eec9b4143b351fc11d3a34a08d3f2dcd&) -who then runs away at the sight of him as a joke. There's also a character that spends 3 episodes murdering her way through the MC's classmates, who supposedly comprises very powerful people- img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1253176897903525920/1253198407720501329/image.png?ex=6674fb77&is=6673a9f7&hm=55fe5caddab2cb3b1c8b831b3b81d183caa854a1b67cc04196180480f1d98cce&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=687&height=383) -who then gets one shotted. In other words, regardless of what they are presented as, villains completely fail to be threats due to how powerful the main character is. The main antagonist, Sage Shion, only survives episode 1 because the main character happens to sleep through her appearance. Once they actually engage in combat, she completely submits within about 2 minutes. Side villains are treated with much less dignity: how quickly they die is entirely dependent on how the main character is feeling. The dark god that the show spent 2 episodes building up to was killed offscreen because the main character thought he was creepy. The aforementioned serial killer that the show spent 3 episodes building up was killed without so much a comment from him. They are presented as less of a threat than literally some random bullies from episode 1. There is, once again, absolutely no reason to care about any villains that appears. There's no telling how long they will stick, and there's no telling if they will just be killed completely unceremoniously or not. Any given arc could just be building up to a wet fart. In the same vein, the supporting cast is completely pointless as well. Once again, threats are only presented as physical ones, and there's nothing that can even come close to threatening the main character. As a result, there's nothing for any supporting cast to contribute. The only thing Tomochika does the entire show is quip (usually to villains' corpses). She's so completely irrelevant she never even gets held as hostage or kidnapped. This builds up into the third issue, which is world building. In a battle shonen like this one, world-building is often informed via its power sets and its villains. However, powers aren't relevant, because they are all useless compared to the main character's. Villains aren't relevant, because they are all useless compared to the main character. In that end, what does any world-building matter? There are several plot lines in the show that ties into its villains. There's a whole conspiracy that the Sages summon people from other worlds to mind control them into being their servants, but the main character just kills all the on-screen sages, so it also means absolutely nothing. img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1253176897903525920/1253206679781245018/image.png?ex=6675032b&is=6673b1ab&hm=90a9ce4d69ff01ee12a1acc746f654d244037082ba47fc7b01a88a60eb8f8aca&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=687&height=385) Similarly, Episode 5 to 7 establishes the world to have a dark god that has to be sealed away and a complicated murder-ritual used to select the seal's guardian. But since the main character simply deletes the dark god afterwards as a joke, the entire 3 episode arc, and its world-building, means absolutely nothing. img(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1253176897903525920/1253205999318204467/image.png?ex=66750289&is=6673b109&hm=3fea6a69fef6e521d5464908c8d55731cf5052ecc8da1ab4ac4597cdfa2c4608&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=687&height=383) Speaking of jokes, this whole series has one joke, which is the underestimation gag: someone tries to attack the main character with some special power thinking he's easy prey, gets one shotted. This joke gets used multiple times every single episode. You might as well just play the indy GIF on loop 50 times: img(https://media1.giphy.com/media/RJOYRvEEeMlby/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952l9085jxrlf87sy8371f48bknokhziac8vtfv3k4j&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g) It also makes vague references to other isekais, but references aren't jokes. Especially since they do absolutely nothing with them except just do the underestimation gag again. If the bar is that low then Dragonball Z, which uses both of these tropes quite often, should get a comedy tag. For contrast, let's refer to a good example of an overpowered protagonist, which is one punch man. The reason one punch man is compelling despite its overpowered protagonist is two fold. One, the focus isn't always on Saitama. Sure, he invalidates any fights he's in, but he's not present in every fight, and other characters gets to shine. Supporting characters like Genos are quite powerful in their own right and have good reason not to be trying to call Saitama for help every single fight. Two, the conflicts aren't always physical. Saitama is insanely powerful, but he still struggles with making money, gaining fame, or mosquitos. It's possible for characters or situations to be framed as threatening against Saitama even if he can squash them like a bug. But of course, in a show like this, no writer who writes this premise and title is going to take the focus off the main character or move the situation out of the main character's one realm of overpowered expertise. And that leads to every single aspect of the show suffering for it. While this show's main character is the logical extreme of the typical isekai main character, instant death is but a discount version of other overpowered main characters. If the main character always curbstomps any villains he comes across totally nonchalantly, then the only difference between them and instant death is the theatrics, and the show would suffer from all the same issues. A close example is [The Reincarnation of the Strongest Exorcist in Another World ](https://anilist.co/anime/144553/Saikyou-Onmyouji-no-Isekai-Tenseiki/): the main character there curbstomps every single situation he's in and every villain he encounters with absolutely no real effort whatsoever. The power system means nothing, because he just wrecks it anyway; the supporting cast is completely useless and is made to literally sit on the bench at points; the villains are total jokes, and the only difference between each one is how they get clowned on. Oh, as for ratings, this show has no redeeming qualities except for as a negative example, so have a 1.