Black Summoner – Episode 1

Content Warning: Slavery.

What’s it about? Kelvin wakes up in another world with no memories of past life and he soon learns that he willingly gave up his memories for the sake of gaining stronger abilities.  To his surprise, his past self fell in love with the goddess of reincarnation and asked her to become his servant.  Together with her support, Kelvin begins his new life as an adventurer with gusto.  

You know, it’s kind of sad that after the success of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, that so many isekai shows are trying to include slime characters but for the most part, they mostly serve as cute mascots and nothing more.  I honestly had to double check to see if I wasn’t accidentally reviewing My Isekai Life, since on face value they look like the same show.  Don’t get me wrong, there have been great isekai shows in the past, but it’s starting to get boring that almost every creator is using the same templates over and over again.  

I have to wonder if the target audience for this genre is eventually going to get bored, especially since it isn’t saying anything new.  I always try to find something positive to say about anything I watch, but it’s hard since Black Summoner is just another generic isekai with nothing special going for it.  

The entire episode felt like watching tutorial scenes in a video game and it mostly spent the entire run time exploring the town and practicing attack moves on monsters.  To be fair, the series is based on a light novel so that does explain the show’s slow start.  Kelvin is the usual overconfident protagonist who doesn’t care about anything else beyond his excitement to start his hero’s quest.  He doesn’t even care that slavery exists in this world and never once contemplates the morality of the situation.  Kelvin is far more interested in learning about his stats and training his captured slime in order to become the best adventurer this world has ever seen.  Sort of reminds me of Pokemon, except this isn’t an enjoyable show.  It also seems that one of the enslaved women in the truck might become a relevant character considering how well she’s designed, but for real, I’m not eager to stick around to find out.  

The only fun character in this premiere is the goddess of reincarnation herself since she has such a mischievous personality and it’s amusing watching her enjoy her new role as Kelvin’s servant (I mean I don’t know WHY since she’s a whole goddess, but whatever floats your boat).  The overall animation is ok and while the fighting sequences can be a bit stiff, it’s surprisingly watchable.  

That’s it.  That’s all the positive things I have to say about this show, which is frustrating because this show is soooo unimaginative that there isn’t anything else I can say about.  If anything, I’m sad that the director and series composer, Hiraike Yoshimasa (best known for Wagnaria!! and Wotakoi) is involved in a project like this.  Hey, I understand that bills need to be paid, but please give this person better content to work with–or at least don’t exhaust him with double duty on something so creatively bankrupt.

If you are a fan of isekai and are totally fine with the same formula (including, again, normalized slavery) then this show is for you.  I hope better isekai shows start getting green-lit for an anime adaptation; it’s getting really hard to find anything noteworthy to say about them.