The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made – Episode 1

Content Warning: Fanservice, animal death, comedy vomit

What’s it about? An average class of high schoolers is told they’re being transported to another world, and find themselves at a Standard Isekai Setting. All except bullied loser Hiiragi Seiichi, who’s left to fend for himself in jungle against hunger and super-strong monkeys. Fortunately he has the “fruit of evolution,” an item that gives him untold power-ups.

Y’know how I know Fruit of Evolution is some coward shit? It’s a wish-fulfillment show that starts with a fat protagonist and doesn’t even wait til the end of the episode to turn him into a skinny potato-kun. Everything else about it is cribbed from other equally derivative video game isekai: the screens that impart characters’ stats, the bland environment that uses equipment drops and other RPG mechanics as a safeguard against having to do any actual worldbuilding, the godlike powers slapped on a dude who’s uninteresting at best and a human monster at worst.

It’s all so boring I could die, but since Truck-kun is nowhere to be found in this show I appear to be stuck. To wit: Fruit of Evolution is some coward shit that can’t even make having a fat protagonist as its wish fulfillment figure stick. No, it has a more novel and imaginative gimmick: tiddies.

Well, kind of. The cold open includes a naked hot lady declaring her love for Seiichi and smooshing her shiny, shiny boobs against him, but that’s technically a flash-forward. Mostly because Fruit of Evolution knows that it has nothing to offer without jiggle physics. Most of the plot proper involves Seiichi pottering around the jungle and throwing up a lot, with occasional check-ins on his asshole classmates. The closest thing to a running joke it can gin up is that Seiichi has weaponized body odor. It’s not even offensive, really; it’s just unspeakably dull.

The naked girl from the opening does reappear, technically…as a giant monkey. That’s the gimmick, as nearly as I can tell. Saria-the-monkey (which I assume is a tired joke on anime’s tendency to call athletic or otherwise assertive girls gorillas/monkeys, with a side of coded homophobia since the buff gorilla form Seiichi is grossed out by has a male voice actor) falls in love with Seiichi after he successfully lives through a fight with her. She carries him off, intending to marry him, and the episode ends.

I cannot emphasize enough how much I would have to be paid to come back and see how the show connives to turn her into a hot girl. This means that I will also miss out on meeting the other girls in the opening that are destined to be bested by and consequently fall in love with Seiichi, but I shall persevere. If you’re absolutely desperate for the exact combination of videogame isekai, wish-fulfillment, and boob jiggles…there are still at least half a dozen other, more creative titles you could look into. Don’t bother.