VSoumith

One of the best story lines in isekai genre with MC getting revenge, unlike traditional story lines where there is a righteous man doing everything according to rule book and saving everyone from clutches, these follows a different route, where MC is ruthless, hardcore and goal oriented. I loved all the supporting characters in MC group, there are no irritating characters who trouble MC. If only they had a better budget for animation and stuff, this would have been great, i have to applaud the writer's imagination for creating such monsters, those are just absurd to look at. Finally, i enjoyed this a lot, I hopewe get to see season 2 with better animation. Total worthy anime, goes to my top isekai anime list easily.

Nivo3041

I honestly think there are some anime out there who have some type of special qualities or abilities: failure frame (not gonna spell that long-ass name) is possibly one of the powerhouses in this regard with such a great "what you see is what you get". Every time our lovely protagonist yelled "paralyze" to the enemies, I, too, was paralyzed on sheer horror. Every "poison" made me feel uneasy too, and all his "sleep" made me slowly fall into a peaceful slumber, as if it were directed towards me instead of the character in the same series. Quite powerful anime, isn't it? Failure Frame isquite the case where the overly simplistic premise progresses so but so linearly and predictably that it becomes infuriating. No, I don't mean it's repetitive (though you'd be correct even in that case). It's just that it overuses the initial plot approach to the point of feeling silly. Stupid even. Failure Frame manages to live up to its name and premise, being quite a failure in almost every aspect. But what is that makes Failure Frame such a case? What does it have? Well, let's start with a little review of the plot and how it starts: Touka Mimori, our beloved protagonist, is on is way along with his classmates to some type of class trip in which- Wait what? Every one of his classmates is an absolute asshole? Yeah... Don't get too much good vibes from it... But I digress. So in the middle of the trip they got teleported to another world in which the goddess tells them that they're heroes and have skills and everyone is unique, and the bullies are strong and and and... Yeah, sorry for that, but basically that's your premise on the first episode. The plot itself present itself as such a bitter taste in your already bitter tongue that fall flat, why do I make this kinda of irony? Because I want to break down just how absolute horrible the first minutes of the anime are, we get to see how almost every one of Touka's classmates are absolutes assholes to others while having all the same type of "hierarchy" in class, I always tell to myself that this is the blandest way of trying to settle the tones, like what are you thinking? I don't know anybody and yet you force such a one-dimensional characterization on the WHOLE class and protagonist life just to make it easier to get edgy later? Couldn't you at least hope to wait just a little bit? And am I criticizing this part too much about something so simple? No. Not at all in this episode. The first moments of an anime is something that needs to make you feel engaged to it, that charms that it radiates via the characterization and dialogue that will settle our direction and setting on such works, but this is all we got for our first moment? And just don't make me start on how everyone turn on our protagonist to bully him because he is weak... See what I mean? It feels like all was just a pretext to make something look darker and tragic when it wasn't even organic on the first place, making it that the plot itself feels like something that tries just to fall onto the ground so hard it is almost shameful to look at. Going back to the main point: the first episode is absolutely horrible, no questions asked. But it’s in the following episodes that you'll be subjected to what you'll hear throughout the entire series. Yes, be prepared for the unbearable, insipid, excruciating, and nightmarish... Paralyze and poison... It seems as I'm doing some kinda of joke now, but seriously, this is what I mean in my first point: Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything With Low-Level Spells, focus in where it says "annihilated everything with LOW-LEVEL SPELLS" because this is a point in where I think we need focus. You see, there's plenty of people of anime (isekai specially) in which the only gimmick is that the protagonist have one thing, let it be quality or skill, that almost runs all his character trying to maintain it afloat. There was an anime in which the protagonist was overly cautious, which I liked, and another one in which the main gimmick is that the protagonist can parry everything which I'm not liking (from this same season), and other in which the protagonist is a middle-aged adventurer (also from this season) that I think is okay... So what's the difference? Obviously, and for starters, it's the direction and how serious the series want to be versus how serious it actually is. If your protagonist have an overpowered or just silly skill, make it that his personality and plot points doesn't wrap around it. If your protagonist have a silly exaggerated quality, make it that the series itself can have humor and even teases itself. But, for the sake of everything that is holy, don’t make your protagonist rely solely on their skill, and even more so, don’t treat it too seriously. At least give us a chance to laugh at the end of the day. What Failure Frame did was the latter. Obviously, this reflects my preferences regarding how a character's personality should align with their skill. I think that what’s most annoying about Touka lies there. It’s not just that; his character almost literally works as an oxymoron for the plot itself. Now let me try to extend on this little silly idea. You see, the plot enriches itself with the idea of how the protagonist was ranked as a bad hero and how he wasn't even capable of doing anything spectacular, so they decided to send him to a dungeon in where the sunlight don't even peek out contrasted with all the monsters that do peek out to kill and eat, that's known to us thanks to the goddess Vicious, the main antagonist, but there's some question that arise after watching some episodes... First, why send heroes there in the first place? I know it is focused the point that Touka is really bottom of the barrel and talentless... But still, why? This question arise also from the lack of deep and exposition of how the magic and power systems works. Even if it's true that Touka tried to paralyze Vicious to just fall miserably, there's no explanation in how does the effect of paralyze and poison work, neither of how the curve of that power itself work, isn't Vicious just wasting potential like a fool? We just need to take in our minds that it seems that paralyze and poison works on some people and not on others, but doesn't that make Touka almost extremely broken? Add to it the fact the poison and paralyze almost never or straight never goes off the creatures once the skill is leveled up, so it was a little more of training and the protagonist have the power to quite literally kill everyone slowly as he imprisons them. Again, Vicious, aren't kinda of a big fool for wasting this potential? That's one first problem, and why don't use that dungeon as a place for the heroes to train? Doesn't that seems more worth than just doing those stupid errands and expeditions that we see throughout the episodes whose serve no purpose to be honest. The fact that something so simple like paralyze and poison have such a big impact makes it hard to believe the rules bound towards strong hierarchy and the antagonist mentality, as I said, is all forced to make the story edgy and makes our protagonist suffer, because that's the point, to try to be serious yet not being serious, just like as I stated on my first point. That also followed my second point too: How absurdly linear and predictable the plot progress just based on the approach it takes at the start. When I meant that I wasn't focusing on this series being generic, is that I mean that the tittle says it all about the anime both in progression and content; I usually think there's a misconception when you talk about something being repetitive by following the same structure yet having different content in each structure, than having the same content with different structure in the narrative, both of them don't mean anything bad by itself, but that's a whole another talk and I digress. My point about Failure Frame falls into that, how it does the same thing again and again both in the same content and with the same narrative structure and even plot points, which I find almost inconceivable in any media. That problem of falling on the same structure and content falls because, well, the protagonist have the same skills, I remember when I was a kid I wondered plenty of times "Hey! Why doesn't Goku just spams Kamehameha to defeat his enemies with no problem?" well, little me, it's because that would be fucking boring, so damn boring that no one would think about making a story like that, right...? Sorry my inner kid, your words were heard by a japanese man, whose name is Shinozaki Kaori. But yeah, that's the problem, the content itself is limited when talking about actions sequences and conflicts, because the protagonist has only 2 skills that he spams... Then what about the content? Let me break it down for you: —"Please please don't kill me! I-I don't know anything..."- Touka, in almost every circumstance —"Hehe... It seems we have quite the easy target... Hehe..."- The enemies, which proceed to talk with themselves like idiots —"Haha morons you've fallen for my trap RHHAAAAA PARALYZE POISON!!!"- Touka, who just killed the treat of today's episode The reason as to why I took my tame to wrote such a lame and cringeworthy set of words is because that's the stamp, the golden print, of this anime. Failure Frame somehow thinks its interesting seeing this, even faking a build up to its reader. Like, what do you mean the strongest character showed died because he was careless? And on top of that, he was careless because the protagonist told him "Hmm... Well if you come later to me, I'll be stronger, so we will have a great showdown and yeah..." what type of poor dialogue is that? This is not any type of subverting expectations to make an interesting plot twist nor to change the narrative, this is just a failed promise by the author, almost betraying the setup he made himself by sacrificing dialogues and a character's conflict, just so the protagonist can go "paralyze - poison - sleep - berserk"? That happens in a specific character to which I even made pasta, which for me is the nectar of life, just for it to get completely spoiled after witnessing such a horrible episode. Both in structure and content, there's no grace in this. And that’s just the surface, because Failure Frame is full of surprises—or maybe not. There’s a saying in my country, 'Chiste repetido sale podrido,' which means that something repeated too often becomes lame. That’s the experience with Failure Frame; it’s kind of funny, considering that even after everything, I haven’t even started talking about the characters. But there lies the problems, there's really a few to talk about when it comes to characters, because if the main core, the plot and world have deep issues, how are we supposed to look in good eyes at the characters on the world? The character, funnily enough, feels really disconnected from the world they live in, maybe because of how the info dumping works in the series, in which every dialogue is fueled with edginess that is not even funny, so the inclusion of the characters on the main plot and the world fitting around them is so dissonant contrasted by the tones and direction it feels like a lazy attempt instead of characters really talking about themselves, that's specially true in the main duo's dynamic; Touka and Seras. There's a scene I would use to make an attempt to disclosure just how silly this relationship feels; In a moment they're asking a receptionist for a room, to which the conversation goes like this "Touka, I think we should order just one room to save money" to which Touka replies with "Do you know I am a man, right?" to which Seras blushes and stutters, while Touka just keep his Stoic demeanor... And later at that same episode there's a mistake for Sera's part in which she serves Touka herb that turns him on, to which Seras says "Is there any way I can help you?" and at that point I was done, how could it be that Touka and Seras relationship makes progress based on that stupid tension? I'm saying it because a few episodes before that happens, there is one episode that finishes with Touka literally asking Seras "Hey, remove your clothes". Is when you gather all those dialogue when you notice Seras and Touka's relationship was settled since the beginning for the author, so he just made some lazy plot points for it to make it more sense for them to be together; he changed the order of the things, he thought first on the idea of making a partner for the protagonist, he thought too much into that, making all their interactions later are based on some type of fetishistic things related to the fact that Touka is the one who saved her. So no, the characters doesn't even feel like characters, the main duo isn't even charming in the slightest, and they don't have chemistry whatsoever and their dialogue fall flat, even with all the conflict that Seras had at the start and how Touka helped her they still both feel like their dynamic is artificial and with a dialogue so unsubstantial and so shamelessly insinuate that doesn't even work as irony nor parody, not like that was the author's intention tho. Now... Stay with me in this one, even if it's true that the source material from this anime is anything but good, there are some guilty people here making this stuff. You know, the charm of this is seen how they ANIMATE the source material into. If luckily, a whole different experience still aligned with the original themes and essence, right? Sometimes I feel like I talk to myself. Now is one of those moments, because this anime looks awful, but goddamn awful. The animation lack in almost every department, but the worst and more nightmarish prize should be given to Kōtarō Sasaki, having worked previously on... Tesla Note?! Don't worry, he wasn't managing the CGI back then, but it seems so, as both look so bad that it even breaks the immersion in the series to an absurd level, I won't even give examples in episodes that looked back, just search the opening on YouTube and enjoy. I'm full into appreciating CGI, the stigma is not bad at all compared to how was it back then on 2016, but there are some art choices that just doesn't seem to make sense on my head. There are plenty of scenes in which the CGI of our main duo walks in the middle of a dark forest, making an abrupt change between traditional animation to CGI while having such dark backgrounds make it look awkward, as its like the whole focus artistically changes with no reason from one point to another... I obviously don't want to insult Kōtarō Sasaki, the budget didn't seem to good for this anime neither, yet I can't help but think that the anime would have look so much better without that nasty CGI and those sudden changes in shots that also changes the animation style with no advent just to follow the same narrative, making is unnecessary and awkward. Sasaki's CGI just doesn't work along with Yōko Nakao's decisions. Its normal, since it is really hard to include CGI in anime like that. But if that was the case since the start they should have not done it in the first place... Yet I'm not expert on animation whatsoever. But if I, the public, see those mistakes, is because something wrong is going on there, the general composition of the series looks awful and sometimes even slow, but at least it feels coherent, unlike some anime from this same season, so that's a little bonus for it. So, what does Failure Frame attempt to achieve in its final stretch, or in its subversion of the tropes it has been playing with throughout the series? It's a bit funny. Failure Frame tries to impose limitations on the protagonist simplistic powers, but it ends up with strange results. For instance, there's a moment where the protagonist reaches a maximum number of targets, and in another case, he attempts to paralyze an enemy, but it fails because... the enemy covered their face? It feels weird and nonsensical, and there's no narrative explanation as to why that would happen. Additionally, why tell us he has reached the maximum number of targets, only for him to paralyze everyone again moments later? It feels like a lazy attempt by the author to remind us, 'Oh, remember, this power isn't all that great... but yeah, it still works.' This inconsistency adds to how strange the world feels. Why is this skill portrayed as a weak, extra ability when the series has shown and told us two different things about it? When the premise is delivered so inconsistently, with basic elements far apart like two separate lines that should align, it becomes clear that the plot wasn’t fully thought through. One of the most frustrating aspects of this adaptation is how little progress the series makes on the central plot established at the beginning. We barely see the protagonist’s journey toward vengeance—it’s as if they bait us with it, only to let it sink. I understand that this is likely due to what the first season is meant to adapt, but since there's almost no chance of a second season (and I honestly hope there isn't one), this feels awkward and almost dishonest. The series spends so much time with the protagonist shouting, 'Vicious, I’m going to get my revenge,' that any other plot progression feels unimportant and uninteresting. Along the way, he recruits characters who are flat and boring, serving only to highlight how terrible the world is. If you're writing a dark fantasy and the only way to show the darkness of the world is through repetitive dialogue and grotesque characters, then the world feels one-dimensional and weak. That’s when you know you fucked it up. There are countless other bad things to be said about this series, many of which make me feel as furious as the characters themselves. The blandness of the characters—both in their dialogues and personalities—is so infuriating and laughable that you can’t watch any scene involving Touka’s class interacting without asking yourself 'why?' with an awkward smirk. Delving further into it almost feels redundant. Characters introduce themselves, only for none of them to have any real relevance in the anime. The awkward and jarring transitions between CGI and traditional animation don’t help, especially when the environment looks poorly rendered. The worldbuilding is equally awful, with a weak power system, and the main cast adds nothing to the story. There’s no excitement or intrigue for what’s next—it’s just a disappointing mess. So Failure Frame really did it great, because: The plot paralyzed me in horror. The characters drove me berserk with how annoying they are. The animation poisoned me for life. Save yourself from this