The full English version of the title is "Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything with Low-Level Spells" because you know how they love lengthy and descriptive titles that giveaway most of the plot in a sentence. It's based on the light novel written by Kaoru Shinozaki. It's an isekai anime that focuses on the revenge themes.
I know this is a manga review but I'll be using the anime trailer because the anime adaptation has recently been released. Please note that I'm reviewing the manga version with some references to the anime and parts of this review contains SPOILERS.
PLOT:
Touka Mimori and his classmates were on their way for a school trip when they got transported into another world by the Goddess Vicious to fight the Great Demon Emperor. Everyone had an innate skill given by the system and these skills were ranked according to the standard E to S tier we often see in games.
Touka was ranked E with acquired spells Paralysis and Poison. These spells would have been good in most isekai plots except part of the world building that gives the protagonist a handicap here is that status debuff spells are weak, short duration and have a low chances of success when applied in combat. It's a coin flip with odds already stacked against the user and for little payoff which makes these skills useless according to the world building lore at least.
This prompted the Goddess Vicious to set Touka as an example by casting him out into the Abandoned Ruins for having useless skills.
SPOILER MANGA VS ANIME
The anime adaptation is a great improvement to the character's visual design. Most of the background characters in the class get a visual upgrade in looks. If it's just purely for visual reasons, the anime adaptation is doing a great job improving the source material. I can't say for certain that the anime would be closely faithful to the manga since it's too early to tell for now but if we go by first few chapters vs first episode, there are already deviations on some scenes in the anime.
SPOILER STORY
I've been up to date with the manga but not the light novel series because those take a while for the English translations to come out. But as far as the story goes, there's not much difference in what we've seen from other isekai stories. There are minor differences but overall it's the same formula that makes me say this story is average.
It's an isekai anime with the plot leaning on pursuing the protagonist's desire for revenge against the Goddess over defeating the great demon emperor. Like a standard revenge plot, there are only few redeeming qualities in most of the characters with reasonable exceptions are meeting new characters within the world that Touka ends up befriending along the way.
Touka as a character isn't a weak shit of an MC, he has his shortcomings outside his control but he is a pushover by choice. I say by choice because he willfully suppresses his own instincts to do harm to others out of gratitude and respect for the people that served as his role models, his aunt and uncle. He was an abused child which caused some permanent damaged to his psyche but was saved by his aunt and uncle who adopted him. This is the part where people who have not read the manga may dismiss Touka as being a pushover MC. He's aware of his capacity to do harm but chooses not to as compared to someone who does nothing when push comes to shove.
I find the balancing system of this world janky considering Touka is by convention an overpowered protagonist setup to be abnormal in the world where debuff spells are supposed to be impractical and yet he can cast them at 100% success to a great potency. If this was a game, he was sent at a level in between the mid and end stage to survive with only beginner skills to work with and yet he managed to take down high level monsters raising his levels to hundreds. On the other hand, his classmates who were S-rank were leveling up at a snail's pace where they're at less than 150 levels in while Touka is already reaching 1500+ levels up in a short span of time. This part right here was ridiculous and just led me to take the story less seriously than it already is.
But Touka reaching those levels don't necessarily translate to him being invulnerable despite having a high stat value as even the weakest monsters at melee combat can still kill him with enough damage equivalent to the level of a normal mortal wound. See? balance. In some ways, the world building and plot tend to be an up and down when it comes to the balancing act as Touka is overpowered and not.
If the anime adaptation is your first exposure to the story, it maybe worth a try since there are parts that aren't found in the manga. The anime enhances the character designs and other visual aspects of the story but as for the story itself, it's not really something that I can find potential to be at the top of the charts especially in the competitive field of the isekai genre. Failure Frame is mid for me.
Thanks for your time.
