Anime Spotlight #38: I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Animeister

I'm an only child...which is one of those phrases that looks, sounds, and feels more cumbersome, awkward, and grammatically incorrect the more you think about it. I mean, the "an" kind of implies that it is in a category with others of its kind, which defeats the significance of the "only" qualifier. There are obviously multiple children in the world; technically, every human being and animal alive today is a child of someone. So none of us is really an "only" child. Hell, if you throw in the age designation that a child is someone below adult age, a lot of us - myself included - aren't even children anymore. And yet, those of us who are the last remaining hope for the continuation of our bloodlines insist on using the "I'm an only child" garble, which is not only a double-phlegm-wad of a saying, it divorces itself from the familial pride and singular specialness it is meant to convey. Sure, the old ways of the patriarchy may have fallen to brevity and the strength of the feminine spirit, and I suppose that makes the world more open and gives pride a more personal, less vicarious connotation, but I find a certain kind of charm to the archaic ways of expressing lineage, like Nordic surnames ending in -sson and -dottir, or British nobility being the Numbered Title of Place, heir to the throne of Other Place, Numbered Son/Daughter of the House of Noun. Sure, it's longer to say all of that than being John Orange from London, but John Orange from London doesn't sound very important, now does he? I'd rather be my parents' only child than just an only child because like I said above, being an only child means less and less the more you think about it.

Why am I saying all of this? Well, it has something to do with today's Spotlighted Anime...and the coffee I drank before I started writing this at six o'clock in the afternoon because I'm in the middle of a ten day work period and I spent the past two days shambling around the deli like a zombie and reeling on my feet like Shang Tsung just told Sub-Zero to freeze me and rip my spine out. Maybe if I drink enough stimulant beverages, I can isekai from karoshi and get reincarnated as the nineteenth son of a noble who's rich enough to not care that I spend all of my time alone writing critical entertainment editorials under a pseudonym that gets famous in the surrounding kingdoms.

I'm too caffeinated and tired to come up with a good segue, so please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment something at the bottom of this post (yes, even the word, "something" would count as something), help out my ad revenue as you read so I can get some decent sleep tonight, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

I originally wanted to do a bit at the beginning about how another trend in anime is making the main character a distant son in some fantasy world lord's line of succession (in a world where there aren't planet-harvesting aliens with the ability to kill them all like in Independence Day: Resurgence). But there are only two of them, so I'll just make a joke that I hear all the time but have no idea where it originated: It's weird that it happened twice!

I remember that I watched The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?, but that's the only thing about it that I remember: it was an anime that passed through my eyes and ears, and therefore it exists. Which doesn't leave me much to say about it without copying its nest of Wikipedia articles, and I don't have that kind of time because I need at least a week to type the title of the anime that I'm really going to review: I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability.

The anime titled...that...is obviously your usual novel/light-novel/manga franchise publication salad, this time written by the awesomely named Kenkyo na Circle and illustrated by Meru (light-novel) and Yōsuke Kokuzawa (manga).

As a nice change of pace, the main character isn't some personality-void protag-kun with dark, spiky hair from Japan this time, but instead a mage from a different fantasy world who loses a magic duel to the death and gets reborn as Lloyd Saloum, the seventh son (well, he's really the sixth son because he has a sister in line ahead of him, but I've been pedantic enough already) of the King of Saloum in a world where magic is just about everywhere. So like the title says, Lloyd uses his distance from the throne to study magic with an obsessive, sociopathic fervor, to the point that he sees people with cool magical abilities as resources to further his study of magic (not in a morbid, sacrificial sense, but in a detached, mutual advancement sense). In the first two episodes alone, he enslaves a reality-warping demon into a cute animal mascot form (kind of like Natsume's Book Of Friends, if Natsume used a nuclear magic spell and a sadistic personality to subdue Master Kitty-Kat instead of just punching him in the face) and draws the attentions of a female adventurer from "the East" who fights with Demon Slayer-like breathing techniques and Dragon Ball-light chi blasts.

Of course, there is a light smattering of ecchi (suggestive/adult content that isn't quite pornography yet, which I commonly refer to as Japravity) in here as Lloyd is often put in androgynous clothing by his busty, retired assassin maid who has a homicidally protective age-gap crush on him, and the aforementioned kung-fu lady is in a love quadrangle with Lloyd, his magical adult disguise, and his sparkle-handsome adult brother. Oh, and later there's a child assassin who magically sweats poison when she strips half-naked, and she develops a "senpai did something nice for me so I wanna bang him when we're older" crush on him. Keep in mind that this is all played for laughs because Japan.

Not that 7th Prince is entirely an isekai sex comedy, mind you; the aforementioned encounters with the demon-turned-sidekick and the man-crazed kung-fu lady (not to mention the other two, big demon fights of the first season) are graced with some mind-blowing, eyeball-melting effects animation that would make Studios Trigger, Bones, and ProductionIG take notice. Even the comedy gets some off-model chibi work so the meme community can go apeshit with Lloyd's many expressions. From an animation, action, and humor standpoint, 7th Prince is like Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, J.J. Abrams, and Guillermo Del Toro co-directed an epic Ren & Stimpy movie...except they would at least attempt to manufacture decent tension into the fight scenes. As amazing as they all look, the fights in 7th Prince basically come down to this:

Demon: "Pathetic human! I will erase your soul, eat your entrails, and use your body to conquer the world! Bear witness to my ultimate technique that has been lost to the ages!"

Lloyd: "Oh; I see how that works now!" Uses demon's finishing move against it. "Haha; demon go brrrrrr!"

It's never a question of whether Lloyd will win, but of how he will win and how funny the demon's contorted face will look when it dies of ownage. Even the effort between the fight's beginning and Lloyd's ensured victory is a case of "tell, don't show," as all strategy and challenge is casually discussed after the fact like the twist reveal in an ill-conceived heist movie.

This is totally subjective, but the final, two episodes of the final fight legitimately bored me. I felt like I was falling asleep to an ultraviolent screen saver or something, which is not a description you want to hear in regards to the season finale fight of a comedy battle shonen anime.

Prepare to witness the depths of something else.

For example, I'd like to witness the depths of your awesomeness as you remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment something at the bottom of this post (yes, even the word, "something" would count as something), help out my ad revenue as you read so I can get some decent sleep tonight, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my demon-pwning content.

Animeister,

Out.