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「地竜（龍）、ヤバい？」 (Chiryuu (Ryuu), Yabai?)
“Earth Wyrm (Dragon), Bad News?”
If you thought the last episode of Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka didn’t have as much focus on the human side, you’re in luck because Episode 03 gives you more background on how they navigate through their lives. It might be the blander side of the story with a generic tale about how a plucky young hero excels in magic school to the chagrin of a jealous classmate. But it does flesh out some of the universe’s lore that we might not have discovered from Kumoko’s perspective.
While it takes opening up a webpage for me to remember who most of these guys’ names are, it’s far easier to digest how this version of the afterlife translates video game logic to its universe through the skills that can be used. Because each human in the academy excels at an entirely different form of magic, having a lesson tailored around water magic can mean some students will have to work harder than others to catch up.
Yuri’s connection to the world’s deity might have been passed off as part of her on-going issues, but I can also see her having a difficult time getting a Skill-Up if either her expertise ends up being white magic or if she starts to internalize the Level Up voiceover that plays in her head as a divine spirit. We get glimpses of the world’s skill features in Kumoko’s section with the kind of skills she racks up, including one that really makes her feel like Spider-Man, but it’s helpful to note how elemental magic plays a role in how certain students excel.
The pre-credits scene is oddly impactful because it gives us a morbid lesson on the familial ties that creatures of the same species share in this universe. In Fei’s case, she grows more horrified about the implication that she ate one of her relatives as she helped her friends murder them after having her Kin Eater label exposed by Shun’s Appraisal skill.
The Kin Eater label might have been shrugged off by Kumoko as merely a means of survival, especially with the normalcy that came from spiders in the caves eating each other. But Fei’s Kin Eater status was gained through happenstance merely from having the misfortune of having to protect her friends from a dragon on the loose. It’s easy to see why she’s be racked with guilt and shame and why Shun would lose his lunch upon realizing what Fei had done during their battle.
Aside from these tidbits though, there’ll have to be more than just lore to make the human side interesting, especially if developing Shun and his friends falls by the wayside to bring more focus to Hugo being horrible to everyone around him. With the info on Filmos skipping class or Katia correcting Shun on how he addresses other students, there’s something there that hasn’t quite been approached just yet. There wasn’t as much of Kumoko in this episode with her main dilemma being having a dragon fight of her own to have to face, but her earlier scenes gave us a funny glimpse of how she’s enjoying the new upgrades she has to her toolbelt.
That dragon fight was extremely messy and terribly animated, not in terms of quality of characters drawn, but in terms of movement, so many still shots, so much “camera” zoomed in on the characters, it went from https://randomc.net/image/Kumo%20Desu%20ga,%20Nani%20ka/Kumo%20Desu%20ga,%20Nani%20ka%20-%2003%20-%20Large%2011.jpg to https://randomc.net/image/Kumo%20Desu%20ga,%20Nani%20ka/Kumo%20Desu%20ga,%20Nani%20ka%20-%2003%20-%20Large%2026.jpg entire freaking fight, especially when Schlain went for final attack, it felt like framerate dropped from 30 to 10 and he became a laggy .gif; CGI spider MC and a lot of the cave enemies, ok, but now this? what was their budget exactly? 1000 yen and a pack of sushi?
The one very sucky thing about the human parts of this show is that they never fixed their problem of zooming in way too close to the characters. Part of me tries to find more workable screencaps, but I also want to be transparent in showing that there are way too many scenes where they would have a character are shown from their forehead to their collarbone.
It reads like a cost-saving measure so that they don’t have to make the battle scenes as drawn out and expressive. Or what post-Bourne action movies have done where the camera jerks around quickly enough so you don’t have to invest so much into fight choreography.
It is something a lot more forgivable with the CGI spider when the jerkiness of it makes Aoi Yuuki’s riffing much funnier. But in the human scene, it puts the show’s cheapness of full display
I get when hollywood does this, there are many reasons, to hide stunt double, to make character appear powerful ( he takes out people in seconds etc) but when anime does it ugh, I just remember naruto vs pain fight.
For anyone who is not watching, just reading blogs of this show, just watch this https://i.imgur.com/PZBCUXa.gif
it’s a effin mess
Thanks for telling us about this. Cant stand CHEAP animation.
So the teacher got toasted and nobody really batted an eye….
Anyway, I can’t figure out if the story’s about the spider with a human
former classmate side story, or about some reincarnated humans with
a spider side story.
I’m hoping for more of the spider stuff as right now that’s more interesting…
“Anyway, I can’t figure out if the story’s about the spider with a human
former classmate side story, or about some reincarnated humans with
a spider side story.”
It all comes together. There’s still many important characters who haven’t been revealed yet.
Regarding the magic lesson. Something they kind of skimmed over is that the spell being engraved in the wand means that the spell can be cast without the user having the skill for it, in this case, the Water Magic skill.
Casting spells through the wand enough times will let the user learn the Water Magic skill without spending skill points, just like how Kumoko got Acid Resistance by eating the acidic frog.
They really need to change the title to
Aoi Yuuki desu ga, nani ka?
I WANT PICTURES OF SPIDER-WOMAN!
Ok I super confuse. What up with the two separate adventures and characters? Are they going to meet as enemies or friends or TOTEL strangers?
This is based an a long running novel series. Hints provided in these first episodes may still be unresolved by the end of the first 24 episodes. Stuff will happen and both (or more) sides of the story will all matter.
Kumoko on one side and Shun and friends on the other were all reincarnated in this world after getting blown up in the same classroom. There has already been one major intersection between these two stories, and there will continue to be more and more as the story goes on.
I read the manga, this anime adaptation feels like its own story. I hadn’t read the LN yet.
I’d just keep watching.
I definitely prefer the manga’s approach of just ignoring the human story until much later. Interweaving it here just seems to be stealing momentum from the main plot. Not sure how far they are going to get with how much jumping to the human stuff for half the episode is slowing things down.
I actually like this storyline better. I hope that they change the big reveal in the anime and go with something else. The girl right now is pretty funny and endearing. The class mate aspect seemjust as intresting when in the WN that i read they were boring.