Anime Review: So I’m a Spider, So What?
Getting reincarnated in another world after an accident or explosion is getting rather commonplace these days. But when a spider hatches out with the memories of a Japanese high school student, and her fellow hatchlings try to eat her, this seems like a bit of an imposition. Right from the beginning, “Kumoko”‘s life is on the hardest difficulty setting, with everything in her new home of the Elroe Labyrinth trying to kill her.
It quickly becomes apparent that the world our spiderling is in is based on “Computer RPG” mechanics, as she levels up and gains new skills and special abilities by combating her opponents and eating them. Day to day survival is a constant struggle, and Kumoko rarely gets any rest. Oh, and when she finally meets humans in the Labyrinth, they mistake her for just another monster and try to kill her as well!
This story is based on a web novel by Okina Baba, which has then been adapted into light novels and a manga before this animated version.
In a related storyline, it turns out that the explosion took out an entire classroom, so all the students and the teacher were also reincarnated. Our primary viewpoint character here is Schlaine/Shun, a young prince (fourth in line for the throne), who is going to a magic school for the upper crust, along with several of his former classmates. One of them, Hugo/Natsume got reincarnated as the first prince of his empire, and has developed a swelled head, so doesn’t like that Shun seems more popular with the majority of their schoolmates.
The teacher, Filimes/”Oka-san”, has been reincarnated as an elf, and though she is technically also a magic school classmate, has her own side project of gathering all the reincarnations together.
Good: Kumoko is a fun character, with interesting monologues, and the voice acting by Aoi Yuki is vital to selling the audience as for much of the series, the spider has no one to talk to, and then the first dialogues are with characters who have the same voice actress! I hope she got paid extra for all that motormouthing!
The spider’s part of the story is filled with exciting combats and hair-breadth escapes from peril. The RPG mechanics allow us to see how she improves, but also give us glimpses of something sinister lurking beneath the numbers.
Less good: Shun’s part of the story is less engaging, as he’s literally a “designated hero.” That is, the system grants him the title “Hero” and he’s stuck with living up to it. Shun’s much more of a stock lead male character, and while his supporting cast is more interesting, we seldom see them without him. The decision has been made to expand this storyline’s time on screen, and there are entire episodes where the spider gets almost no scenes.
(I am given to understand that in the novels, Shun’s storyline was designed to reveal things Kumoko couldn’t know, or to point up the dangerous path she’s taking with some of her upgrade choices.)
Our spider’s character design is perhaps a little too cute and easy to identify with, which draws attention away from the fact that Kumoko may have the memories of a human, but has very quickly abandoned many human moral and ethical considerations in favor of pragmatic survival. She might be acting in self-defense, mostly, but she soon develops a very loose sense of what “self-defense” entails. (Humans give the best EXP!)
From time to time, the CGI animation loses quality–the final episode apparently was delayed a week because one of the animation subcontractors couldn’t deliver acceptable work at all!
The ending is also rather abrupt, as the two storylines finally seem to converge, but are just left hanging.
I liked the first half of the series better, but there were still some fun moments in the back half.
Content note: Frequent gory violence (at one point Kumoko exclaims, “It’s raining blood sideways!”), cannibalism, fantastic racism, brief transphobia, peril to children; and it should go without saying, but this is not a series that arachnophobes should watch.
Given the place the series ends, one can hope for a second season to clear up a few things. Primarily recommended for isekai fans.
