I’ll be the first to admit that it’s generally in bad taste to compare one work of fiction to another while reviewing it. After all, each is an individual work of art that has unique points, even if they use the same basic tropes or general setting. However, there are exceptions to every rule, and this is one of them.
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. A normal guy reincarnates into a fantasy world. Soon, he meets a dragon that comes to live inside his body. This reincarnator can perform incredibly high-level magic, and he uses his Earth-knowledge to create new magic unlike any seen before. He has an inner voice that teaches him about both magic and the fantasy world he now lives in. As he goes on adventures, he adds more and more demihumans to his ever-growing group of companions, naming them, which makes them evolve and become more powerful. (As you’d expect, many of them are female and in love with him, but he remains largely oblivious.) Eventually, he founds a nation of monsters (named after both the dragon and himself) in a heretofore uninhabited forest surrounded by powerful countries and deals with issues like building a modern (yet magical) infrastructure into his city on top of handling international relations. Of course, he overcomes 99% of these problems with no on-screen effort while his numerous sycophants talk endlessly about how amazing he is.
This is, of course, both the plot of I’m a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic and the much more popular That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. To say these two stories are cut from the same cloth would be an understatement. At times, it feels like I’m a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic is legally distinct fan fiction rather than an original tale.
It’s not inherently a bad thing for two stories to be this similar. Often, a well-known story can be used as a jumping-off point to take a tale in a different direction or explore the core concept entirely differently. For example, The New Gate is basically “What if Kirito was isekai-ed after he beat the Sword Art Online death game?” Demon Lord, Retry! is Overlord except that the evil characters all come from a sci-fi world instead of a fantasy one—and that the former story has much more of a focus on comedy than graphic darkness.
So what’s the twist in I’m a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic that sets it apart from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime? Well, that’s the problem. There isn’t one. The general plot—getting overpowered magic, going on adventures, recruiting new allies, and building a new kingdom—is the same. The only differences are in the details.
It would be one thing if I’m a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic told the story better than That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. However, to call this anime “boring” would be an understatement. The show is a victim of either terrible pacing or subpar writing (and I’m not sure which). The way the story is told feels like reading a Wikipedia article at best and listening to a rambling young child attempting to tell you a story at worst. No actual suspense is in this show—it’s just a series of events. Nearly every threat or problem is overcome in the same episode it is introduced—if not sooner. This makes even the biggest threats seem small. After all, if things were truly dangerous, they’d never have been solved so quickly.
The characters do the show no favors either. Most fade into obscurity as the show goes on, as they have little to no personality beyond what they are—i.e., the wolf girl acts like a wild dog, the ogres are straightforward and strong, and the elves are proper and loyal (and interchangeable). Worse still, the anime feels like it doesn’t even know what to do with its characters after they are introduced. Even the first two heroines disappear from the story without explanation for several full episodes, and never do anything meaningful again, even after they reappear. Honestly, it feels like the extended cast (with the sole exception of Princess Scarlet) only exist for the sole reason of being around to blow smoke up Liam’s ass.
As for Liam himself, he does at least have a personality—even if it’s also one-note. He is obsessed with magic and all it can do to the exclusion of everything else. He finds joy in both the study and use of it, and nothing makes him happier than inventing new spells to help his people. In general, this is treated by the story as a good thing. Liam has no ill intent with his magical progression and sees the best in everyone. However, he is also a person who would make a WMD for the sheer joy of discovery and creation, and never realize that it could be used for evil. To the plot’s credit, the extended cast recognize this about him and serve as a series of checks and balances to his actions.
And speaking of Liam’s evil actions, we have the real elephant in the room: slavery. In recent years, the “male isekai protagonist buys a sexy female slave who becomes his love interest” trope has been booming in popularity. I’m a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic takes things to a whole new level of insanity. Every one of the thousands of monsters and humans living in Liam’s country is his slave. Oh sure, they are called his “familiars” and each chooses to become one of their own free will, but this doesn’t change the fact that they are magically compelled to follow his every command. Of course, as is par for the course with this trope, Liam is a “noble slave master” who would never command them to do anything they didn’t want to do, which somehow makes everything morally okay as far as the story is concerned.
What’s truly interesting about this is how the show stumbles into an interesting moral quandary (which it’s seemingly oblivious of) as the story goes on. There are massive benefits to being one of Liam’s familiars. You instantly become faster, stronger, smarter, and younger once you become one—be you human, demihuman, or monster. On top of this, by the end of the show, by the magical nature of being his familiars, even those without innate magical powers can use basic magic within the city he has built, which completely changes the convenience of their everyday lives. Thus, we are left with the logical question: “Would you give up your free will if it meant you became physically better in every conceivable way and could live in a place where the standard of living is higher than any other place in the known world—especially if your ‘owner’ was unlikely to exercise his control over you?” If this anime were interested in exploring this idea, it might be a show worth watching.
On the animation side of things, this show is watchable, if barely. It has the usual issue of character proportions being a bit wonky from scene to scene (even when it comes to Liam himself), and there are all kinds of tricks being used in the action scenes to avoid drawing complex animation, notably lots of dust explosions that obscure things at the moment of impact. A noticeable amount of footage is being reused between episodes, and sometimes even within the same episode. However, it does do the bare minimum of visually showing you what’s happening in a way the audience can follow.
The music is shockingly good. The show has these well-scored musical moments that frankly feel out of place considering the rest of this anime. They sometimes even seem to clash with what’s going on in the show, giving us all the gravitas in the world through music, but for a problem that is solved easily by Liam or his companions.
To sum things up, this is an extremely subpar anime with problems in about every area. The plot is unoriginal, the characters forgettable, and the storytelling itself is bound and determined to keep things as void of narrative tension as possible. The animation is similarly dubious, and while the soundtrack is the sole exception when it comes to quality, it clashes with the rest of the anime. I can’t think of a single reason you should watch this anime—and that may be the biggest condemnation of all.
