FUNA’s anime adaptation follows a common trend in recent years with the flood of fantasy isekai. Abilities Average (the shortened title I’ll be referring to) doesn’t demand much on the creative side as we witness the transformation of a teenage girl into an overpowered adventurer. Joining main female protagonist Mile includes Reina, Pauline, and Reina. Are you ready to watch an adventure with these four goofballs?
Clocking in at 12 episodes, the early warning flag raised is the faithfulness of the anime adaptation. Unfortunately, it’s easy to say the anime decided to condense the material in order to maintain a flow of the overall series. Rather ... than following a faithful roadmap, the anime omits Mile's days at academy and instead puts her right into the 4-girls group as we are most familiar with. Needless to say, that cuts value into Mile's character as the audience will have a lesser time understanding her. As the novels consists of over 300 chapters, this decision didn’t take me by storm. Thankfully, Abilities Average make time to bring a comedic filled adventure.
The Crimson Vow. Remember those words well because this entire show is about them and their adventures. Mile may be the central protagonist but she retains the common interest of an otaku that being her love of anime, manga, and video games. Applying this knowledge to her adventures and battles, the show is made effectively self-aware of its standards. Even Mile herself is aware of her personality that is addressed by her own narratives. Joining her in these adventures is Reina, the crimson mage with a dark past but became a Hunter. As a crimson mage skilled with fire techniques, she plays the role of a tactical fighter and is invaluable to the party; think of her as the mage class in one of those classic WOW raids. Reina herself does have a background story that takes the show into a more emotional direction. If you care about her as a person, you will likely feel some sympathy of Reina when told from her personal perspective. Entering the familiar isekai party tropes, we also meet Mavis von Austein, the skilled knight with a noble persona. In any fantasy stories, a knight is almost like a necessity to make its series credible. Hence, we have Mavis although the show pokes fun of her character. For instance, she often gets teary eyed by sad stories despite her masculine appearance. Finally, Crimson Vow has another mage named Pauline who occasionally shows her “dangerous side” when least expected. Brace yourself for this group because they are the embodiment, heart, and soul of Abilities Average.
It makes sense that Abilities Average follows these four characters exclusively rather than developing other characters. After all, Crimson Vow is essentially the collective party of the poster characters. Even though Mile is the central protagonist, the others are featured just as much as her. FUNA’s writng of these characters puts emphasis on their personality than development. Watching their character chemistry and embracing who they are as characters is essential to enjoying the show. The more I watch these characters, the more I feel connected to them. However, I will say the show is aiming for lighthearted humor the majority of the time. There’s also satirical humor with character behaviors such as Mile’s lack of common sense at times. In other words, Abilities Life is more of a deconstruction of the fantasy isekai genre. It’s not an entirely a unique concept but does give a breath of fresh air for the Fall 2019, a season that seems to have an unusual amount of isekai.
The closest Abilities Life gets to with an antagonist is the life adventure itself. The anime adaptation doesn’t truly have a Big Bad but does introduce obstacles for Crimson Vow to overcome. This includes the battle tournament these girls participates early in the show to later facing off against an Elder Dragon. We have to remember that these are still teenage girls who have yet to step into the adult world. However, all these characters are portrayed as adorable badasses. The best way to describe them would be “dynamite come in little packages”. It’s when their opponents are caught off guard and realizes it's too little, too late. Mile’s request to be “average” still turns her into an overpowered character by the Creator. By average, she didn’t expect that her own abilities far outclasses others in this new world. The word ‘average’ itself losses its meaning when you think of the Average Joe. But in essence, it’s still fun to watch their adventure to see how they overcome their obstacles.
Project No.9’s transformed the light novel into anime by making it full of charms. It’s adorably cute with the characters made into teenage girls. If you look at first glance, there’s little reason to fear them until it’s too late. Character expressions is portrayed with a cartoony style of expressions with a vast majority of the time being humorous. On rare occasions, there’s more emotional reactions such as with Reina’s anger or Pauline’s sadism. The world setting is also decorated with light touches of fantasy such as the mystical and fairy tale-like creatures. Of course, dwarves, elves, and goblins exist because it’s part of the Isekai 101 formula. On a lesser scale, the battle cinematics is clean and crisp although looks average in style. Don’t go into this show looking into some high level caliber of animation quality because you won’t find it.
I’d normally discard the voice acting of a cast of teenage girls because most often time or not, they all sound the same. However, I do want to mention that the character voice mannerism of Average Life is more effective than some of the other isekai shows I’ve seen. This is due to how close the character connections are with each other. It’s collected together as a union of personalities coming from different backgrounds but united as Crimson Vow. Plus, who can forget the theme song of the show? When you have an adorable cast posing in ridiculous manners and catchy lyrics, it’s hard not to get into the rhythm.
Average Life always seemed like a series that would eventually get an anime and it indeed did. Here, we have an anime about a cast of goofballs poking fun of the idea of an isekai adventure. However, I do want the audience to be aware of the faithfulness of the show. Average Life is guilty of falling short on expectations when it comes to adaptation. There’s much more in the light novels that you can understand the characters better. But for an anime show of itself, Average Life is much more than just average.
Alternative Titles Synonyms: Noukin Japanese: 私、能力は平均値でって言ったよね! Information Type: TV Episodes: 12 Status: Finished Airing Aired: Oct 7, 2019 to Dec 23, 2019 Premiered: Fall 2019 Broadcast: Mondays at 23:30 (JST) Licensors: None found, add some Studios: Project No.9 Source: Light novel Duration: 23 min. per ep. Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older Statistics Score: 6.761 (scored by 98,907 users) 1 indicates a . Ranked: #60842 2 based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #1261 Members: 190,569 Favorites: 458 Available AtResources |
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