Failure Frame has all the hallmarks of the binge-cringe fantasy isekai you love to say you hate while secretly reveling in its wish-fulfillment trash premise. To call it Anime of the Week might even be considered a crime in journalism depending on who you ask, including myself, especially when judging its regrettable veers into basement-quality 3D-animation — not for expensive fight scenes, of course, but just to show two characters…walking and talking. Weird.
So what is it about Failure Frame that elevates it from thrift-store curiosity to “anime you should really consider streaming this week?” Well, for starters, there’s no shame in taking a break from the emotional toll My Hero Academia‘s new season is taking on many a Crunchyroll subscriber, and like I mentioned before, the fantasy isekai itch doesn’t need logic or reason to prove itself irresistible. And Failure Frame is quite irresistible, almost right from the get-go.
“This isn’t a pretty story.”
Based on the light novel series by Kaoru Shinozaki — which is how I first came across the series — and the later manga adaptation by Keyaki Uchi-Uchi and illustrator Shō Uyoshi, Failure Frame expands the basic formula of the fantasy isekai quite literally, by summoning not just one or two or three Japanese teens to another world as “Heroes” but rather an entire busload of them on a school trip.
Our introduction to said class is a bit harried and perfunctory — we get it, the villain is the bully — but the story almost immediately catches interest with the introduction of our main protagonist Touka Mimori, who isn’t just your average, shy otaku with a heart of gold. Sure, he is shy and average, but he is also decisively a learned sociopath, with whatever kernel of goodness left in him stamped out by an abusive childhood, one that he was even liberated from at a certain age by a kind new family, only for him to reject their good nature in order to take his revenge on the world and then some.
“Won’t you please save this world?”
That revenge manifests into a far grander obstacle when Touka and his classmates come face to face with the fake-smile goddess who summoned them to her world by force and no clear way to escape unless they defeat…the Demon King? Demon Lord? I forget, honestly, these isekai start to blend together after a while.
Again, though, the villain of the story is absolutely the goddess, and that’s all that matters to Touka. After the goddess judges him to be the weakest of the group, she “gets him out of their way” by tossing him in a dungeon full of monsters he has no chance against, effectively giving him a death sentence. It’s a lot like Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy, but played less for laughs. For example, almost no one in the class seems to even care, as the cynicism of this world and the “real” world start to blend into the anime’s surprisingly dark tone, one that does a lot to separate it from the more common ilk of the genre.
“These guys just look like experience points to me.”
As you may have predicted, Touka does have a saving grace, which is where the full title of this anime comes in. See, it’s actually called Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything with Low-Level Spells. Turns out Touka has what is basically a GameShark cheat code when he reaches the dungeon: a skill that allows him to set a low-level “status effect” or “debuff” skill on any living creature except for the goddess. This essentially makes him unstoppable, as he can paralyze, poison, or lull someone to sleep with a simple command.
With this ability in tow, Touka clears out the dungeon and levels up to an absurd degree, renewing his sense of purpose as a vengeful knight of revenge who needs to figure out how he can ultimately topple the goddess who crossed him, the only person he’s aware of that can resist his otherwise unstoppable status spells. Seven Arcs is behind the anime itself with Michio Fukuda (Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, Tesla Note) serving as director with series composition by Yasuhiro Nakanashi (Kaguya-Sama: Love is War, Shy).
“You can run if you want.”
Oh, sorry, are you still waiting for the part that explains why this anime is so great? Well, not to be too repetitive, but there is something just addictively visceral about watching an underdog lay waste to the haters, as I’ve already praised in last week’s highlighted anime, The Ossan Newbie Adventurer. But while that anime focuses on the positive, upbeat nature of a lovable goofball, the “juice” in Failure Frame is the presence of a compelling character arc in Touka, whose internal demons become far more dangerous and harrowing than any villains he faces out in this boilerplate fantasy realm. They want him to save this world, but is it worth saving? Jury’s still out.
The story is also smart about the kind of characters who enter Touka’s orbit. In this early part of the series, Touka is far off from his classmates, whom we only check in with periodically to see how they’re progressing. And that’s for the best, because Touka’s inevitable reunion with his fellow “Heroes” is best put off as long as possible to keep that tension alive. In the meantime, Failure Frame devotes ample time to developing a striking relationship between Touka and his first two party members: A helpful slime companion named Piggymaru who is there to be a cute fan-favorite and Seras Ashrain, an elf princess whose close-combat prowess is exactly what Touka needs to patch up his weaknesses as a one-trick pony.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you.”
And not for nothing, but the world of Failure Frame is also a notch above serviceable. It’s nothing grand or intricate at the start, and the magic itself expectedly lacks surprise and nuance for the genre. But this world does have a knack for giving weight to the world politics and adding in thematic weight to character designs, from evil “holy” knights who hunt Seras for sport and a “if-she-dies-we-right” Leopardwoman gladiator who could easily carry her own spin-off and then some (her name is Eve Speed, because that’s how fast she becomes the best character in the whole dang anime).
So yes, Failure Frame deserves all the scorn it gets for shamelessly wading in a sea of tropes, but every once in a while, it splashes up some refreshing material that earns the best of both worlds: the urge to keep watching for shallow reasons…and the urge to keep watching for arcs that dive quite a bit deeper.
Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything with Low-Level Spells is currently streaming on Crunchyroll with new episodes dropping on Thursdays. Check out the trailer below!
Images courtesy of Crunchyroll. Read more articles by Jon Negroni here.
Jon is one of the co-founders of InBetweenDrafts. He hosts the podcasts Thank God for Movies, Mad Men Men, Rookie Pirate Radio, and Fantasy Writing for Barbarians. He doesn’t sleep, essentially.
