A couple of water boys make their debuts on the same day.
Kunon the Sorcerer Can See Ep. 1 & 2
Thanks to his special lineage, Kunon was born without normal vision. At first, this made him a really sad and morose boy, and nobody really wanted to be around him — not even his own family. When Kunon got his first magic lesson, however, everything instantly changed. All of a sudden, he gained new hope: he now believes that he can one day create functional eyeballs through magic. In the meantime, however, he’s going the master the hell out of water magic. More importantly, Kunon is a man-… er, boy reborn! Thanks to his magical ability to sense the world around him, he is now deeply curious about the world. He is no longer dour and depressing; he is cheerful and, well, a bit of a smart ass.
That’s great and all, but I’m just not sure why I should care. Is this just a slice-of-life show about a blind kid adapting to the world around him through magic? I’m sorry, but that’s doesn’t seem remotely compelling. Sure, Kunon’s personal mission to learn more about the world around him can be one of the plot threads, but I need more. I need something deeper to keep my interest. Like maybe a political undercurrent that parallels Kunon’s vision quest. For example, maybe as Kunon strives to see the world through magic, which is a wholly different perspective from normal vision, he also begins to see his society in a different light. The secondary plot thread doesn’t have to be exactly that, but something like that. For this story to hook me, it needs to go a little further than blind boy uses his limitless talent in magic to master the world around him.
No doubt some people will say that not everything needs to be that deep. The story can simply be about Kunon’s shenanigans as he masters his water magic. Okay, sure, whatever floats your boat. I still need something a little more stimulating than what I got from the first two episode.
Noble Reincarnation: Born Blessed, So I’ll Obtain Ultimate Power Ep. 1
Strangely enough, this show also stars a boy blessed with water magic. Pile on a reincarnation gimmick, stat screens, a magical sword with a will of its own, etc, and you have yourself what looks like a slop at first glance. The most notable gimmick here the one where our boy protagonist inherits the ability of the people and land around him. For instance, his fief is also blessed with water. As a result, our protagonist Noah ends up having an SS-rating in water magic instead of just an S-rating. Keeping up? Good, ’cause I hate this sort of RPG-ass world-building. I mean, I like RPGs, but I don’t want it to be this literal outside of my video games.
Nevertheless, I’m actually a little more interested in the daily life of this water mage over the one mentioned up top. Why? I just feel as though this story has a bit more meat on the bone to chew on. For exmaple, when Noah hears that one of his servants’ hometown has been struck by a disastrous flood, he moves to buy up as much land there as possible. Experience from his past life has taught him that miscreants will always try to take advantage of a tragedy. In fact, he even gives his maid’s mother a job so that his maid won’t have to do extra, sordid work in the red light district.
But in order to afford all these new expenses, Noah’ll have to sell land that has been personally gifted to him by his father. You also can’t just throw money around and expect your problems to go away — problems that are deeply rooted in a flawed system rife with corruption. The land he’s buying is still flooded, and the people are starving. The officials in charge are already unscrupulous and are thus taking kickbacks instead of providing the much needed humanitarian aid. So what does Noah do? He takes a big ass sword and lops the evil doer’s head off. At the end of the day, this is still your bog standard anime, so don’t expect anything revolutionary. Our hero is still a prince who has been magically blessed by the god or gods. Nevertheless, we’ve got a little problem solver on our hands. Noah probably won’t enact true social change when it’s all said and done, but at least he’s trying to save a few lives.
I was a apprehensive about the show at first, because when you see the worlds “Noble Reincarnation” in the title, and your mind instantly thinks, “Ugh, not another cheap isekai…” And who knows? Maybe this will end up being a dumb, fanservice-laden anime in the long run. I also won’t pretend to be thrilled that our protagonist is a kid. But for now, color me intrigued. I’m certainly a hell lot more interested in this than the blind sorcerer humiliating his future brother-in-law.
Also, why does this 21-year-old look so… well, old. How do you go from the cherubic six-year-old in Noah to his brother in just fifteen short years?
I’ll check out Journal with Witch tomorrow. The first couple of weeks of every season is always rough on my time. So many shows to check out, so little time.
