He should’ve stayed fat.
THE PREMISE
I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in the Real World, Too (yes, that is a complete sentence and the title) is an anime centered around Yūya Tenjo, a goodhearted fat boy who life loves to shit on. He finds a magical door in his dead grandfather’s house that leads him to a fantasy, monster-filled world, and comes back super powerful and hoooooooooot!!!!
Before I really dive into the eight pack abs of it all, let it be known that I should not like this show as much as I do. Power fantasy anime-especially ones about the hero getting transported to another world (a.k.a. isekai)-just aren’t my jam. You’ve seen one you’ve seen ‘em all. Especially since nowadays they all take place in worlds that run like one big D&D session, magic and all. And half of Cheat Skill is just that.
The other half is your high school wet dream of immediately being good at everything, becoming friends with all the cool kids at school, and making every girl so thirsty that even the teacher wants to put a ring on it.
(Nothing I said in the above sentence is untrue.)
This show’s main draw is how it splits its time mostly equally between two narratives: one is in the real world and the other is in the fantasy world, with limited overlap. Tenjo levels up in the fantasy world by killing monsters, and he gets to keep his superhuman stats in the real world, plus the eventual ability to do magic. And you know what? It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
I’m serious! The first episode is fantastic at making you feel how much Tenjo’s life.
Fucking.
SUCKS.
His parents ignore him in favor of his younger siblings because he’s comparatively much uglier and fatter. The only person who loved him, his grandfather, passed away, leaving him all alone (though he did leave Tenjo his house). And he’s constantly bullied at school by the local gang. The first scene of the show is him stepping in to protect a girl being assaulted by some of those gang members, only to get the crap beat out of him. Afterwards he limps home and has a breakdown about how unfair his life is and, unlike with a lot of shows like this, you do empathize with him instead of thinking he’s an overdramatic crybaby.
On that note, going into the show, I expected Tenjo to have a way bigger chip on his shoulder, post-transformation. But, if anything, he swings in the opposite direction. He’s kind to a fault, seems psychologically incapable of accepting how good-looking he is now, and is bewildered as to why everyone-in both worlds-is being so friendly to him. After years of violence and abuse, both physical and emotional, Tenjo struggles to accept, well, acceptance. It’s a tad depressing yet endearing.
BUT, and we’ve finally arrived at the big but, both the themes of this story and Tenjo’s character arc would be more impactful if he retained his original look. If only for the first arc or two.
Taking real-world challenges into account, I understand that it would take up time and resources to update Tenjo’s character model every few episodes. The studio is also adapting from a light novel series, so my main gripes are with the story itself and less with the anime adaptation. The show did its job and, outside of a few times that they replace Tenjo with a CGI-model during fights, is animated very well.
Finally, since I’ve only consumed the anime at this point in time, I don’t know if Tenjo’s progression is as rapid in the light novels, but all evidence points towards this being a faithful adaptation. So until I read otherwise, my following points still stand.
THE ROMANCE
Remember that girl that Tenjo saved from being assaulted? Her name is Kaori and she’s daughter of the chairmen of a prestigious school. Impressed by Tenjo’s character, she offers him a spot. This is post Tenjo’s hotness upgrade, so he asks her how she recognized him. She states it was his eyes. That she could see the true him through them or something.
There are more girls who show interest in Tenjo-because of course they do-but I give them more of a pass because they’ve only encountered Hot Tenjo. But even then, it would resonate more (potentially for those who are conventionally attractive) if Kaori and the other girls grew attracted to him based on his character and not just because he looks like a K Pop idol who can Suplex a full-grown grizzly bear.
Call it unrealistic, but what the hell? It’s okay to have power ups and magic, but girls falling in love with a fat guy is one step too far? Accel World did it ages ago and that show’s a classic!
Likely unintentionally, Cheat Skill is kinda sending the message that your deserve love (and friendship) only if you’re good-looking and freakishly good at sports.
RELEVANCE TO THE PLOT
There is only one arc dependent on Tenjo being good-looking. Early on, while going out shopping for clothes that’ll fit his new frame, a series of events result in Tenjo being dragged into a photo shoot with a popular female model. And this arc isn’t bad. It’s even wholesome and Tenjo’s blissful ignorance about how attractive others find him hadn’t worn out its welcome yet. Also, he gets to judo flip a douchebag male supermodel, so that’s fun.
But really, outside of saving his friends from a random fire, which predominantly required the use of water magic to pull off, most of his most impressive feats require strength. The story could have easily made him super strong while retaining his original design. Or flip it so that he gets magic first and relies on that and quick thinking while he slowly builds up his strength, speed, and stamina to superhuman levels.
The crux of the problem is that the first episode of Cheat Skill is so good that I wish it was the first story arc instead. But before I dive deeper into this, let’s first go over the circumstances of how Tenjo levels up, specifically zeroing in on his first night in the fantasy world.
Grandpa’s house is connected by a door to another house-really a cabin or cottage-located in the middle of a dark forest populated by monsters. Monsters that we’re eventually told are powerful enough to destroy entire cities if they every gained the initiative to leave the forest. A magical force field surrounds the property, protecting it and Tenjo. But just because things can’t get in doesn’t mean that things can’t go out.
Inside the cottage is an armory of high-level weapons. By staying just inside the barrier, Tenjo can kill these monsters with little risk to his person. The first monster he kills-an orc-is hundreds of levels higher than him. He starts at level 1. He ends the night at level 100, and when he goes home his body transforms painfully to fit his new stats. The killing high-level monsters while safe behind the force field is the titular “Cheat Skill”, at least initially. Eventually Tenjo does leave the property to fight monsters head on, but his weapons are all still one-hit-killing machines so…shrug.
I’m not completely opposed to all of the above. You could even let Tenjo keep the weapons. My only real change would be to the progression of his leveling. It needs to be slowed waaaaay down. Tenjo would still start out at level 1, but instead of an ogre in the 100s, make it in the 30s, 40s, or even 50s. Tenjo would still get a significant boost from killing it, but it wouldn’t make him superhuman.
His physique could subtly change over time, but initially he’d appear the same, if maybe a little more muscular. This would allow some of his actions (like saving Kaori from being attacked at school, excelling in sports) to still occur, impressing his classmates. Especially since, because he still appears overweight, nobody expects him to be so physically exceptional. And as he levels up more and more in the following arcs, then you could make him more superhuman and handsomer. Yet K’s attraction, along with the other girls’, and his friends’ affection, will come off as more sincere because they knew him when he was the ‘old Tenjo”. It would also justify Tenjo’s inability to accept that these people like and admire him considering he still sees himself as mostly unchanged.
This Is likely a case of the writer wanting to get to the “good stuff” as quickly as possible. Which is fine since he’s clearly wanting to write a power fantasy. I just wish he’d seen the merit in pre-transformation Tenjo in its own right and not just using it to easily earn sympathy from the audience. Also, I can’t speak for the light novels, but old Tenjo’s design in the anime is unique and interesting, with his large eyes popping beautifully. He even has moles! Something not usually seen on non-bad guys in anime. I was so bummed that he lost them when he transformed. A protagonist can have abs and moles, I say!
IN CONCLUSION
Cheat Skill is a classic case of good, but could’ve been better. It knows what it wants to be, is what it wants to be, and still manages to have more personality and subtlety than a show with a title that stupid has any right to be. Especially compared to the usual overpowered protagonist schlock that keeps getting pumped out these years. But I’ll always think about the overweight but kind ghost of what could have been whenever I go back and rewatch that very first episode.
0 Comments