Teogonia

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"In the harsh region known as the borderlands, humans must fight an endless battle against demi-human creatures that come at them relentlessly, intent on taking their land and their gods. A young boy named Kai, fighting to defend his village, sustains a life-threatening injury that causes him to regain memories from a past life. If you're not a guardian bearer, it's like you're playing life on hard mode... Kai's newfound knowledge gives him a new sense of the unfair "rule set" that governs the world around him. One thing is clear: For those without a god to serve as their guardian, life is a constant struggle for survival. Thus begins the epic tale of a young boy's ascent into a vast world filled with magic, bloodshed, and mystery."

Genre(s): Action, Fantasy, Isekai

Research

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1

A somewhat bland intro, I'm hoping this is a 'greatness from small beginnings' situation... for the show, not the protagonist, to be clear.

Some fairly standard fantasy troops on the ground action where the main character is a simple grunt in the grand scheme, but things get strange when he suddenly gets... memories of Tokyo and... learns how to shoot flames? I, like you, have always suspected the Japanese were beings of pure magic, but this is a bit on the nose, don't ya think? Head shaking aside, the introduction of magic into this otherwise magicless fantasy world could be interesting, and some care has already been displayed in characterization and world building so I remain hopeful that this could develop into something. More long running fantasy series (which this feels like the beginning of) will always be welcome.

Episode 2


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I like the old-school vibes. This kind of feels like a fantasy series from a couple of decades ago, minus the sudden isekai traces, which I find unfortunate. That being said, I suppose it had to be explained somehow why Kai wanted to use fire magic in a world where he could have hardly even imagined such a possibility. I'm sure there would have been other ways, but maybe the author wanted to woo the endless isekai audience a little bit. In any case, the world has magic anyway, with those guardian bearers gaining supernatural strength, plus we now did get a verification of there being ability users.

So far there's nothing I wouldn't really like about this. I enjoy the old-fashioned style. The production values are undoubtedly mediocre, but that's only in the big picture. These days anime series are so struggling for budget that soon generative AI will produce better results. So, the action animations in this are, unfortunately, already above average in modern terms. Although maybe I'm just ignorant, watching so little anime these days, and things have changed for the better.

I also like how Kai is so ignorant. He's really an orphan from a remote border town, whose only purpose in life was supposed to do in battle. So, he knows nothing about the world, apart from what he has happened ot hear from older folks. In fact, maybe that's another reason for past life memories: to start to alleviate his deep ignorance. Nevertheless, it was depicted quite realistically how his conversations with Jose went: he had no bloody idea about the simplest of things. I much prefer this sort of ignorance to the low IQ idiocy often present in shounen MCs.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes. It's nice that Kai has an ally in Jose, who has her own challenges in life and who might thus not look down on him. She can't really consider her own family her ally, so maybe she will turn Kai into one.

Episode 3


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It'll be quite interesting if Kai actually starts to develop his own village, essentially, around his own stele. That's essentially what Jose dreams to do, with her abandoned village, but naturally she has no means to pull that off. Kai might have, but as long as he continues to toil away as expendable soldier in his original town, I wonder about it. Even if the dwarves start living in his valley, they aren't too good at defending themselves, so Kai should spend a lot of time there. But if he leaves, that would automatically mean his affairs with everyone in the original town are finished, including Jose. Nevertheless, he's largely wasting time there. It would be a different thing if he was schooled by the lord in all the academics they have available, but he's a bottom rung soldier expected to die at any moment, so nobody's going to spend a minute to teach him anything. So, yes, it's hard to see why he should stick around. The old dwarf, on the contrary, probably would be willing to teach him everything he knows about the world. Technically Jose could also teach him, but she's only concerned about his own lacking fighting skills, so what time she can spare to be with Kai, she wants to use it to train her martial arts.

In any case, guardian bearers are supposed to be guard/worship their stele, so nobody in the town could say anything if Kai announced he needs to move to his own place, to fulfill his duty to his land god.