What They Say:
Osamu Mikumo is a member of Border, an organization designed to protect Mikado City from alien invaders knows as Neighbors. One day a mysterious new student named Yuma Kuga transfers to his school and turns out to be a humanoid neighbor himself. The two are supposed to be natural enemies, but could there be more to neighbors than Osamu has bargained for…
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
So far Toei’s adaption of World Trigger has been a lot rougher around the edges than the show needed to be, especially in terms of production values, which have been pretty cheap even by their current standards. Given what’s at stake regarding the show it’s been pretty troubling and it was definitely a bit questionable if the budget would actually be able to handle a mostly action centered episode. Thankfully the show mostly managed to pull it off and has brought things a bit closer towards where the show actually needs to be.
Where things last left off, Osamu’s school was suddenly attacked by Trion soldiers, and he decides it’s up to him to take care of things. Yuma gives him a warning that he’s not nearly strong enough to take them on and that even if there were 20 of him, he’d still just barely survive. That doesn’t matter to him though since lives are at stake, and while he does take into consideration that Yuma’s Trigger could easily mop them up, he doesn’t want to risk exposing Yuma to Border. Osamu starts his fight against them, and it’s quickly proven how accurate Yuma’s assessment was when Osamu gets beaten pretty quickly and ends up getting his transformation broken as a result. Yuma decides to intervene but can’t risk using his own Trigger since Border might catch onto him and ends up using Osamu’s instead.
Osamu tells him it’s just a Trigger for training and would probably be pretty useless in an actual battle but to his surprise, Yuma still manages to defeat them all with ease. He doesn’t quite understand how that result could have happened but Yuma’s guardian Replica explains to him that it’s the difference in their Trion levels, which is what is generally used to generate Triggers in the first place (though Yuma tells Osamu his lack of ability has more issues than just that). In the aftermath of the fight, Osamu’s classmates start praising him for the rescue, and Yuma forces him to take credit for everything since Border can’t know who he is. When Border agents do finally arrive on the scene though, one of them is pretty impressed with Osamu’s apparent abilities but one of the others also notes that he’s broken regulations by using his Trigger off-base even though he’s just a trainee and should be reprimanded.
Production wise the animation budget for this episode is something of a step up from the previous two. The fight scenes don’t look particularly good but they mostly get the job done and though there’s some clear shortcuts it’s nowhere near as blatant or awkward as it’s previously been(character designs are still off model a few times however). The soundtrack also takes a bit of a step up this episode as well and is more noticeable, but there are still a couple of scenes too many left soundless. Same can be said for the pacing which is relatively fine during the action scene but gets noticeably dragged out during the Trion explanation where it quite obviously goes on for twenty seconds longer than it should.
In Summary:
This finally feels a bit more like an adaption of a battle manga, and there’s a lot more action to be had this time around. Sadly the budget constraints still show a bit, and the pacing suffered a bit noticeably but this episode more of a step in the right direction. If Toei can improve on things a bit more, the show may get closer to reaching it’s full potential. Hopefully next week helps in making those strides.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
