Winter 2022 First Impressions – She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 12

Source: Light Novel

Episode Summary: In the world of Ark Earth Online, a group of mages, deemed the “9 Wise Men” distinguished themselves from the pack by gaining power and fame – in spite of many players who preferred a simpler, more straightforward playing style. Danblf was one such mage, named the “One Man Army” due to his incredible summoning abilities. When the mage kingdom he and his IRL friend established becomes a fresh target, he travels to the battlefield and dispatches the attackers on his own.

After the battle, however, Danblf disappears completely from the face of the game. In the meantime, a beautiful young woman awakens wearing Danblf’s robes and with the ability to wield a small amount of his power. Who is this mysterious woman, and might she have anything to do with Danblf’s disappearance?

Impressions: While I’ve only played MMO games briefly in my life, I love the idea of them. They’re places where people from all over the world can get together and interact within the bounds of an otherworldly fantasy environment. That said, the romanticized notion of what can occur in an MMO can often be at odds with the things that actually happen, including poor interactions with other players who just want to cause strife to others. The world of Ark Earth Online sounds like one of these lawless places, where people have the freedom to do whatever they want – from developing their own in game skills and joining together to build mutually helpful guilds or even nations, to starting wars against other factions they don’t like.

This is where we meet our main characters, caught at this intersection of positivity and negativity within the gaming world. I think that there’s a lot of storytelling that could be accomplished with this as a premise. If nothing else, an exploration of the fact that one’s internet persona(s) can often reflect the inner realities of one’s personality with more truth than we’d like to acknowledge could be an interesting angle to examine. Or, for some lower-hanging fruit, maybe the fact that being an OP character who’s reached a game world’s endgame can be a little bit boring. Considering the set up we get here, some of that may or may not be in the cards.

During this episode, however, we’re treated mostly to some pretty boring world building for the Ark Earth Online game world, a little bit of backstory for Danblf’s and King Solomon’s players, and a truly mediocre large-scale CG battle scene that seems plucked straight out of a bad video game. The episode mostly lacks tension, though I suppose that might be the point; Danblf and his brethren are so overpowered that they can dispatch a large group of enemies with a wave of the hand and some spare mana, and much as Saitama laments his lack of true opponents in One Punch Man, so too must game players who are long since too powerful for any real challenge. The thing about OPM, though, is that it’s clever about its character’s pathos; She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man ultimately just feels rote.

Pros: The one part of this episode I really enjoyed were the few minutes after our mysterious heroine (not so mysterious if you’ve read any plot blurbs about the series) wakes up in a field. This entire segment is delivered in a montage with no dialog, as she wanders back into town and happens to pass by many of the characters we’ve already met in passing. There’s a lot of good storytelling that can take place simply by showing people’s actions and reactions, and this is a good example of that. There are also some funny moments as the character tries to get used to being in this new, unfamiliar body.

Cons: I’m willing to give a lot of grace to anime that seems like it might not have the resources to produce the best visuals. One of the biggest recent examples of this was So I’m a Spider, So What? which ended up melting in its final 1/3rd, but which was still an interesting, fun story most of the way through. This episode, though, has a lot of issues right from the get-go, and doesn’t really utilize any other tools to offset the clunky animation and ugly CG models. I think a lot can be accomplished with interesting scene framing, cool layouts, and unique storyboarding – all techniques that anime has relied upon to distinguish itself for decades. This episode doesn’t really exhibit any of that and almost completely lacks in dynamism and visual interest.

This point I’m about to try to make is a bit of a meta discussion of the plot, but I felt compelled to mention it anyway. Reading the plot description, it seems like the main character is embarrassed that his new character form is female, which doesn’t map very well to my own reality. Most of the male-identifying people I know who’ve played games where characters can be chosen or created, have willingly elected at one point or another to play as female characters. No one I know of has tried to turn this fact against them or make fun of them; it’s a complete non-issue. So I can’t really say that this series’ premise does a good job of reflecting reality for me – but that’s just my personal observation.

Content Warnings: Fantasy violence. Mild nudity.

Would I Watch More? – I don’t think so, there’s nothing really pulling me into the series and overall I found this episode just frustratingly mediocre.