Guai Xiang Shou

It's fine. I liked it, but I tend to be easily entertained. Those who want actual storytelling or action will not like this, but those who are here for the joy of just being will more than likely like it.

This original story starts with the main character getting isekaid into a magical world through train. We meet friends along the way as also mysteries. Everyone isn't as they want to be seen. There really isn't much to say about the plot, there's barely any of it. As one reviewer on bilibili said, the content of each episode is either water or water.

The style of this ... miniseries (only 8 eps/~120 mins of content) is cute and pleasing to look at. The animation is alright, it's clearly done by a smaller team with a smaller budget, but it did not feel static at any point. It could've been cleaner, but I enjoyed the indie feeling it brought. Character designs were great, some of them I would even call cool looking to the point of cosplaying.

Voice acting was good despite the low budget. Music was also great, the end song did end up added to my playlist.

Where the series ultimately fails is in its pacing. Basically nothing happens for the first four episodes, which is not great when there's only eight episodes to spare. From the fifth episode onwards there is good buildup, but the finale tries to do way too much and falls apart in trying to force as much lore as possible in 20 minutes. This could've been easily avoided by not making the first half of the series useless and unused worldbuilding. It should've jumped straight into the actual story instead of dilly-dallying.

I do hope the creators learn from this because I really liked the idea. Too bad they only had eight episodes to work with.