Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra

Episodes 1-3

Once a novelty that was more or less limited to titles like .hack (my beloved) and Sword Art Online, anime about “What if protagonist, but isekai'd into the world of a video game” have now become de rigueur, and you can reliably expect to see at least a few such titles in a given year. To list just one such recent example, it was only months ago that we got this from the hilarious likes of From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated! What I'm getting at here is that now surrounded by way more competition, it's a lot harder than it used to be for anime with this premise to stand out—and by extension, when such anime do come out, they're going to be fighting a much harder battle for interest and attention than they would've, say, even just a decade ago. And it's in this landscape that we get Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra this season.

We're only three episodes into Mynoghra so far, but it's already pretty clear where its strengths and weaknesses are. Let's start with its biggest pro: when you watch anime about Truck-kun suddenly throwing you into the world of a video game, the game in question is almost always either an (MMO)RPG (EX: .hack//SIGN, Sword Art Online, Log Horizon), or a dating sim (EX: pretty much every villainess-themed anime). The game world in Mynoghra, on the other hand, is a 4X strategy game akin to—well, the obvious comparison is Sid Meier's Civilization. They're not as direct a comparison, but since I play them more, I can't help but feel reminded of games like Planet Zoo and RollerCoaster Tycoon. Either way, you get the point: this anime takes place in the world of a strategy game. And while I can think of a number of anime where strategy games (or at least games with major strategic elements) either play a big role or are a major theme (EX: Yu-Gi-Oh!, No Game, No Life, Code Geass), at least off the top of my head, I can't think of any other anime that are specifically set in the world of a strategy video game—but please let me know if I'm forgetting any.

And even taking the video game-y-ness of it all out of the equation, while it's not to say they're non-existent, the list of anime that are even sort of about building up a civilization, town, kingdom, country, etc isn't as long as you might expect. So basically, despite what some of the basic information about it might make you think, Mynoghra's actually doing something pretty unique, all things considered. And if it continues down this path, it could be a good, satisfying scratch for a widely-overlooked itch within the realm of anime.

But alas, don't read all of that and let yourself get too excited about this anime just yet. Because this all leads us to Mynoghra's greatest con thus far: its weak execution isn't matching the strength of its ideas. To be fair: we're only three episodes in, and there's still more than plenty of time for this to change. And as always, I'd love nothing more than to dump a bunch of ketchup on my words so I can eat them. But at least as far as these introductory episodes go, none of the characters have displayed much, if anything, in the way of personality. The visuals are generic and unimpressive. And we've barely seen any storytelling. There's nothing really keeping me excited to watch what happens in the next episode. There's just no spice.

The lack of interesting characters, especially, is a disappointment. In what's probably the only moment we actually saw the faint glimmer of character or identity within them, our protagonists, Takuto (our isekai-ee) and Atou (his waifu) are not only aware that they're in the world of a game, but seem excited that they're going to be building an evil kingdom even if they've started out with some disadvantages. And it's hard to beat self-aware villains who relish being the baddies. But that was episode one—we haven't really seen that from them again since then, not in a way that amounts to anything substantial, at least.

I really hope that Mynoghra has just needed a few episodes to get itself set up and that it's going to get better moving forward, because done right, I think this could be super fun. The potential is very much there, it's just been getting lost in the shuffle to establish itself—or at least, I hope that it's just been getting lost and that we're going to stumble upon it soon. Maybe as the political intrigue ramps up when the protagonists become a much larger presence in their world, so too will the (much needed) excitement to be had in this anime.

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Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.