English Dub Review: Black Summoner: “Reincarnated Without Memories”

Overview: A young man now known as Kelvin Celsius (Van Barr Jr.), with the help of the goddess who reincarnated him, Melfina (Tia Ballard), must traverse a new fantasy world. 

Our Take: The title for the first episode of Summoner, if Isekai has been in your watching rotation for any substantial amount of time, pretty much tells you everything you need to know, initially. There is reincarnation, a fantasy world with mythical creatures, various job systems, a tiered rank system of adventurers, etc. At the center of the new world is Kelvin Celsius (Real hot name) who has been stripped of his memories at his request and thrust into it with a goddess, Melfina, who reincarnated him with S rank abilities as a Black Summoner, a very rare class. Right off the bat, there is nothing here that screams originality, with each of these story elements being pulled from various series in the genre. From the design of the starting city to the monsters, there isn’t even anything especially unique from a visual standpoint. 

With those criticisms in mind, it is not bad. Just not particularly inspired…yet. The one redeeming factor is the chemistry between Kelvin and Melfina. Tia Ballard brings so much sweet, over-the-top energy to the character that you can not help but love her. Kelvin is very much a basic, run of the mill protagonist. As you’d expect, he was probably a gamer and had a rough life with his amnesia leaving him as a classically blank slate to learn with. How Kelvin evolves as a result of his new experiences and/or from remembering or not from his past life will dictate how interesting he is and if he can shepherd a series. Although, he gets points for being a regular dude in actually showing an interest in women and not falling into the sexually abstinent cliché pitfalls that other leading protagonists do. Van Barr Jr. does a good job as Kelvin, especially in being embarrassed by Melfina. Although, overall, with the relatively basic material he has been given thus far, he can only do so much.  

A decent base is up and running, hopefully leading to more exciting adventures as Kelvin begins gathering his party in his adorable slime, which he can enhance with his already amazing abilities, an elf that is being sold and his reincarnation goddess that helps with exposition in explaining the rules of the world. Hopefully, the show can soon show us more than just stripped parts we have seen taken from dozens of other franchises in order to be S rank itself.