English Dub Review: Black Summoner: “New Family”

Overview: Kelvin (Van Barr Jr.) welcomes Rion (Kristi Rothrock) into the family by giving her a new companion and a worthy test to gauge her skills up to this point.

Our Take: There may be a new family member in Rion joining Kelvin’s party, however, in doing so it presents a lot of old ideas. We all know how much of an amazing badass Kelvin is, yet the huge influx of developments that continuously make him and everyone ridiculously overpowered make it feel mundane with that even extending to the servants through shared XP gain. Kelvin taming a wild wolf as a new companion for Rion or Sera and Gerard dispatching a whole forest of beasties offer no challenge whatsoever. As for Rion, while she is a cute addition, her lack of on screen progression and near instantaneous leaving up to S-rank skills is jarring with the breakneck pace being overwhelming.

With women dotting over and wanting to be with Kelvin and every man wanting to take his place, it is becoming mindless fluff and tiring overall in everyone constantly adoring and idolizing Kelvin. In all fairness, the Isekai genre loves to revisit their old stomping grounds narratively. Its lack of creativity could be forgiven if it was comedic or entertaining to watch, which it was in the beginning. However, it is starting to become less clever and repetitive as the series goes on, wearing out its welcome and failing to be funny or even fun to watch. 

Even Rion’s trials feel like hardly that with her taking out a group of assailants attacking the mansion with ease and no tension to speak of. At the very least, a coming war with various powerful figures plotting a takeover of other neighboring nations spices things up ever so slightly. However, with the run-of-the-mill way the plot lines and antagonists have been characterized up to this point, I would not put my money on them being any considerable challenge or of any real consequence, merely serving as glorified punching bags and more reason to shower the main protagonist with compliments.