In a discord channel with some other folks I know, I did a big “info dump” (a.k.a. “wall-of-text”) on a Light Novel / Anime series titled (as you could guess from this post), “So I’m a Spider, So What?“. (The title, transliterated, is “Kumo Desu ga Nani Ka?”) I first watched it when season 1 of the anime came around. [It’s since had a second season and, unfortunately, is probably unlikely to get a third.]
The story is a standard sort of “isekai” (translates as “other world”) story, where the main character (or characters) get, somehow, transferred to a world that isn’t “Earth”. [There are various mechanisms by which this happens, one of the standard tropes being hit by a vehicle, sometimes known as “Truck-kun” because of how often it happens.] In the case of this story, it’s an entire classroom’s worth of Japanese High School students who get isekai’ed into another world. Most of them are reborn as humans. Our main POV character (and protagonist), however … is reborn as (yep, you guessed it) … a spider.
Not just any spider, though. Certainly not a tiny little one that’s a house-pest (or not, depending on your perspective). Nope, she is reborn as a dungeon monster spider in the “Great Elroe Labyrinth”. And, unlike all of her classmates who get reasonably comfortable childhoods, etc., her life is pretty much a constant struggle to survive.
If you’re familiar with any sort of RPG (Role Playing Game) setting, though … beating enemies and such is the main way to “level up” … and get stronger. And that is exactly what our protagonist (known colloquially as “Kumoko” or “Kumoko-chan” – “spider girl”) does. She levels up … and levels up … and levels up … to the point where she becomes a legendary-class monster (think “end-level raid boss”).
I recently finished reading the third volume of the translated light novels (shout out to BookWalker Global for where I grabbed them, electronically – no, still not shilling). From the perspective of the original work the anime dropped and shuffled a lot of stuff. I understand why it did, but, as always, the original work is better.
Bottom line – If you’re an RPG-gamer and like to read… definitely check this one out. I think you’ll be happy. If you’d prefer to just sit and watch, the two cours (seasons) of the anime are available on CrunchyRoll (again – no shill … I subscribe and have been happy with the service).
And now, let me pull in all of the stuff I wrote elsewhere about this. Warning, this is very spoiler-heavy. Not in a way that ruins the story at all, but it does make some of the twists apparent right from the start.
Probably the biggest confusing factor (which is one of the bits that clicked) is that there’s actually TWO separate timelines being shown in the anime (and also occurring in the LNs). This does come out a bit more explicitly further on in the anime, but, by that point, it had, honestly, gotten so garbled it was hard to keep track of things.
Ok – the anime … first cour is ok, but the second cour is … I’ll be generous and say “sub-standard”. There was clearly a LOT of rushing of episodes and some of the extended CG scenes (almost to the point of being entire episodes) are just plain UGLY … which is unfortunate as there’s a somewhat interesting story in there.
[Binge-watching the entire two cours definitely helps … like, a lot! One of the big problems is that the two different timelines, until you’ve seriously wrapped your head around it, is confusing as hell, and because the show does nothing to help with the realization there are two, it just comes across as a dumpster fire.]
So – what the hell two timelines are there? Ok – now to get into the meat of the series.
Basic premise is isekai, right? Classroom full of students get (somehow) nuked into a new fantasy world … one of them is reincarnated as a spider and … hilarity ensues, right?
The key point, which is barely acknowledged until it gets hinted at later in the first cour and then made much more explicit later is … EVERYONE gets reincarnated at the same time. They all become their pre-birth selves simultaneously.
All of the “cool” stuff in the first cour is about our protagonist (aka Kumoko/Kumoko-chan) surviving as a lowly spider dungeon mob and leveling / skilling up to become a supreme boss monster. There’s a second plot thread about the classroom kids who reincarnate as humans (except for the one dragon girl and the elf) going to the academy, etc., etc.
The part that is not clear until later is that these two plot threads ARE NOT happening at the same time. While Kumoko is a level 1 spider fighting for her life, everyone else isn’t even quite born yet (gestation for spiders being shorter than for humans, apparently). So pretty much ALL of her back story is happening years and years before the human story occurs.
[This complicates matters, of course, because you wind up spending a bunch of time trying to figure out why the hell you should care about the humans at all. I mean … they’re not even in the title, right?]
If you didn’t watch it the first time around – or did and sort of went, “Eh…” – you might want to give it a try with this little tidbit of info buried in your head… remember that almost all of the human stuff is about 14-15 years AFTER Kumoko’s dungeon adventures … and suddenly things start to make a lot more sense … as well as making the story a bit more interesting.
Unfortunately, it still can’t fix the seriously crappy CG in the second half nor the utterly rushed final couple of episodes, but it definitely makes the show more watchable and more enjoyable (even beyond how much I liked watching it the first time).
Which is to say … I enjoyed watching this the first time around … but I liked it for the “wrong” reasons (watching Kumoko figure out how to survive and get stronger), rather than for the bigger story contained inside.
As one of the tvtropes bits notes, the amount of chess-mastering that goes on to enable the “later” story to make sense in light of the earlier happenings is seriously impressive.
— Me
