English Dub Season Review: The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me? Season One



The Isekai genre continues to dominate the anime scene, even in the middle of a global pandemic. It can be easy to follow a trend in order to sell more of your story, but there are going to be some who just try to get the bare minimum of work to qualify. Such is the case with “The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?”, which seems like it tacked on its token Isekai tropes so that it could barely qualify for the category. Our story follows a former Japanese salaryman who wakes up in another world as someone else, as is the case for so many other transported heroes of this genre. Only instead of dying randomly or being transported due to magic, this guy gets there simply by falling asleep. But he’s not starting in this new world in the lap of luxury, as his new family are nobles who are long past their peak of social status. Even worse, he’s been reborn as Well, their youngest son of eight, meaning he has no chance of inheriting their estate, not that he’d want it anyway. Luckily he also has insane amounts of magic power, allowing him to forge his own path and prove to society that it doesn’t matter that you were born the youngest, just that you were born with super powers!

Though in all seriousness, something I’ve noticed in watching several different Isekai shows is that the new arrival to that world tends to bring with them some new wisdom that helps to change the mindset of the residents, often for the better. Sometimes its about being kind to scary creatures, other times it’s being true to one’s morals despite public shaming, and yet others it’s simply kicking a lot of ass. In Well’s case, he doesn’t really do much to change other people’s minds other than to get them to follow him and his increasing power and influence. In fact, this show’s philosophy seems to be weirdly pro-monarchy and feudalism, as Well doesn’t end up trying to change much about his new home’s archaic way of thinking and government, especially since his rise to power comes from him fitting in quite well into that system. Getting numerous riches and titles, engaged on first sight, and even obtaining concubines is totally fine as he soon finds out, and while he seems momentarily surprised, he tends to accept all of this without question soon after.

I could go into the other characters but…what’s the point? They’re all barely characters at all, only check boxes for the expected series of tropes for these sorts of cast, none of which have much else to do other than fall in line with Well. His main party mostly have the same issue of being impacted by being born as younger siblings, but this quickly becomes a non-issue. In fact, despite being in the title, the inheritance and birth order don’t factor much into the obstacles the characters face until the last few episodes, and even then mainly to show how those who think it has any importance are doomed to fail anyway. But that’s not really news to anyone in this modern era any more than “don’t marry someone you just met” was a hot take in Frozen…except that Well DOES get engaged to someone he just met, so even that’s out the window.

This show is a power fantasy, pure and simple, but not even a fun one of those. You can get away with that when it’s at least cool to look at or the characters are fun to see interact or fight or the plot is interesting enough, but I would be lying if I said “The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?” had anything remotely like that in its twelve episodes. One can only hope this is the last we’ll see of it, or at least wait a while before trying to re-adapt it (since apparently this wasn’t a great adaptation anyway, so not even fans of the source material seem to care much for it). I guess this only amounted to being a waste of everyone’s time, even the well picked English Dub cast, who were probably glad to get work with everything happening now. Not even a pandemic can make this show tolerable, which probably says everything it needs to right there.