Mathias, the world’s most powerful magician has achieved everything he can in life within the limits of the weak magical crest he was born with. Still unsatisfied and wanting to learn more and more powerful magic, he decides to reincarnate himself to get the optimal crest to achieve his ambitions. When he does reincarnated, a thousand years or more into his future he’s happy to see that he has got it, but surprised to discover it is now considered the weakest crest. Something has gone wrong with the world’s common sense and only one thing can be responsible: demons!
Shikkaku Mon no Saikyou Kenja (The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest) looks like an isekai wishfulfillment fantasy, just lacking the protagonist being from Earth rather than their own world’s past. The world is the same sort of medievaloid Dragon Quest derived fantasy world, complete with demons, magical schools and adventurer guilds. Mathias himself is standard isekai protagonist B, overpowered but dismissed because his powers don’t fit preconcieved notions of how to use magic. This turns out to be the result of centuries of behind the scenes manipulation of magical knowledge to weaken the world for a demonic invasion, as Mathias discovers when he goes to magical school in the first episode. There he meets Lurie and Alma, a swords woman and an archer, with which he forms a part. Lurie and Mathias immediately form a crush on each other, which Alma likes to tease her childhood friend with. Together they go through various magical school adventures before the series turns into the war against the demons, with them in the frontline as they travel the kingdom uncovering their plots.
To be honest, this wasn’t a very good series. Plot and setting were cliched from the start while the execution was pedestrian at best. There was little tension throughout as Mathias was so clever overpowered most of the time none of his opponents were a great challenge until the final couple of episodes. Neither the animation nor the character design was up to making any of it interesting either. The only reason I stuck it out was Iris, the dragon Mathias had once defeated in his previous life. In the manga version she was an Id driven gremlin only interested in eating and fighting, doing her stuff in the background while the plot happened in front of her. But she too was neutered in this adaptation. Had Winter 2022 been a better season I wouldn’t have started this, let alone have finished it.
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