The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra

Takuto Ira succumbed to illness at a young age and ended up reincarnated in a world that resembles the fantasy turn-based strategy game Eternal Nations. Not only did he reincarnate into his favorite game, but as the god who commands the evil civilization Mynoghra. With Mynoghra's beautiful hero unit, Sludge Witch Atou by his side, not even legendarily difficult race traits will stand in the way of restarting their civilization.

Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra is based on the light novel series by author Fehu Kazuno and illustrator Jun. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

After a few years as a critic, it's become easier to define light novel anime, especially isekai, by all the things they don't do rather than the things they do do. That's partially because I think most light novel isekai are amateurish paint-by-numbers doo doo, so when it avoids a standard trope I find annoying, i.e., stat menus, overpowered protagonists, and slavery, to name a few. They're so common, their absence is almost refreshing, like getting a sandwich without tomatoes or mayonnaise that I don't have to make a special order for. So when I'm thinking about what to say, Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra, I feel like I'm going over a checklist. Harem? No. Stat screens? Check, but at least they're a different genre than the norm. Sexy female underling who devotes herself to the protagonist from the get-go? Check. A discomfitingly relaxed attitude toward slavery? No, but it's still early.

I almost enjoyed it, too. It's kind of nice having an isekai that takes itself and the world seriously without being driven by the protagonist getting revenge. Even if he's ruling with an evil alignment, Takuto himself isn't evil. If anything, he's a sweet kid. He wants to feed a group of refugees and offer them a home without razing and despoiling the land. He hasn't quite reconciled the differences between playing a strategy game and ruling over a group of living, breathing individuals who are looking to him for leadership. At the same time, the dark elves accepting evil alignment means that they're now driven by hatred of their oppressors, rather than building a new home and escaping prejudice. That's pretty dark! I'm not sure the series will ever reconcile that tension, but it adds some juice to a bland genre. Maybe allow it to do something, if not new, that I haven't suffered through at least a dozen times. I was ready to throw out the checklist.

But then at the end of the episode, Takuto realizes he can generate anything from Earth; while it may come with a hefty extra mana cost, he's so overpowered that it makes little material difference. Suddenly, his scrappy little upstart nation has a huge advantage over the adjoining “good” kingdoms, and the checklist reasserted itself in my mind. Overpowered protagonist with insights into game mechanics that give him a leg up over his enemies? Check!

My interest? Uncheck.

Once a season, I get to eat a little crow as a treat. There'll be an isekai or LitRPG series that I'm totally ready to dismiss on principle, and then the first episode does something kind of fun or different. I'm forced to take a deep breath and say, “That actually wasn't too bad.”

Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra actually wasn't too bad. It's kind of like the opposite of Overlord, an anime I watched one episode of and didn't care for at all. Takuto wakes up in the world of Eternal Nations and finds himself face-to-face with the hot elf girl he romanced in-game—but he's still a scrawny teenager in his pajamas and not a scary dude in armor. They have a pre-existing relationship because she remembers what he said to her in character instead of him rewriting her personality to fall in love with him. Their domain is a crumbling stone throne in the middle of some woods.

Then they start spouting lines from the game and start cringing because… it is kind of cringe! Lines that read fine on a computer screen make them laugh uncomfortably when spoken out loud. Their whole kayfabe breaks down for a minute, and it's kind of charming: two teenagers LARPing in the woods, unsure of how seriously they should be taking this whole thing. Instead of having voiceover narration, they just speak their thoughts out loud to each other, which is actually adorable because they're operating on the same wavelength: it's kind of weird when games become real. This also makes their relationship feel more like a partnership than a doting subject and overlord—and Atou more like a person than a mewling fantasy as they discuss their strategies within how the game functions.

But even if it's a game for them, it's still deadly serious for the denizens of the world. They encounter dark elves coping with exile and genocide—and Takumi can't bring himself to act as the evil Overlord and feeds them instead. His altruism throws their belief system into disarray, creating tension between the prophesied apocalypse bringer and the being that fed them when they were hungry. That's right, actual thought is being put into the consequences of the protagonist's actions, instead of him just sailing through any conflicts that arise with a gormless smile and a wave of his overpowered hand.

What percentage of isekai have this level of thought put into them? Into translating the game's systems over other than endless stat screens and numbers going up? Communicating through character dialogue rather than endless narration of what's happening on screen? Not enough, that's for certain.

Aside from simply enjoying that a series is riffing on video-game mechanics and tropes that are interesting, for once, the thing I enjoyed the most about Apocalypse Bringer's premiere was the dynamic between Atou and Takuto. She's just an evil advisor doing her best to nurture a King of Ruin who can conquer the land and plunge it into a millennium of despair and darkness, and he's just a sweet-natured guy with a crush on his video-game waifu and a penchant for figuring out 4X strategy game conflicts. It's a match made in heaven, really, and the scenes where Atou is attempting to balance her King's reputation as a fearsome beast of blackhearted cruelty with Takuto's kindhearted nature are always fun.

Also, this second episode really digs into those 4X tropes more, which I was happy to indulge in. To put it in terms that a Civilization player might get, Takuto has unfortunately been reborn as Genghis Khan, but he's a guy who always goes for the Diplomacy victory. It's cool to see Takuto exploit diplomatic systems and refugee absorbing mechanics to build an empire built on forward-thinking progress and kindness, even when those aspirations run completely counter to the game's alignment system. When the Dark Elves of the forest join up with the King of Ruin, you see, their souls are transformed to match his Evil alignment, which hilariously produces an army of elves who are more than willing to slaughter their enemies and raze the land for its natural resources. Takuto isn't that kind of guy, though, which is a contradiction that may just end up breaking his citizens' brains.

If there's any major downside to this show so far, it is that Apocalypse Bringer can be lacking in presentation. I get that the very nature of Takuto's role means that he probably won't be on the frontlines of any battles any time soon, but surely we could spice up the direction of these dialogue scenes a bit, yes? So much of this episode consists of Takuto sitting down on his rocky throne and talking to people, and while I find the development of his plans interesting, there's no question that we could liven things up a whole lot more.

Still, I'm pretty delighted by Apocalypse Bringer, even if it is a proudly B-tier little production. It gives me hope that we might someday see anime riffs on other video-game staples that are infinitely more interesting than some generic fantasy MMORPG.

There was exactly one thing that interested me going into the premiere of - everyone take a deep breath, now - Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra: World Conquest Starts with the Civilization of Ruin: It's description promised me a “Reincarnated in the World of My Favorite Game” anime where the game in question isn't just some crappy ripoff of Dragon Quest or The Elder Scrolls. More specifically, it promised a world where the main character's new powers all manifest in the form of mechanics from 4X strategy games. For anyone who doesn't know, the X's stand for “Expand, Explore, Exploit, Exterminate”, and 4X games involve ruling over nations and pursuing victory against rival empires in all four of those different arenas. The most popular example of a 4X game is probably Civilization, a series that I've sunk hundreds of hours into over the years.

So, even though I wasn't eager to jump into yet another fantasy anime about a reincarnated superbeing with an RPG menu and all that, I was curious to see how a cartoon would adapt the specific nuances and considerations of a Civ-like experience into a serialized TV show. As it turns out, the end product is not really that different from the billions of similar series that have come before it, but that's okay. Apocalypse Bringer still manages to squeak by on what novelty it is able to bring to the table, along with the general quality of its execution.

The first good sign that Apocalypse Bringer delivers is how the opening scene, where our hero Takuto meets his favorite game character, Atou, ends up being pretty charming. The two are a down-to-earth (“down to Mynoghra?”) and likeable pair, which makes it all the funnier when they have to pull off Takuto's “intimidating ruler with aspirations of global conquest” routine. The show also finds ways to work in the parts of 4X games that make the most sense for a narrative like this, such as bargaining with rival nations and forging tenuous diplomatic ties. Granted, those are the sorts of events that occur in most works of fantasy about the ruler of a nation, but still, the show frames its areas of focus in a manner that feels just fresh enough to stand out from the pack.

I also appreciate the show's ever-so-slight dark fantasy vibes. Similar to this season's Clevatess, it is an aesthetic that makes the world feel grungier and more lived-in. We're not stuck watching an animated adaptation of an incredibly chintzy theme-park MMO. Apocalypse Bringer is unlikely to knock anyone's socks off, but it can still stand proud as one of a surprising number of shows this season that managed to outdo my expectations by being pretty decent.

I suppose it was inevitable that Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra would backslide into standard isekai pabulum at some point. I probably should even have seen that it would happen in episode two, given that episode one largely avoided a lot of it. And in all fairness, this is still much less egregious than many another similar series: there are no stat screens and no one seems to have levels, both of which are very welcome exclusions. But this episode is a lot more focused on lazy worldbuilding via in-game encyclopedia entries and excessive explanations, and that brings the entire thing down.

There are still some good elements. The way that the dark elves shift in classification is shown makes a lot of sense – now that they're “evil,” they allow themselves to feel anger and resentment about what they've gone through, which may even be a little healthier than just ignoring their own mental and emotional pain. The gag about the elves only seeing Atou and Takuto as a red-eyed temptress and an ill-defined blob of black energy remains amusing, especially when vestiges of Takuto's actual emotions come through via how his glowing eyes are drawn. The idea of their appearances being dictated by the elves' preconceptions of them is a good one, and I'm hoping that as the series goes on, both Atou and Takuto will start to look more human to their new populace. There's a decent chance of that, given that Gia in particular is utterly floored by how nice his king's actions are. How many evil overlords mandate reforestation after clear-cutting?

The not-so-hidden goodness of Takuto and Atou is likely to be the major driving force of this series. The dark elves are starting to figure that out. The post-credits introduction of a saintess murmuring about bad things happening in other places means that she's likely to meet up with the Mynoghra folks at some point in the not-too-distant future. At this point, she'll figure out that “evil” is relative when it comes to them. (If we're lucky, she'll see Takuto in a third way unrelated to the dark energy or his regular appearance.) This may not be as interesting as I at first hoped it was, but I still think it's worth a third episode to see if it retreats from the standard isekai crumbs. It doesn't have to be completely different or innovative…just more than it was in this sophomore episode.

I was tentatively hopeful going into this show because it's based on a novel licensed by Cross Infinite World, and more often than not, I agree with their taste. That makes it mildly embarrassing to admit that I haven't gotten around to reading the source material yet, but despite some very familiar genre elements, Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra is off to a pretty good start.

Protagonist Takuto may have died in our world and ended up in another, but that world is merely based on – or similar to – his favorite RPG rather than being the game. That's interesting enough on its own, but the real twist is that his favorite character, Atou, has also transmigrated to this new world, and she's nearly certain that it's not her own. She also recognizes Takuto from the time he spent playing, which indicates that there's an awareness between game and reality, and that, therefore, Atou's world is a real one to her. That both of them have been plucked up and dropped off is a way for them to grow beyond what the game allowed, and that has some real potential for development.

Also worth noting is that despite Atou seeing Takuto as himself (a skinny teen in pajamas), others see him as a terrifying figure made of black smoke and static. Even after Takuto gives food to the starving dark elves, they still see him this way, meaning that it's not something he can disprove easily. To them, he's a horrible being from dark legends, and poor Gia practically has an existential breakdown over the fact that the Dread Monster buried him in food for his people, doubling the amount when he heard that there were children among them. Rather than becoming an evil Overlord or a hero, Takuto just wants to live a nice life and help people, and if Gia's reaction is anything to go by, that's not going to be easy. Even the world may be against him on this.

Feeling more like genre fantasy than isekai, I think this show stands to win over viewers who are fans of the former but tired of the latter. Its plot is off to a decent start, there are very few game mechanics, and I like the way it looks; it isn't gorgeous, but it sets a good scene, and Atou's dress is more interesting than most henchwomen's without being fussy. I'm glad I gave it a chance, and I'm going to move the novels up in my TBR pile.