When a series, anime or otherwise, presents the story in an untraditional way, it can be a double-edged sword. Films like Memento or 500 Days of Summer are iconic examples of when it’s done well, but fans would be hard-pressed to find many examples in anime. In comes So I’m a Spider, So What?, also known as Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? This Isekai series follows a class of typical students reincarnated in a magical world, as the standard isekai goes. What sets this series apart from others is that the main protagonist is reincarnated as a spider while most of her classmates are reincarnated as humans instead.
Hiro Wakaba, also known as Kumoko, is the titular protagonist, moving the story along with meme humor and impeccable style. Her classmates are fairly forgettable, except for Shun, Hugo, and their teacher, Oka-chan. The names in this series can be pretty confusing since each of the characters has their name from their original world, their name from the new world, and nicknames. Viewers may have also been confused by the way the timeline is presented, for better or worse. Throughout the series, the focus shifts between two perspectives: Kumoko, and the other students. While all the events are presented to the viewer as if they all take place concurrently, the events that the students experience actually take place 15 years after the events that Kumoko experiences. So, the story basically gives viewers whiplash jumping 15 years forward or backward every time it shifts from Kumoko to the students and vice versa.
Kumoko’s Timeline, AKA the Good Part
Wakaba, henceforth known as Kumoko, was reincarnated in a spider form, but the humans were reincarnated as newborns. Kumoko spends a large amount of time grinding through different levels of the underground labyrinth where she was “born”. At one point, she evolves into a Zoa Ele, a creature humans fear as a harbinger of bad fortune, and gains dual perception. Dual perception gives her two individual minds to essentially focus on different functions. They’re basically clones that exist within her mind. Her dual perception evolves at two later points, giving her four individual minds total.
After leveling her taboo skill up to level 10, she sees a vision that the world is heading toward an apocalypse. She becomes committed to gaining enough power to save the world. This moment motivates her, for the rest of the season, to become OP. Kumoko meets Sophia, one of her previous classmates, in baby form and learns that Sophia reincarnated as a vampire. She saves Sophia’s traveling party which leads to an alliance between her and Sophia’s human hometown later on. Kumoko meets the demon lord Ariel at a later point, but Ariel destroys her body in an instant and Kumoko escapes with only her head, literally, because of an immortality skill she gained earlier. After ignoring requests from the spider mother to return to the labyrinth, Kumoko is hunted by her and defeats her with knowledge and power one of Kumoko’s extra minds gathered.
Meanwhile, tensions have been seething between Sophia’s hometown and a neighboring kingdom that wants to strongarm them for no real reason. After some envoys from the neighboring kingdom attack Kumoko, she kills them and the kingdom uses it as an excuse to go to war with Sophia’s small hometown. Kumoko joins the fray and massacres many of the kingdom’s soldiers for that good ol’ human exp that monsters love, until the demon lord Ariel appears. Viewers get a glimpse at a young Julius, future “hero” of the kingdom and Shun’s older brother, before Ariel vaporizes Kumoko with a powerful attack.
Kumoko manages to survive again by basically reincarnating from one of the many spider eggs she’s laid since evolving, except this time she has a humanoid upper half and arachnid lower body. She rolls up just in time to save Sophia and her family’s butler from a cyborg version of Potimas, the elven chief introduced in the human timeline before this point of the anime. She deduces that the technology behind Potimas’ cyborg copy is the same technology that’ll lead to the apocalyptic vision she received. Kumoko has a tough fight until Ariel shows up and backhands Potimas’ copy to pieces. Kumoko and Ariel bury the hatchet, then join forces to defeat Potimas, along with Sophia and her butler whom she turned into a vampire.
The Human Timeline, AKA the Worst Part
Up to this point, all the students who reincarnated as humans have still been infants, just like Sophia. Fifteen years after the last scene in Kumoko’s timeline, the human students are now in a magic school, fully aware of both their old past and their present lives in this new world up to the beginning of their story in the anime. The first key moment is when Shun’s class is attacked by an earth dragon, which Shun defeats, but Hugo is easily knocked out by the dragon beforehand and begins to develop a hatred for Shun as well as his other classmates. Hugo is a textbook hater and the series makes no attempt to flesh him out as a character, but “haters gotta hate”.
After Hugo attacks Shun later on and suffers an embarrassing defeat by Oka-chan, Sophia, fifteen years older than in the last scene in Kumoko’s timeline, approaches him and promises to help him get revenge on his previous classmates. After Shun’s older brother dies, most likely at Kumoko’s hands, Shun gains the hero title and plans are discussed for him to quit the academy. With help from Sophia and Shun’s other older brother Cylis, Hugo hypnotizes Shun’s sister into killing the king and launches a coup. Seeing a theme here? The human timeline has far too many characters and many of them are rather insignificant except as story devices never to be seen again once they’ve served their purpose.
Shun escapes with the rest of his allies, before venturing to the elf village where Oka-chan believes they will be safe from Hugo and his army for a while. This doesn’t last long and the elves prepare for battle. So it’s Shun and his elf supporters against Hugo and his army. Hugo’s forces attack the elf village and Shun absolutely disgraces Hugo yet again in a one-on-one duel, but Sophia isn’t having what Hugo had. Shun can’t lay a single hit on her.
Sophia confesses that she was using Hugo all along as nothing but a pawn to attack the elves. Feeling ashamed, Hugo attacks Sophia. As Sophia is about to kill Hugo, Kumoko appears to stop her and everyone pretty instantly recognizes her as Wakaba. Thus ends the first season of So, I’m a Spider, So What? It’ll be interesting to see how Kumoko developed in that fifteen-year gap or what will happen between her and her classmates now, with them being on opposing sides. Sadly, it seems pretty unlikely for a second season of So I’m a Spider, So What? to come out, which isn’t much of a surprise considering the poor animation, poor dialogue, and poor story that characterized all the human portions of the timeline.