The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>>

Light wants to be the greatest adventurer. He and his friend Lena eat skill fruits, which results in death if eaten more than once. Lena gains the Sword Saint skill and quickly becomes an S-rank adventurer, while Light gets the useless Nut Master skill, which only helps with nut farming. One day, Light accidentally eats a second skill fruit. However, instead of dying, he gains a second skill, Sword Saint.

Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>> is based on a manga by Hanyuu and Air Matsukoto. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

When it comes to genre fiction—especially fiction in an already well-worn niche like the “overpowered fantasy adventure” genre—the question I ask myself is always the same. What sets this story apart from its peers? How does it twist tropes and cliches to make something new? The most damning thing an anime can do is not answer this question within its first episode… which brings us to Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>>.

This first episode is nothing but the standard tropes, and even those are done in the laziest way possible. We have the childhood friend/love interest that likes our hero Light because…? And he is suddenly living with a cute little-sister character because…? Him getting a second skill is catastrophically bad because…? If the story doesn't bother to answer the most basic questions needed to connect with the plot or characters on any level, I don't see why I should give it a second thought.

Alright, maybe I'm being too hard on Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>>. It does have some slightly redeeming qualities. It actually looks decent. There are no wonky proportions and the level of detail stays more or less consistent. Oh, and then there's the other fruit-power-based fantasy anime in recent memory, The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made was way worse than this one as it failed at its humor on nearly every possible level. Then again, saying it's not as bad as an infamously terrible anime is certainly damning with faint praise.

In the end, this is an anime that doesn't even try to set itself apart from the pack. It wants to hit every cliche it can for those who can't get enough of this sub-genre and do nothing more. It's bland, predictable, and I will likely never think about it again after I finish writing this sentence.

Well, this is awkward. As I was watching this episode, I became utterly convinced that I'd read the source material. I could predict each and every story beat and plot point, guess the character reactions, everything. So imagine my shock when I looked it up and realized that I haven't read the manga and that the light novel isn't even legally available in English. Was I having a psychic episode? Or is Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>> just that painfully generic?

Much as I'd love for it to be the former, my money's on the latter. There's almost nothing that stands out here in either a negative or positive way. You've got the ambitious hero, Light, whose ambitions are thwarted by his gods-given skill before they can start, his winsome childhood friend Lena, who gets the coveted skill, and the inexplicable loli, Ayla, who appears to exist as the episode says, “for reasons.” She's also dumber than a brick, which she apparently needs to be for the plot, because it's her inexplicable inability to see a giant poison label on the boxes of skill fruits that allows for the plot twist (or “twist”) to be revealed: that Light's skill isn't so useless after all. Also, she thinks that the skill fruit looks tasty, but they're a weird green color with purple spots, nature's way of screaming, “DO NOT EAT” at us.

Am I being unkind to this episode? Possibly, it's a bit hard not to be when every word Ayla's voice actor utters makes me want to scream (something about the pitch, although I've definitely heard worse), and the art and animation aren't doing anything to help the story. Even if we disregard the way the skill fruit looks, including the fact that the way they're drawn seems to indicate that they ought to be peeled, though no one does, this visually proclaims itself to be nothing new in the RPG-inspired anime oeuvre. But there are a few elements that could indicate a better story going forward. The nun who forces poor Lena into a career path could make a very good villain, and it's clear that by the time Light finds Lena again, she's been through a lot, with the next episode preview possibly indicating that the leader of her party has been abusing her. It's at odds with the goofy tone of both opening and ending themes (which feature a lot of oh-so-quirky dancing), and it may be an indication that in terms of story, at least, I'm selling this short. It may be worth another episode just to see what the deal with Lena is and if Light's line about “my second life” is an indication of isekai or just the way he's framing his skill, but I'm not sure I can be bothered to give it that chance.

The depressing thing about Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>> is that the single most notable thing about it is its title, which is in the running for the award of “Most Obnoxiously Overlong and Stupidly Formatted Title Ever,” though it will be hard-pressed to beat American Reincarnation★Love Alliance. America Was Expelled to Another World, and Reincarnated as a Blonde-Haired Girl (Along With Japan♪) And Headshots Monsters With Her Gun Summon Skill! What!? The Earth's in Danger and You Want Us To Go Back? Oh, Too Late, Die! Yes, this is a real title for a real book, and no, we are no longer worthy of God's light. We lost out on that privilege the moment we let that other fruit-based abomination loose into the world. It's the Pink Gorilla Wife's world now, and we're just living in it.

Anyways, outside of the dumb title, Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>> doesn't really have anything else going for it, which is a little funny when you consider that it is trying to throw everything at the audience in the desperate hope that something might stick. We've got a bland dweeb who has been cursed by his generic RPG-world with a useless skill that could never help anyone else in combat, except he also has an extra special superpower that lets him eat as many Skill Fruits as he wants to stack up on the actually important skills, and he has a little orphan waif who has that “Analyze” skill that these shows are so obsessed with, which means that the show has managed to somehow cram the “Loyal RPG Pet” and “Cute Adopted Daughter Figure” tropes into the same character.

Despite the overwhelming amount of ingredients that Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>> is cramming into its stewpot, the only flavor that emerges is one of oppressive blandness. The show is not attempting to utilize any of these cliches in creative or interesting ways, nor is it trying to supplement its anemic story with spectacular production values, funny jokes, or exceptionally likable characters. As is the case with so many anime that get cranked out of the Web Novel Fantasy Slop Factories these days, this show seems content to disguise its plagiarism just enough to avoid the ire of any copyright lawyers. Good for it, I guess. We've all got to pay the rent somehow, especially now that the Corpos are sending their A.I. deathsquads after our jobs. Hey, there's something I can say in this show's favor: It was, so far as I can tell, probably made by real humans! I still don't think you should waste your time watching it, but credit where it is due.

Something unique about Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>> is that unlike other LitRPG slop, which tend to pull all their ideas from video games or each other, regurgitating the same ideas and pooping back and forth forever, it steals its idea from a super popular non-gamic anime! Ya yo ya yo, anyone?

I will say that as far as junky LitRPG anime go, Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>> is pretty inoffensive. Light is a nice enough boy who, despite his disappointment, doesn't seethe with resentment at receiving what he justifiably thinks will be a useless skill. The small child character isn't sexualized, either. The female character designs show considerably more skin than is practical for adventurers, but they're cute and unique enough that they didn't draw a single sigh or eye roll from me. There's no slavery, no clunky fantasy racism. I even enjoyed the theme song!

At the same time, it should be telling that when I'm talking about the merits of a show, I'm describing all the things it lacks. Because, you see, Bogus Skill <<fruitmaster>> doesn't have a lot going for it. It's a mix of genre cliches, like people getting assigned particular RPG-like skills that determine the rest of their lives, the protagonist getting a seemingly useless skill that turns out to be incredibly powerful, and other seemingly random contrivances, like how he ended up taking care of a young child for no reason. The whole world is a house of cards that falls apart if you blow on it; you'd think the skill fruits were tightly controlled, considering how eating one is a rite of passage and they're extremely dangerous. Ayla doesn't even know what they look like, even when her guardian is growing them?

Even if I'm CinemaSins-dinging the story (because let's be real nobody, who's watching it cares), it's just not very well presented. The animation is full of shortcuts, including during the sparse action scenes, and Light's sword is extraordinarily ugly. I can't say for sure if the writing is bad, the translation was clunky, or both, but the dialogue sure didn't sparkle.

Bonus unique thing about it: I have to copy/paste the title because the brackets interfere with the HTML! It's really annoying!