Roll Over and Die, a grimdark fantasy series about a girl who drags herself and her girlfriend out of slavery, won’t be winning awards for storytelling or animation, but it will be getting a regular watch from me as the solid-so-far anime airs on Crunchyroll this season. I’ve dabbled in the novels the series is based on – a breezy read with decent prose – and as lit RPG junk food goes, I’d put this one in the coveted “not bad” tier, head and shoulders above the usual glut of fantasy slop.
The series’ full title betrays its trope-y origins: Roll Over and Die: I Will Fight for an Ordinary Life with My Love and Cursed Sword. It’s also worth looking at the previous release from studio ACGT, Berserk of Gluttony, which bears a remarkable resemblance to Roll Over and Die but, in my eyes, lacks the few things that meaningfully set this one apart from its many, many contemporaries. However, also like Berserk of Gluttony, it looks pretty alright in motion and the character designs shine through.
The first episode of Roll Over and Die will feel familiar to my fellow ‘any port in a storm’ fantasy gluttons, but let me assure you that we are merely peering into the abyss before the plunge. Heroine Flum Apricot, divinely chosen to join a band of heroes in the anti-demon war despite her weak constitution, is betrayed and sold to a slaver. Seconds from a grisly death, fate hands her the titular cursed sword and she learns that her RPG-grade affinity, Reversal, turns any curses applied to her into powerful abilities. Bing, bang, boom, we’re off to the adventurer’s guild to start a new life, with another former slave – who’s never known freedom – trailing behind us.
It’s not just that Roll Over and Die is capable of wholeheartedly calling slavery bad – a low bar that an embarrassing number of fantasy anime fail to clear. Rather, it is simultaneously as ghoulish and depraved as many edgy series think they are, yet it doesn’t linger on this to excess or extort it for sex appeal, and when needed it cuts through all that nastiness with a little sunshine. This world sucks – it could suck peanut butter through a McDonald’s straw – but for once our main character does not. She isn’t a freak, a miscreant, a genius wise beyond her 16 years, a prodigy doing everything effortlessly, or a pervert. What a treat.
Keeping the big spoilers chambered for now, I can say that Roll Over and Die takes the golden rule of challenging your protagonist to a pretty ugly extreme while building out a nightmarish canopy of lore hanging over this deceptively small story. There’s a cosmic, almost existential sheen to to its aberrant fixations. It’s an exceedingly – but, thankfully, decreasingly – rare yuri series, it avoids the usual fantasy anime pitfall of rapidly devolving into stakes-free harem garbage, and it actually has something to say about the way this world treats women.
Even if fantasy anime weren’t so dire on average – for every Frieren, there’s 1,000 tasteless power fantasies – Roll Over and Die would still stand out for its clear voice and tangible grit. Episode one has earned it over 2,200 user reviews averaging 4.7 out of 5 stars on Crunchyroll, and, flanked by yet more indistinguishable isekai, it’s getting an enthusiastic thumbs up from me.
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