History YMMV / SoImASpiderSoWhat

** Among the Reincarnators (side-characters compared to Komoko, even in-universe by others), Feirune is by far the most popular and liked. In large part this is because, unlike her more generic Reincarnator friends that she hangs out with, she has the most amount of story use due to being reincarnated as a Dragon over being a human or humanoid. Her humanoid form is also liked for being cute in design as well.

* LoveToHate: Even though D is a completely vile character, she's also very popular precisely ''because'' she's so completely horrible. Part of this is due to not knowing just how vile she is immediately, coming off more as a {{troll}} than a {{Jerkass God|s}}. Her banter with Komoko early on is very entertaining.

* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: The ding that heralds Komoko's LevelUpFillUp and the following "Experience Threshold Reached". It's hard not to cheer.

* {{Padding}}: One of the more common complaints about the series is that any scene that does not focus on Komoko is boring, because the other cast members, such as Shun's party, are more generic isekai characters, and thus not as interesting as her. This complaint is especially loud in the anime, because the CompressedAdaptation makes them appear ''even more'' generic due to cutting out important character-building scenes between them.

* EvilIsSexy: Ariel, Shiraori and Sophia are demons and monsters who plan to subjugate humanity and they are extremely attractive.

** "[[EvilIsPetty D]]" is a powerful goddess charged with managing the Underworld, but is [[TheGodsMustBeLazy lazy]] and [[JerkassGods sadistic]]. Following a war with the dragons that left the Other World depleted of its magical energy and on the brink of collapse, D--who could have simply replenished it by herself--implemented the System, a JRPG-style cycle of reincarnation that only prolonged the Other World's degradation at the cost of millions of souls. Growing bored, D snuck off to Earth and masqueraded as a Japanese high-school student named Wakaba Hiiro until a Hero and Demon Lord destroyed the classroom in an attempt to assassinate her. [[YourSoulIsMine Collecting the souls]] of her classmates, teacher, and a spider, D inserted them into the System while altering their reincarnations to play cruel pranks on them. When the spider--[[Characters/SoImASpiderSoWhatKumoko Kumoko]]--apotheosized into a goddess intent on avenging the suffering D had inflicted on everyone, D named her Shiraori to prevent her from doing so while sabotaging her plans to save the Other World. In the light novel, D further brainwashed Shiraori into slavishly falling in love with her to ensure her loyalty. When Shiraori is left in a severely-weakened state after dismantling the System, D captures her intending to keep her as a slave for further amusement.

** ''Busty Greedy Spider'' [[labelnote:Explanation]]Quite a few fans misread the title of the anime's 2nd opening theme, "Bursty Greedy Spider". It helps that [[BoobsOfSteel Shiraori's chest size]] makes the misread version not exactly wrong.[[/labelnote]]

** There's a wider similar criticism regarding all the Shun and humans plot, especially in the Anime version, because the anime version cuts out a lot of human scenes that were present in the light novel. These characters are supposed to, by this point, have lived in this new world for 16 years. Almost as long, if not longer, than they lived in Japan. Furthermore they were born with all their memories and sentience. The anime never once addresses this aspect of their lives, instead treating it as though all of them were your typical isekai characters who only recently arrived in the new world. In the anime, Shun acts as a cookie cutter Isekai protagonist who seems to know ''nothing'' about the world he's in, and the rest of the cast save only a few characters are the same way. CompressedAdaptation hits them so hard that none of them act like they've been living this new life for over a decade, which makes the entire plot point about them being reincarnated a fairly useless plot point since the story could easily have just they awoke inside new bodies and the story wouldn't change at all except for the monster characters like Sophia.

** [[ItsAllAboutMe Potimas Harrifenas]]'s [[MadScientist unethical experiments]] with [[TheLifestream MA energy]] in [[ImmortalityImmorality pursuit of immortality]] led to the creation of supernatural demihumans and predatory monsters; turned his daughter Ariel into a human-spider hybrid; and sparked a war between humans and dragons that led to most of the world's MA energy being siphoned--leaving it on the brink of implosion. Evolving himself into an elf, Potimas grew fearful of divine retribution and hid himself away, using clones and cyborg doppelgängers to continue his experiments in secret. Millennia later, Potimas discovered his second daughter Filimøs was the reincarnation of a human from another world and tricked her into helping him capture the other reincarnates, intending to sacrifice them all [[GodhoodSeeker to attain godhood]]. When one of the reincarnates, Kumoko, allied with Ariel to oppose him, Potimas activated an anti-dragon superweapon and attempted to self-destruct its core, which Kumoko consumed to apotheosize into the goddess Shiraori.

* AcceptableTargets: The bandits Kumoko fights regularly in the second arc are revealed to be {{slaver|yIsASpecialKindOfEvil}}s, making it easy for the audience to not care as she kills them in [[BlackComedy hilariously gruesome ways]].

** Speaking of Aoi Yuuki, this isn't the first time she's been a [[WesternAnimation/SpiderManIntoTheSpiderVerse spider girl]]. Also, its not her first time [[Literature/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil reincarnating in a]] CrapsackWorld [[Literature/TheSagaOfTanyaTheEvil and being bothered by single letter God.]]

* AuthorsSavingThrow: Many readers of the original web novel pointed out that despite being mentally thirty years old due to living two lives, the reincarnated students acted more like typical teenagers. In one "D-sensei" chapter the god declared this was due to sheltered upbringings ensuring they had no need to mentally mature.

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** Many readers of the original web novel pointed out that despite being mentally thirty years old due to living two lives, the reincarnated students acted more like typical teenagers. In one "D-sensei" chapter the god declared this was due to sheltered upbringings ensuring they had no need to mentally mature.
** The early part of the web novel was criticized due to the lack of character interactions and Kumoko being a somewhat boring individual. The anime adaptation removed several fights to increase the pace of Kumoko's Labyrinth adventures, gave her plenty of {{Imagine Spot}}s to break things up, let the Parallel Minds interact with her more, and chose a wonderful voice actress to give Kumoko life.

** With ''Literature/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil'' as Creator/AoiYuuki is once again reincarnated to a CrapsackWorld and being bothered by a [[JerkassGods single letter God]].

** Speaking of Aoi Yuuki, this isn't the first time she's been a [[WesternAnimation/SpiderManIntoTheSpiderVerse spider girl]]. Also, its not her first time [[Literature/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil reincarnating in a]] CrapsackWorld [[Literature/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil and being bothered by single letter God.]]

** Among the Reincarnators (side-characters compared to Komoko, even in-unverse by others), Feirune is by far the most popular and liked. In large part this is because, unlike her more generic Reincarnator friends that she hangs out with, she has the most amount of story use due to being reincarnated as a Dragon over being a human or humanoid. Her humanoid form is also liked for being cute in design as well.

** With ''LightNovel/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil'' as Creator/AoiYuuki is once again reincarnated to a CrapsackWorld and being bothered by a [[JerkassGods single letter God]].
** Also with ''LightNovel/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'', due to similar premises of someone being reincarnated as a traditionally low level monster (Spiders and Slimes) only to have a game styled system to help them grow much faster and eventually reach [[spoiler:and surpass]] the level of a Demon Lord. There was even a short CrossOver of the two by Kadokawa with them meeting at the labyrinth.

* LesYay: Shiraori follows and supports Ariel's plan not for the planet's sake or even Sariel's, but just because she will not accept any end that doesn't end with her Demon Lord smiling. She even jokes that her perfect epilogue would end with both confessing their love to each other.
* {{Moe}}: An {{Adorkable}} spider with the mind of a {{Hikikomori}} highschool girl? Pretty much the reason why the series got noticed. The fact that the manga made her a bright pink with a more cartoonish art style accentuates it.

** Speaking of Aoi Yuuki, this isn't the first time she's been a [[WesternAnimation/SpiderManIntoTheSpiderVerse spider girl]]. Also, its not her first time [[LightNovel/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil reincarnating in a]] CrapsackWorld [[LightNovel/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil and being bothered by single letter God.]]

** The ending of the Web Novel pulls double duty with these:
** First off, [[spoiler:Guliedistodiez]] is set up as the ultimate opponent for Shiro, [[TheDreaded one so terrifying she spends years scrambling with preparations]] for what she deems an inevitable confrontation. When the promised fight comes, [[spoiler:it's not that he's ''easy'', but he is severely underwhelming as a combatant.]] This had actually been foreshadowed with the "Past Arc", where it was revealed that [[spoiler:Gyulie]] was severely lacking in age and experience compared to their contemporaries, although it comes off as a bit unbelievable that they wouldn't gain much wisdom after living for so long either. What actually pushes this into a real AntiClimaxBoss is that [[spoiler:halfway through the fight, D's shenanigans [[EleventhHourSuperpower give both Shiro and Gyulie a considerable power boost]], escalating the fight while also breaking the equilibrium Shiro had managed to set up]]. In a situation like this you'd expect [[TrueFinalBoss the "real" final battle]] to start, but what actually happens is that [[SwitchingPOV we cut away to the viewpoints of several other characters caught up in their own battles for several chapters]] while Shiro has an OffscreenMomentOfAwesome where she manages to win despite the odds, returning just in time for the final face off, with Shiro only recounting scant details of the grueling deathmatch she just came out; the ones that coincidentally are relevant for the next bullet point.
** Shiro herself becomes this right after she comes back from her battle with [[spoiler:Gyulie]]. Being [[spoiler:a literal god]], her entrance into the field immediately tips the balance in favor for her side, as she uses WrongContextMagic that her enemies can't defend against. What ''should'' have happened is a CurbStompBattle of epic proportions as she's literally the strongest being on the planet at this point. What ''actually'' happens is a massive ContrivedCoincidence that ends in her humilliating defeat. See AssPull for elaboration. The one saving grace is that [[spoiler:Shiro still had a backup plan that lets her pull off a surprise upset and win the final battle,]] but it's still incredibly grating to read.

* AssPull: The climax of the final battle in the Web Novel. It's a massive ContrivedCoincidence full of poorly explained or foreshadowed justifications, including at least one GenreSavvy character grabbing the IdiotBall in a critical moment, all to allow [[spoiler:Shun to defeat Shiro]] in one of the most frustrating moments of the entire series:
** [[spoiler:Shiro, having just come off an OffscreenMomentOfAwesome where she beat Gulie, [[WoundsThatWillNotHeal incurring wounds she cannot stop to heal]] due to being pressed for time, fights Reise while still in the mindset of fighting a god. [[note]] Meaning she momentarily forgot Reise will actually die if she destroys his physical body.[[/note]] This lets Reise scratch her face above her remaining eye (the other was ruined by Gulie) with [[KryptoniteFactor a Heresy Attack]] before being killed, leaving an open wound she cannot heal at this time. Despite acknowledging that [[LampshadeHanging it could bleed into her eye at a crucial moment]] or that she can resort to Clairvoyancy to work around the problem, she decides to conserve power and does not use Clairvoyancy. Keep in mind she just stepped into a battlefield littered with monster corpses, creating a great deal of visual obstructions.]]
** [[spoiler:She correctly recognizes that she should [[TheLoad aim for Shun first]], since his status as the Ruler of Kindness makes him [[McGuffinPerson a priority target and critical component for Dustin's plan]]. She spots Dustin and recognizes the old man is near death, but [[FailedASpotCheck doesn't question why he's there despite a frail old man having no place in a battlefield like this]]. She recognizes that Shun, Dustin and Katia are [[PragmaticVillainy the weakest elements on the field and that it would be quite simple for her to kill all of them]]. She also sees that the enemy's ancient dragons are being held at bay by the Puppet Taratects and the Queen Taratects. What does Shiro do? She proceeds to ignore Shun, Katia and Dustin despite having a clear opportunity to reduce the enemy's numbers by aiming at their weak links, instead focusing on shooting the ancient dragons since they're closer to Ariel. Note that the ancient dragons, despite being vulnerable to her spells, are also moving targets that she has to actually aim at to shoot, while the aforementioned weak links are not only her enemies' [=MVPs=], they're sitting ducks. The ancient dragons by all rights would [[TakingTheBullet move to shield them if they're targeted]], but instead Shiro aims for the dragons themselves.]]
** [[spoiler:Shun decides to sneak behind Shiro to revive Reise, [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman the only one on his side who has skills to hurt Shiro]]. To do this, he and Katia sneak around the battlefield using the monster corpses as cover in order to approach [[TheArchmage Ronant]], who can teleport them behind Shiro. Keep in mind that sneaking around to hide from Shiro's eyesight would be useless if she was using her Clairvoyancy, ''which she isn't'', so they pull it off and get telerpoted behind Shiro, then revive Reise. Also keep in mind that Shiro's "one true talent", as she herself considers it, is [[SpaceMaster her gift for dimensional magecraft,]] which allows her to detect and [[TeleFrag counter any teleportation attempts]]; she did this against ''Gyulie'', an actual god. When the chips are down, she [[IdiotBall utterly fails to live up to her own hype against the teleportation of a single human and suffers for it]].]]
** [[spoiler:What's Shiro been doing all this time? She's just been shooting weak magic spells at the ancient dragons. They deal huge damage since the System dragons [[WrongContextMagic cannot defend against magecraft]], but since she's being very careful about spending power, she isn't using bigger, more powerful spells...despite having just used one against Reise. Since she's too busy focusing on the ancient dragons, she doesn't look behind her nor detect Ronant's teleportation spell nor Shun's use of [Kindness] to revive Reise. She only notices something's up when the dragon she just killed ambushes her from behind, costing her some more of her energy. Reise is killed again very quickly but Shun's already gotten past her without her even noticing it, all because [[IdiotBall she didn't prioritize having a clear grasp of the full battlefield conditions in her overconfidence]]. To make matters worse, he's got [[CheckhovsGun the Hero's Sword]] in his hands.]]
** [[spoiler:Since Shun is way too close to Ariel and the System Nexus for comfort ''and'' he has the Hero's Sword in hand, Shiro cannot afford to ignore him any longer and immediately goes after him. Her first attempt to kill Shun is stopped by Katia's [Chastity]. Her ''second'' attempt to kill Shun is stopped by Dustin's [Harmony]. Her '''third''' attempt is to use her Evil Eye to disintegrate Shun, which fails because [[EyeScream the open wound Reise had opened above her eye chooses this moment to bleed into her eye and cause the attack to misfire]]. This gives Shun enough time to charge up the Hero Sword and unleash it's [[ItOnlyWorksOnce one-time super attack]] to [[NoBodyLeftBehind completely destroy Shiro's main body]]. Katia and Dustin wouldn't have been able to stop Shiro if Shiro [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim had killed them when she had the chance at the start of the fight]]. Reise wouldn't have opened that wound if Shiro had kept her cool and hadn't been overly careful against him. Shun wouldn't have been able to sneak around, revive Reise to distract her and use the Hero Sword if [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim she'd actually aimed for him from the start.]]]]
** And on top of that, [[spoiler:Dustin's [Harmony] had only been recently introduced as a last-minute ace up his sleeve that [[AntiMagic let him nullify attacks from Queen Taratects]] (for a heavy price). The first time he did this it left him on the verge of death, and he does it again without dying still even though he's a frail old man with civilian-level stats and an old soul that should be too frayed to use a skill that powerful to this effect. Then he uses it to negate the attack of ''a god,'' a being outside the System that his skill operates in. This skill alone is a complete AssPull since it only appeared once in Dustin's Appraisal before this momment, with no hint as to what it could do, and he uses it at exactly the worst possible moment for Shiro to screw her over. We don't even get the decency of seeing this battle from his point of view, so it comes across like a DiabolousExMachina introduced to make Shiro lose right when she's about to win.]]
** The end result: [[spoiler:against all odds, Shun actually manages to defeat Shiro effectively because of PlotArmor.]] No matter how many justifications Okina wrote up for this moment, fans all over were extremely disgruntled with this outcome for several reasons, not the least of which being [[RootingForTheEmpire fans rooting for Shiro feeling she was done a huge disservice.]]

** "[[EvilIsPetty D]]" is a powerful goddess charged with managing the Underworld, but is [[TheGodsMustBeLazy lazy]] and [[JerkassGods sadistic]]. Following a war with the dragons that left the Other World depleted of its magical energy and on the brink of collapse, D--who could have simply replenished it by herself--implemented the System, a JRPG-style cycle of reincarnation that only prolonged the Other World's degradation at the cost of millions of souls. Growing bored, D snuck off to Earth and masqueraded as a Japanese high-school student named Wakaba Hiiro until a Hero and Demon Lord destroyed the classroom in an attempt to assassinate her. [[YourSoulIsMine Collecting the souls]] of her classmates, teacher, and a spider, D inserted them into the System while altering their reincarnations to play cruel pranks on them. When the spider--[[Characters/SoImASpiderSoWhatKumoko Kumoko]]--apotheosized into a goddess intent on avenging the suffering D had inflicted on everyone, D named her Shiraori to prevent her from doing so while sabotaging her plans to save the Other World. In the light novel, D further brainwashed Shiraori into slavishly falling in love with her to ensure her loyalty.

** [[MadScientist Potimas Harrifenas]]'s unethical experiments with [[TheLifestream MA energy]] in [[ImmortalityImmorality pursuit of immortality]] led to the creation of supernatural demihumans and predatory monsters; turned his daughter Ariel into a human-spider hybrid; and sparked a war between humans and dragons that led to most of the world's MA energy being siphoned--leaving it on the brink of implosion. Evolving himself into an elf, Potimas grew fearful of divine retribution and hid himself away, using clones and cyborg doppelgängers to continue his experiments in secret. Millennia later, Potimas discovered his second daughter Filimøs was the reincarnation of a human from another world and tricked her into helping him capture the other reincarnates, intending to sacrifice them all [[GodhoodSeeker to attain godhood]]. When one of the reincarnates, Kumoko, allied with Ariel to oppose him, Potimas activated an anti-dragon superweapon and attempted to self-destruct its core, which Kumoko consumed to apotheosize into the goddess Shiraori.

* CompleteMonster: "[[EvilIsPetty D]]" is a powerful goddess charged with managing the Underworld, but is [[TheGodsMustBeLazy lazy]] and [[JerkassGods sadistic]]. Following a war with the Dragons that left the Other World depleted of its magical energy and on the brink of collapse, D--who could have simply replenished it by herself--implemented the System, a JRPG-style cycle of reincarnation that only prolonged the Other World's degradation at the cost of millions of souls. Growing bored, D snuck off to Earth and masqueraded as a Japanese high-school student named Wakaba Hiiro until a Hero and Demon Lord destroyed the classroom in an attempt to assassinate her. [[YourSoulIsMine Collecting the souls]] of her classmates, teacher, and a spider, D inserted them into the System while altering their reincarnations to play cruel pranks on them. When the spider--Kumoko--apotheosized into a goddess intent on avenging the suffering D had inflicted on everyone, D named her Shiraori to prevent her from doing so while sabotaging her plans to save the Other World. In the light novel, D further brainwashed Shiraori into slavishly falling in love with her to ensure her loyalty.

** D using the System to suppress certain chemical reactions to force the world back to a pre-industrial level seems like it's just part of her plan for entertainment, but it does actually serve a purpose. Without access to the underworld, the planet only has a limited pool of souls to draw on. An industrial population would strain the limits of that supply and souls would likely need to reincarnate immediately, wearing them out even faster. Reducing the population to a pre-industrial size means souls will get at least some downtime, extending the System's lifespan.
*** For context: The ancient civilization was comparable to Earth so assume roughly 5 billion souls entering the System. Assuming the two continents have roughly the same population as pre-industrial Europe, there are now roughly 250 million souls active at any given time. With a new generation born every twenty years, souls could potentially get centuries of rest between reincarnations.

** With the anime adaptation, a new one comes in the form of episodes with very little, or no Kumoko at all in them, focusing entirely on Shun and the other humans. The comment section of basically every such episode on Crunchyroll is divided between two groups. The first group is people who severely dislike the plot, in no small part thanks to the anime already cutting out many human-side scenes, which omits a great deal of character development, and thus Shun's party appears generic or flat in comparison to Kumoko, and some of those episodes having noticeable drops in animation quality, especially during the action scenes, compared to what Kumoko get, and thus argues just skipping those bits entirely. The second group argues that those bits are important and necessary for the plot and the human-side characters become more interesting and developed when they become more active in the plot instead of being vessels for exposition about world-building thus shouldn't be skipped - though even they rarely argue the content's dip in quality compared to the Kumoko-heavy episodes.

** Among the Reincarnators, Feirune is by far the most popular and liked. In large part this is because, unlike her more generic Reincarnator friends that she hangs out with, she has the most amount of story use due to being reincarnated as a Dragon over being a human or humanoid. Her humanoid form is also liked for being cute in design as well.

* UncannyValley:
** Having Kumoko and various monsters in 3D animation is fine, with a lot of viewers finding it pretty alright for a budget isekai anime adaptation. Then following the fight with Araba, various characters start being animated in the same style despite initially appearing in traditional animation. The result is that many characters just look off when they go from normal animation to CGI in only a frame, with Ariel and Sophia in particular being constantly shown this way.
** The manga depiction of Kumoko's Arachne form gives her humanoid upper body a chitin-like appearance, with mostly white skin-plates and black tissue in the flexing joints. Combined with her too-large and -round eyes and oddly jagged teeth, she resembles a doll stitched onto the back of her spider form.

** Per EightDeadlyWords below, the early part of the web novel was criticized due to the lack of character interactions and Kumoko being a somewhat boring individual. The anime adaptation removed several fights to increase the pace of Kumoko's Labyrinth adventures, gave her plenty of {{Imagine Spot}}s to break things up, let the Parallel Minds interact with her more, and chose a wonderful voice actress to give Kumoko life.

* EightDeadlyWords: A complaint leveled against the story, especially during the web novel's ProlongedPrologue. Kumoko is not an especially engaging character on her own and it takes 120 chapters before she ever meets another intelligent being, and even then the conversation is short. Many readers give up early as a result. And even if you're willing to accept that and enjoy the wacky and darkly hilarious adventures of Kumoko, [[spoiler:it can be hard to swallow the fact that the entire CrapsackWorld is due to [[JerkassGods D]] wanting to squeeze as much entertainment as she can out of the inhabitants' suffering and setting up the System as it is when she could have fixed it another less bloody way, that she goes out her way to throw a wrench into ''anything'' that looks like it might make things better for shits and giggles, and that really [[InvincibleVillain she's so far above everyone else that the chances they'll be able to make her pay for it all are slim to none]].]]

* TheScrappy: Hugo. Obviously, he was intended to be hated for being a [[EvilIsPetty petty]] CardCarryingVillain who hates Shun for nothing more than sheer jealousy...but it seems that worked a little too well, as he's one of the most blatant examples of StupidEvil in the entire series and has all the character depth of cardboard. It's not uncommon to find readers that wish [[HypercompetentSidekick Sophia]] would just off him so they don't have to listen to his crap anymore.

** With ''LightNovel/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil'' as Creator/AoiYuki is once again reincarnated to a CrapsackWorld and being bothered by a [[JerkassGods single letter God]].