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| I already don’t trust her. |
Summary:
A young man named Satou Kazuma is a hikkomori, who one day ventures out of his room in order to buy a limited edition of a game. On the way home, he sees a girl about to be run over by a truck, and pushes her out of the way. Doing so, he ends up dying and meeting with a goddess named Aqua. It turns out that the truck was actually a tractor, and Kazuma only died due to shock. Despite this embarrassing death, Aqua gives Kazuma a chance to start his life anew—by being “reborn” into an alternate world currently being ravaged by a demon lord. Aqua allows Kazuma to choose one thing to bring along with him to this new world. Still angry at having been made fun of, Kazuma chooses to bring along Aqua. And thus, they are both whisked away to their new life.
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| What the hell is this sudden Shaft angle |
Kazuma seems to settle into this new world fairly quickly. Aqua… not so much. Despite an extremely rough start, Kazuma and Aqua manage to register themselves as adventurers! …And soon after find themselves merely working as laborers. After a period of time doing this, Kazuma tells Aqua that they can’t just keep living as laborers, even if they are slowly making their way up the economic ladder. So Aqua suggests that they go out of the city in order to do a kill quest, and work towards their final goal of defeating the demon lord.
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| Amazingly, he actually says “bitch”. |
My Opinion:
Surprisingly, I enjoyed this episode a lot more than I thought I would. The plot summary for this series sounds like your typical generic fantasy-RPG-inspired anime, but it manages to subvert some tired old tropes in rather unique ways. Yes, Kazuma tries to save someone and ends up dying—but he didn’t actually get hit by the car, but rather died of shock. Also, even though he’s the protagonist of the series, it is later found out that his stats are completely average… except for his intelligence and luck. I mean, it isn’t HARD to subvert such tired RPG tropes, but it is unusual to see an anime that is all about subverting these tropes. From the OP, it seems that Kazuma and Aqua manage to recruit two more members into their party, but apparently they’re all pretty terrible at actually fighting monsters.
Also, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something extremely fishy about the whole situation. Aqua’s conversation with Kazuma about the afterlife is rather suspicious, and I do wonder if Kazuma is actually dead. I know that a lengthy explanation was given, but I still feel like this is all just a ploy by… something in order to whisk people away from their own worlds to put into this dangerous fantasy one. Judging by Aqua’s reaction to their new world, she might not actually know much about what’s going on after all, despite supposedly being a goddess.
Overall, this seems like a potentially interesting series with decent enough animation and jokes (though the blatant boob-jiggle physics can get annoying). Aqua’s kind of grating on the nerves, but I do like the relationship that she has with Kazuma so far. It’s not a romantic one, but rather a buddy-buddy sort of relationship. Kazuma himself (despite his boring character design) is a rather interesting character as well. Sadly, I don’t like the first episode enough to be motivated to blog it in its entirety, but I might keep an eye on it and watch a few more episodes.
Out of five for this episode:
and 1/2
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| You can’t run, you’re the healer! |
Moeronpan 