For two years, Kaito Takagi has been struggling at the lowest level of explorer, farming slimes while avoiding being caught by his childhood friend Katsuragi, who’s made him agree not to explore the dungeons. But finally, he’s reached a milestone—his 1000th kill, and a gold slime at that! Maybe it’ll drop a rare gem or maybe…it’ll give him something else. Something even more valuable—a summon! Thus begins Takagi’s adventure in turning from a “nobody” into a hero, the type that Katsuragi’s dad is (or was?), since his summons, the Valkyrie Slyphy, helps him in battle so that he can level up, while also encouraging him in his exploration. Meanwhile, Takagi must balance life as a student in Japan with his visits to the theme park built around the dungeon, leveling up and maybe finding some more valuable treasure as he fights monsters both typical and more unusual.
From time to time you encounter an anime where you wonder if it’s serendipitously fallen into a formula that makes it entertaining despite its lack of quality, or if it’s just actually plain good. After watching two episodes (a double-episode drop!), I’m leaning toward the latter with A Nobody’s Way Up to an Exploration Hero, which shows itself to be quite aware of how silly it is. I laughed about every two to three minutes throughout the episodes, mostly at Takagi, who is just a cute and sincere teenage boy. To me, he’s reminiscent of the boy heroes of children’s anime of the past, like Taichi Kamiya of Digimon Adventure or Ash Ketchum of Pokemon. In fact, the entire anime feels like it’s playing with those childhood series that were made for kids but sometimes skewed a little into adult territory, like a CLAMP series perhaps, with a bit of fanservice here and there and writing that works better for a slightly older audience. For instance, there’s a running gag about a series that’s part infomercial and part gigantic movie franchise called “Dungeon Love Story” that starts out featuring a brother and sister that are uncommonly close in an anime-type way and then less and less subtly goes the route of full out romance. Don’t worry, though, it’s played for laughs. I was pretty impressed by how smart this childish series was. Oh, and on a more superficial level, we could all use a cheerleader as encouraging as Sylphy! I’m not entirely sure that most fans would particularly enjoy or even really get this show, but for those of us who like modern fantasy series and remember kids’ anime with nostalgia, A Nobody’s Way Up to an Exploration Hero is going to hit just right.
A Nobody’s Way Up to an Exploration Hero can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
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