First Impression: Loner Life in Another World

Little green goblins are grunting and gobbling around a fire pit as a hooded figure watches from the shadows. There are too many of them to take on, so the figure retreats, only to step on a branch in his haste, alerting the green guys and triggering a mad dash through the dark forest. Good thing he dug a pit trap earlier, ha! Haruka is one smart dude. Must be all the isekai light novels he read as a loner teen in Japan before being summoned to this other world, along with his 42 classmates, who, by the way, arrived first and took all the cool roles like mage and prince and the good magic like clairvoyance. Poor Haruka, who had tried to outwit the summoning circle and so was delayed, was left with the lamest new identity, “Villager A”, and the leftover garbage magic, like temperature, magic wrapping, special contact lenses, luck, magic dice, the list goes on and on and it’s all rubbish, as Haruka moans repeatedly. But when Haruka opens up his costume kit for Villager A, he begins to realize that the guy was astonishingly well-equipped, and that leveling up his magic is an absolute cinch. Before we know it, Haruka has protection magic, clairvoyance, unbeatable weapons, and the ability to see and understand everything about this gamified isekai, from edible and medicinal foods, to secret loot. As he’s chasing down his dinner on that second day though, three groups of his classmates converge near him in the forest. Should he reach out to them??? Naw! The loner life is better!

And with that, the Fall 2024 anime season has begun…with a bit of a yawn, I’m sorry to say. You know how a good episode of anime can feel like five minutes? Well, this one felt like about 45, mainly because the protagonist and his incessant voiceover are trying to gaslight us into thinking that his ridiculously OP magic isn’t, in fact, OP and that the tremendous ease with which he levels up—he can literally flex his fingers and new abilities and stats materialize—is somehow interesting. It’s not. It could be, if he actually had to puzzle out how to leverage his strangely-named powers in creative ways to produce meaningful results, but he doesn’t. It all just happens for him automatically. Suddenly, without explanation, he has clairvoyance; he lights one fire with his temperature magic and suddenly it’s fire magic; he imbues one object with some magic and becomes invincible; pitches a tent and gains protection magic. It’s all just way too easy, making for a pretty dull plot. Maybe it’s the luck magic. There’s nothing about his school life to foreshadow an interesting plot involving his classmates either. Haruka’s monologuing has a few weak jokes but they don’t excite more than, “ah, I see what you did there” kind of response for me. The VA does his best to inject some charm into the character, though. Nice job. The animation is fine, nothing stands out as worth commenting on, though the character designs are pretty plain. All in all, there’s nothing egregious about this one, so if you’re looking for some background tv while you do other things, this will do the trick. But as for me, it’s a hard pass. Oh well, things can only get better from here! 

Loner Life in Another World is streaming on HiDIVE.

claire
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