Hajime Shinonome is a well-respected adventurer who makes his living by slaying monsters and selling the meat. He enjoys the simplicity of his daily routine, but one day, he notices the main door to the dungeon has been left open. When he goes in to investigate, he finds a young child having trouble fighting the weakest enemy in the dungeon, a slime. Once he rescues her, she tells him her name is Rirui and that she’s an orphan. Hajime realizes pretty quickly that nobody will take care of her unless he decides to do it himself. Despite this, he fails to make up his mind until it’s almost too late. Presuming that nobody was going to help her, the girl had gone back out to hunt by herself. Hajime is just in time to save her from a huge wolf. From now on, they’ll go on adventures together. However, it turns out Rirui is not an ordinary little girl, but an ancient species, which might cause more trouble than Hajime signed up for.

Whenever an anime has a setup like this one, it’s unfortunately necessary to consult manga readers about what kind of direction the story is going. From what I managed to find through my limited research, it seems like the manga is just a wholesome adventure story. Despite that, there is a bunch of weirdness in this first episode, enough for me to sign off immediately. Hajime sleeps in the same bed as her, and while he’s having “good” dreams, Rirui’s body turns into that of an adult woman. At the end of the episode, the nature of Rirui’s species is revealed. It turns out she’s a succubus. All of that, combined with what manga readers say, leads me to conclude the manga is “teasing” these suspicious elements while not actually going through with them, which is supposed to add to the lighthearted comedy. The problem is that the humor is not working at all. Hajime is an annoying and sleazy main character, but in a lame way that doesn’t lead to any funny situations. The positives in this episode don’t amount to much either, so I won’t be around for the next one.

An Adventurer’s Daily Grind at Age 29 is streaming on Crunchyroll.