First Impression: An Adventurer’s Daily Grind at Age 29

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.

Michel
Latest posts by Michel (see all)

2 thoughts on “First Impression: An Adventurer’s Daily Grind at Age 29”

  2. And… I couldn’t disagree with you anymore. Hajime, though flawed in a way all healthy adult males with a very normal sexual appetite have been since the dawn of civilization, is actually a very honorable man, one who whose holding out his hand to another kid abandoned by her parents, before she could form any lasting memories. Hajime, not that you watched even a fraction of even the 1st episode, OBViOUSLY, is quite an honorable and empathetic being, who also believes in hard work, while also never forgetting Rirui needs plenty of time to just be a kid, too. Her crush on Hajime is completely innocent, even a boring cliché for some, though I find the humor they generate from it positively cute, ie not the least bit problematic (benignly innocent). Had you even given the anime a cursory viewing the way legitimate critics judge whatever media they’re consuming, you might have been able to wtite a criticism worthy of your or your audience’s time consuming. But, this hit job that merely proves you need to spend less time judging covers, more time researching critical analysis. Oh, and hating on shows because you believe they’re not being catered to you, and are being catered to us perverts is just obnoxious. Characters can have flaws, they better damn well have flaws for heaven’s sake. You don’t have to watch or read things, either, but picking out a few fantasy character qualities that may suggest this show might be problematic? Ridiculous…

Leave a Reply