Sara Talks Anime

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If I asked you to name the anime that helped to define the isekai genre as we know it, I suspect that some of you in the audience would list Sword Art Online as the anime. This is mainly because most isekai anime takes place in high fantasy settings, also where SAO took place. Well, what if SAO was having that whole issue of there not being a log-out button occurring during the debugging phase instead of when the game hit the shelves at your local GameStop?

Wait, let’s rewind a bit. That setup makes it feel like I’m about to slap you all with an SAO fanfic, which is untrue.

Quality Assurance in Another World is yet another isekai released into the world, but thankfully, without any reincarnation junk. But, when you start the series, you may think I’m lying when I say this show is an isekai. That makes sense as we begin the series within the game world, and not even from the isekai’d person’s perspective. This helps to set this show apart from other isekais, as those other isekais have gotten quite comfortable following the mold. As the first episode progresses, the character that we follow during most of it, Nikola, meets Haga, who she assumes is someone who works with the king in a role known as “Seeker.”

Of course, her assumption is wrong, but that’s not the point. The point is that her everyday life is about to get shattered due to an event threatening to destroy her hometown. At first, Haga tries fighting it alone, but the village helps and beats the beast and…

Oh.

Oh.

Yeah, that wasn’t supposed to happen, and despite the victory, everyone ended up dying. Y-yay…? And Haga confesses to Nikola while she is burning that he’s not a ‘Seeker’; he’s a debugger. And how he’s witnessed her death because of this event several times.

OH.

From here, the rest of the episode follows Haga’s perspective. We find out the story behind how he got into the game world in the first place and how he got to this point in the game. Why not progress further, though?

Put a pin in that, and we’ll get back to that later.

Anyway, I’m about to spoil the biggest twist of the first episode, aside from the whole…y’know… the thing that initially caused me to go ‘oh’ and say that Nikola’s back…somehow. Within the first three episodes, while there is something presented as a theory as to why she’s back, there’s no concrete “this is the answer” yet. Overall, episode 1 was an excellent episode to begin the series, and I have zero complaints about it.

Episode 2 does more to build everything for future episodes, both by setting up Haga and Nikola to adventure together and by introducing an opposing faction that, at least as far in as I am so far, will be the series’ main antagonist.

Also, one of the characters introduced in this episode has the same voice actor as Bond from Spy x Family, and now I can’t look at that character without seeing the best boy from Spy x Family.

This episode was also solid and even helped to emphasize that this is a video game world due to the debugging procedures that Haga was teaching Nikola. So, those are two episodes that get good ratings in my book. What about episode 3?

When I say episode 3 blew me away, I am not kidding. As I wrote in a toot on my Mastodon account (which you should follow), *ahem*. “I loved this week’s episode of Quality Assurance in Another World! It’s just…I’m struggling to think up the words I want to use, but it’s now 100% a show I will continue following!”

I hardly ever vocalize that I’m struggling to decide what to say when making toots. So, if I write something like that on there, I think it’s an excellent episode or even an excellent series! Unless I write something that suggests otherwise.

Thankfully, it’s been a good number of hours since I wrote that toot, and since I’m doing something where I’m more comfortable talking about spoilers, I finally have the words to talk about what I want to talk about.

This was shown at the beginning of the episode, and I THEORETICALLY could’ve talked about it in the toot, but…jeezus, those debuggers who have seemingly gone mad with power are crazy for playing NPC darts. Like…that’s straight-up murder!

I don’t care if they’re NPCs; that’s still taking a life and cutting it off before its natural time! And since we don’t know the total limits of debug mode yet, we don’t know if they have a limited or unlimited supply of NPCs! My current suspicion is that it’s a limited supply and could give another reason for this faction to clash with Haga.

We also get to experience what dungeons are like here. Nikola ends up getting distracted by gold coins…I would’ve done the same thing, to be honest.

But now, the second thing I want to talk about regarding this episode is the fellow debuggers were with Haga when they entered the game. Only he and one of the others never succumbed as low as to mess around with debug mode and, as a result, didn’t have to face the consequences of what currently appears to be playing God.

I mean, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be stuck in this kind of situation.

Yeah…that’s why Haga hasn’t moved on. But now, he’s finally deciding to follow the hypothesis that beating the game’s story will cause him to log out. This episode also contains more worldbuilding for the game world. It also sets up Haga’s big mission – to become the righteous hand of God and strip those who mess around with debug mode as if it’s a new toy of their privileges…and beat the game, but obviously, being the righteous hand of God is more important.

And the tease of the next crew member –previously seen in both the opening and ending themes –has me excited for next week’s episode! Quality Assurance in Another World has my seal of approval at this time, and it is a series that, as I stated earlier, I will continue to watch during this anime season. I recommend it to new and old fans of the isekai genre and those who have no idea what the fuck an isekai is.

In North America, the series is currently being simulcast on Crunchyroll, though only the first two episodes are currently available to non-premium users, as the episodes get opened to free users a week after they’re available for premium users. For users in other regions, it’s better to look up which streaming services the series is on for you instead of assuming it’s also on Crunchyroll where you live.