The episode begins with Takumi and the kids going to pick up the items he requested get made by a smith of some kind back in *checks notes* Episode 10. Okay, so it’s not as bad of a break as introducing the concept of going to Bailey compared to when the visit to Bailey occurs, but it’s not something that I quickly recalled off the top of my head. A better way to have this stay within the viewer’s head is that at the end of the previous episode, you could’ve had a letter delivered in last week’s episode being like, “Hey, the things you asked for are done!” to remind viewers that may have forgotten that those exist.
Takumi is eventually pressured to let Bolt out to test his perch thing (sorry folks, I legit forgot what it’s called), revealing that he has a rare contracted beast to people who are still pretty much strangers to him. Yippie…
They even go out with Bolt visible…at least until Takumi finally gets to get Bolt back in his shadow. After a quick talk with the provincial lord and revealing a painting not for children’s eyes, Takumi and the kids head back to the Azure Palace, where they get Mermaid Bracelets for the contracted beasts before heading back to the labyrinth they found previously, going back to the tenth floor. They proceed forward with the kids acting like compasses and the contracted beasts joining in after a while. While there are some battles, they’re easily gotten through due to how OP Takumi and the kids are. While there was a tiny bit of struggle in two of the battles, one of them brought back freaking inventory ex machina, and the other had the solution come quite quickly. But after the battle, there’s a chest that has a sword. Okay, fine, whatever.
We get back to Bailey, where it turns out Takumi is being called to the capital to discuss the labyrinth he found. He was only told this by the lead knight, Vault, and Sir Issac Risner. Takumi decides to let Alan and Elena spend more time with the provincial lord’s children instead of saying goodbye, for better or for worse, and this leads to an emotional goodbye that just has so much occur throughout it, including changing sides, that it’s much easier to go to the end result and say that Alan, Elena, and the contracted beasts end up going along with Takumi, Issac, and Vault to the capital. We see them head out, and…that’s it. That’s the episode. As of the writing of this post, a second season of the show has yet to be announced, but even if one does get announced in the future, don’t expect me to jump directly into watching it.
I WANTED this show to be good. And while it had a promising start, it fell flat for me. It seemed like the source material’s author wanted to try and balance action with wholesome fluff but DIDN’T want to take the time to develop the action, so they made the main characters OP so they could easily have both without losing time. I think the only reason I kept going was that I wanted to see this improve, which it never really did…for me, at least.
Perhaps it’s because I’m too used to isekais being more high-action stakes that seeing a more slice-of-life story that didn’t try to add an underlying plot later on messed with how I looked at this show. And the worst part is? I can’t exactly say I can recommend it unless you’re willing to watch it for entertainment purposes only. I think the show wasn’t supposed to be picked apart like how I’m doing right now, and was meant to just be entertainment.
If the action scenes felt like there was more struggle to complete them, then MAYBE I’d be more willing to say that I recommend this series. As it stands right now, though, you’re probably better off watching paint dry if you want an overarching story. But now that coverage of this series by me is done (for the time being), I can say with about 95% confidence that whatever show I end up covering in the Fall season will be better than this one. I currently have two options, and my mom ALSO has those two options currently, so it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’m going to be covering something that’s at the very least better than this ended up being.
Something also tells me that by this time next year, I’ll have forgotten all about this series. But hey, that’s fine. It’s probably time that I close the book of “Sara Reviewing Isekais” for right now. I mean, if we count the time during the Summer 2023 anime season that I had to step in for my mom, I’ve reviewed (whether fully or partially) FOUR series that would reasonably get classified as any form of isekai. I need to get more variety before I become known as “the author on the blog that reviews a frick ton of isekais and also that one show about grandparents turning young again”.
Additional posts about A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring:
Sara Talks Anime 
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