The story of the light novel series and manga follows a 29-year-old programmer who is on a "death
march," but one day he wakes up in another world after a nap. From a meteor shower he happens to gain
vast riches, and he decides to go sightseeing. So begins his "heartwarming, occasionally serious, and
harem" adventure in another world.
(Source: Anime News Network)
I've gotten up to episode eight but felt the need to start a review now. This will not be spoiler free. So the show is your very typical run of the mill isekai, with nothing really setting it apart from the others; even the "other races" are reduced to a few smatters of elves (if elves can even be considered an 'other' race in isekai anymore) some basic furries and a few kemonomimi tamer than even Monmusu. It feels like another Overlord because of the "rl dude gets stuck in a world based on a game and is basically god and almost no one else in the fantasy world is from earth" and turns the character immediately into a god because of some deus ex machina right at episode one. So we have to sit through his leveling skills with his near infinite skill points and becoming immediately perfect at every skill that pops up. Which of course no one questions. He tries (minimally) to hide his rl and game-god nature of course just like in Overlord, but overall really doesn't do much to fit in with the world and just gets mixed up pretending to be a merchant with literally no desire to sell any of the hundreds of items that were dropped by the massive mob of lizards he killed. Meanwhile he has millions of each currency and somehow in the chaos of the first episode killed a god (which we never actually see happen) and therefore has a metric ton of epic loot, but chooses to do nothing with it. In the meantime he's dealing with his harem of lolis. Which brings me to the real reason I felt the need to write an early review. In eight episodes the MC has stated numerous times that he is, in fact, NOT a lolicon. He is a nearly-30 year old dude in the real world and these literal children are NOT his type. You must be made aware of this, because almost every loli has thrown themself at him and one even tries to get frisky n risky. He has even been quoted as saying "if you were 14 or 15 years older I might consider". Which begs the question: why bother having these lolis throw themselves all over him them? He's clearly not interested, sees them as kids to take care of even though he's been reverted back to 15 years old (which is legal adult age in this world because of course it is), and the one woman who is actually OF age he remarks that he'd only be interested in her if she lost 20 kilos because otherwise she's a milf. Gross. Meanwhile he's busy batting off the advances of the lolis and otherwise treating them like children while reminding us that he is, indeed, NOT attracted to them sexually. During the first few episodes the MC exclaims that he's just going to make the most of his situation, and he's going to explore the world around him and really take in the sights and see what this new world has to offer. By episode eight he still hasn't left the first town he stumbled upon and only just bought himself a carriage to fit all his lolis in. Only when a plot device arrives in the form of a lost elf girl does he actually think about leaving town again and exploring like he said he would six episodes prior. Any of the "fight" scenes are boring and suspenseless because the MC is so overpowered and perfect there's no reason to be worried about him or the people around him. Because of his near-infinite skill points he can max out every kind of combat skill he even attempts, and thus destroys anything in his path with basically one swipe. Mingle this in with a very bland day-to-day plot that is painfully stretched with little movement forward, then a rush of plot from episode 6 onward, and it's overall just a meh show. There's nothing mold breaking about it, there's nothing to really set it apart from other game-based isekai, and the characters are at most somewhat likeable, otherwise they're pretty cookie cutter. There's a forced plot with some old play that's being relived, some mumbo about reincarnation in this fantasy world versus being summoned into the world, all of which is very brushed over and the MC barely questions. Even the title is a bit of a misnomer in that the only "death march" mentioned was the fact that he, as a game developer, was in the death march before release of two games (when developers often don't leave the office for weeks at a time to make sure they meet deadlines) and otherwise the idea of said death march doesn't play any part in the show. It can't even really be called a plot device because while his working on the games contributed to the game-like nature of his experience in said world, that work doesn't have anything to do with how he got there, and he seems to have no desire to get out. Another gripe is the episode pacing. Each episode ends at a rather awkward spot, and there are times in each one about four minutes before the end credits that would be a really good place to stop at with a decent cliffhanger. But instead it stretches on for another few minutes and cuts off the entire episode in a strange spot story wise. It feels choppy in that aspect, where you'd be satisfied but want more if they'd have cut it off just those few minutes sooner, but instead you get an unsatisfied feeling of something left wildly undone, like a sentence cut midway. Before I sat down to write this review I thought I was mildly enjoying the show, at least enough to keep watching, and if you're not bothered by bland plot that doesn't really go anywhere or the fact that his not-lolicon nature keeps being drilled into your head, it's not necessarily a bad show that no one should watch. It's just not a good show. It's something to watch if you need some filler between seasons of your faves and have watched or dislike everything else, but don't go out of your way to watch it. I'm not keen on finishing it myself.
Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody seems almost as perfunctory as anime gets, as if to be the self-appointed embodiment of “anime today, 2018”, but with some sense of restraint, much to the relief of some. By that same token, it manages to actually somewhat succeed at being incredibly basic (temporarily), because sadly, it's hard to find a show that can pull this off. Giving the finger to SAO, Re:Zero, and Isekai wa Smartphone, this is Death March’s brief time in the limelight. I'm sure that at least some who are aware of my outlook on a variety of shows of Death March's ilk are recognizing me as daft for even glancing at this show's general direction. However, the intention goes far beyond having an excuse to malign another anime. Put it simply, I want to prove the existence of a hierarchy. Every genre, and every category of entertainment has a relative and not entirely subjective hierarchy consisting of installments that are better than most, worse than the rest, or are somewhere within a grey area of sorts. Even the harem show has undisputedly better installments such as Ouran High School Host Club, and irrefutably awful ones as well, such as Isekai wa Smartphone. The school battle anime typically goes with the comparison of Chivalry of a Failed Knight to The Asterisk War for such a comparison. While some shows that are more commonly considered to be in the middle are treated like the worst of their kind, it wouldn't be fair to label them as such. Even genericism can be executed swimmingly or horrifyingly. As for where this show stands in the isekai totem pole...well, an important enemy from episode 1 somehow died offscreen in the beginning of episode 2; this anime isn't exactly the savior anyone here is asking for. Slamming aside, this show isn’t have bad. In fact at times it can be decent, even good. For example, the first 12 minutes are actually pretty great. We were shown a horrifyingly real depiction of the Japanese work industries, with people often staying for hours upon hours at their job, falling asleep there out of sheer exhaustion, not coming home for days at a time, and the workload being asinine. The directing by Shin Onima helps sell how dreary it all is, with incredibly harsh lights shining when the protagonist sits on a train to get to work in his sleepy state, and how silent everything is in the workplace in regards to background music until we transition into the primary setting of this anime. Hell, even when the surprisingly likable MC is transported to said game world setting (don't ask me how, this never makes sense no matter which anime pulls it, and most don't even explain themselves in some way), it still feels oppressive. When he first enters the game, we get to see Sato immediately become at least somewhat disillusioned with the idea of this being an ideal “dream” when he is attacked and writing with pain while bleeding, in a scene somewhat reminiscent of some of the better moments of Re:Zero’s early portions. From there, it becomes a bit more hit and miss. While some aspects of the game make no sense (why would need allow your character to learn language comprehension?), they did think about stuff like currency, tax, and the overall economics and societal rules in a simple and effective manner, unlike the convoluted and meaningless currency in say, Smartphone, that never gets brought up after the first instance. It somehow manages to be a pleasant watch at times, notably because of the main character, the constant music that blends in perfectly, and the occasionally pleasant misadventures Satou and his posse go through, and the surprisingly passable world-building. Sometimes, the show can feel dull and blasé, needlessly so. It doesn't help that the show does sink into some of the more loathsome temptations of its maligned brethren on occasion. It’s annoying to see such practices continue since we’ve come so used to the absolute bottom-tier dreck these kinds or anime shit out souleslly while removing anything they seemingly had in their LN counterpart (see Mahouka’s main character as a known example of this). It does this further as it goes along too, as if the reviled temptation is increasingly heinous for them to resist. Due to this, the bare minimum of what should be considered acceptable can almost be seen as nigh-revolutionary. This really is like the “triple-A game industry”. A large part of why this series works is Satou, our main character. On the surface, he seems like the run-of-the-mill insert, especially based on his appearance. Admittedly his reactions would be rather typical. However, he certainly isn't an awkward buffoon who only has a spine when the chips are down like most of in contemporaries do, and a majority of the time, we actually see what he thinks about any given situation. It's actually rather amusing to hear him gush over every intricacy of his meals or react negatively to whatever bullshit someone gives him. Additionally, the main character often has to use his surroundings to adapt to new situations (with ease, but still, it's something) using strategies he comes up with in the fly with party members. The fact that we get to see actual strategies being employed when facing an enemy in say, a dungeon, is surprisingly not that common in MMORPG anime, if Sword Art Online has taught us anything. Him looking like Kirito in the early episodes of his show and being better at MMORPG culture and strategy than him makes him all the more glorious, especially when unlike nearly every other overpowered protagonist, he actually has a semblance of variety to his powers. To add on to how much of a cheeky fuck he is, when he wants to rename a female companion, he just translates their garbage name in Japanese, expecting no one to notice. The only real issue I have with him is that he doesn’t bother leveling up his skills until the need for a specific skill becomes relevant for the first time. One could say it’s so that he doesn’t become boring and absurdly overpowered, but if he can do this already, and if he is already at level 310 by the end of the first episode when by the time we are ⅔ into the series, the highest leveled opponent has been level 50, then this excuse can no longer fly. That, and how he can get dull over time, though not by too much. The main character can't carry such an annoyingly dull cast, however, as most of his posse feel less like dynamic characters, and more like largely distinct accessories for him. Obviously he doesn't feel this way about them, but as established, he’s certainly less of an audience surrogate than many of his ilk. They're thankfully nowhere near as obnoxious as most female harem characters, as none of them quite fit into the tired archetypes of harem characters, and each character is distinct from one another, unlike Smartphone, where most of the women are lately the same character. Not to mention that while not every female Satou collects is in love with him, it increases every so often, threatening to turn this pseudo-harem into an actual harem with leftovers. Arisa can get grating sometimes with her bullshit, making her probably the worst of the lukewarm bunch (aside from that one demon in episodes 3 and 4, whose voice was a spell meant to poison the ears), side-characters included. A majority of the villains are borderline worthless husks meant to serve as a “standard evil prick”. Understandably this takes place in a video game but the antagonists really are just the Light Novel adaptation standard when they didn't entirely have to be. At least the villain in the second arc has some pretty decent and interestingly foreshadowed motivations. Easily the worst part, however, would be the production values. Even outside of the nice directing moments present in episode 1, and how they purposely instead sunlight saturation in certain moments of episode 2 to accentuate the wonder Satou feels about this new world he is in, there isn't much flare to speak of. The character designs looks rather sharp, possibly too sharp, though improved over the original novel. Thankfully it isn't the LN standard but it's still not that pretty to look at. The action is not very well animated either and the magic spells aren't with any sense of flare like they would be in Konosuba or Knight’s & Magic. As mentioned earlier, there are some neat directing moments sprinkled throughout, but that’s all they are: moments. Not all episodes even have those brief moments, and coupled together with terrible, sometimes even laughable action sequences, it’s certainly little better than the rest of Death March’s borderline pitiful visual presentation. I'm more than willing to believe that the 2D aspects were studio Silver Link and that the rest is Connect, given their repertoire and how Connect has never done a solo project. I say this because the CGI bears massive simulators to another joint project of theirs: Chaos Dragon. Thankfully there is no frame rate slow-down, aside from the CGI already having bad frame rates as is, but the CGI is both disturbingly prevalent and disconcertingly awful, with most soldiers being reduced to CGI armor models that look putrid, and many creatures being reduced to unintentional abominations due to the same hideous 3D model quality. Regardless, this show looks terrible and doesn’t move well. It’s a shame that somehow it’s the production values that hold a light novel anime back more than anything else, as if this anime wasn’t a bewildering rarity already. The music is mixed as well, though it is conversely the best aspect of the show. The Opening, "Slide Ride (スライドライド)" by Run Girls, Run!, is a real good contender for “most generic-sounding anime OP”, and needless to say, it wasn’t very pleasing to listen to. The Ending theme, "Suki no Skill (スキノスキル)" by Wake Up, Girls! Isn’t much better, as it’s another ending theme that isn’t noteworthy. The rest of the music is pretty decent, feeling like it truly belongs in a fantasy video game. This only applies when the characters are in the villages and not elsewhere. One minor jingle in particular even opts to make you feel like you've discovered or done something grand, and if there’s one thing video game scores are fantastic at, it's giving off a sense of grandeur. The track pool even expands in the second half when things try to get more serious and full of dread and tension. There are some nice emotional tracks too, like the one in the penultimate scene of episode 9, and the episode 10 ending track, which sadly cannot be named at the time of writing. Such a shame that the opening and ending themes that sandwich these tracks are what hold the audio component back. Ultimately, in a world where perfunctory is revolutionary, you can forgive the disproportionate applause at least once, as even mediocrity of this kind, in such a location, can inspire hope for the future of Isekai, garbage visuals aside. There are some genuinely nice moments, visually, and emotionally, so to see it settle is annoying at times. At the very least, if something like Isekai wa Smartphone was up the alley, this is worth viewing too, that way you find an infinitely superior product with a trick or two up its nonexistent sleeves. For now at least, I can say Death March thankfully didn't live up to its title in terms of viewing experience, awful finale notwithstanding, as it’s surprisingly high up on this totem pole. Not bad for a modern LN Isekai title. It may not be good, but, well, baby steps. Also, the fact that people are treating this show like an endorsement of slavery is woefully disconcerting; please don't do what you tried going with Mahoutsukai no Yome.
If you see the first episode of this anime, maybe you will ask yourself: "Why are they wasting so much time before letting the MC enter the fanatsy world? It is irrelevant anyways!" After watching the other episodes, you will realise why that is: Suzuki Ichirou, the 29-year-old hard-working programmer is on his "Death March" and after another hard days and nights he is going to sleep and starts to dream. This just perfektely fits the rest of the story. If I wanted to describe the whole series with few words and without any spoilers I would say: The story is like a good dream: - happy-go-lucky all the way long - generic but well-made beautiful setting - the dreamer is an overpowered hero, doing hero-things - meets nice people and gathers them around him To be honest: This is a really simple story-concept - do not expect anything deep or outstanding. It is just a nice dream. But if you are interested in Ichirou's dream, you will get rewarded. The art is great, always fits the atmosphere and the series in all. They really made everything fit the fanatsy-RPG style. What I especially liked is the GUI which Ichirou interacts with very frequently. This is an aspect where the series sets itself apart from many other Isekai-Game Anime. Most of them aren't paying much attention to the GUI - you don't see the MC using it often and they are often quite rudimentary. The Soundtracks suit the setting very well too. I also liked the OP and ED. Don't know much more to say here though. The characters beside the MC are mainly girls admiring him - exactly like woud want them to be in your dream. Nothing deep to find here too. This may be a point of criticism though. The backgrounds and behaviour of the characters could be more detailed. Enjoyment: This is what the whole anime is about. You are getting invited to Ichirou's dream and as your host he really wants to make this show comfortable and enjoyable for you. He is a really good host. You can enjoy cute girls, a completely OP main character, fancy art, a well fitting Soundtrack and those beautiful GUI. Summary: A very well-made happy-go-lucky fantasy RPG anime with a plain story, plain characters and an overpowered MC. Offers no deepness but may be the perfekt show for you if you like Isekais and just want to relax and dream a bit.
Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody has the single most overqualified score I’ve ever experienced in anime. Every single track is excellently suited to its task, and the way they all work together results in the perfect musical accompaniment for a whimsical, laid-back fantasy adventure more interested in the simple mundanities of life in a magical, quasi-Medieval world than any sort of grand, epic journey. The ED song in particular is so memorable and homey that I would rank it up with Konosuba’s fantastic relaxing fantasy/country fusions. There were so many moments across these twelve episodes where I found myself thinking, “Man, I’m really going to enjoy listening to this music on Youtube once I finish watching this show. I might even imagine a better anime it hypothetically might have been used for so I can wash the stench of this fucking garbage out of my mouth.” Seriously, the quality gap between Death March’s score and every single other part of it is so freakishly large that I’m half convinced some inspired, rebellious composer snuck into Silver Link’s studios some time during post-production and proceeded to record over whatever generic, lifeless musical mush was intended to be the soundtrack, just to fuck with the studio execs. Or maybe he just did it on principle, as part of some heroic quest to ensure that no anime production will ever be allowed to slop onto screens and streaming services without at least one commendable quality. Someday, I would like to meet this revolutionary man of music, to learn his craft and understand his ways, so that he may inspire me in the same way he is so clearly inspired by anime as a medium. Perhaps that day will never come. But I will hope on regardless, because the mystery he left me with is by far the only interesting thing to come out of Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, and were it not for his contributions, I would have spent six hours on this show and gotten nothing in return. So thank you, mystery man of music. Thank you for ensuring I at least had something, anything, of value to hold onto in this utter waste of a show with otherwise no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The truly sad thing is, none of what I said in those opening paragraphs is hyperbole. Death March to the Absurdly Overextended LN Title is, without a doubt, the single most useless anime I’ve ever experienced, to the point where wondering how such a brainless fart of a show somehow obtained its one aspect of quality was the only thing keeping me from going insane due to excessive boredom. It is truly remarkable how completely unremarkable this show is, how not a single moment lands with any emotional impact, how not a single aspect feels like it was crafted with anything more than base-level commercial cynicism, how utterly disinterested it appears to be in its own existence. It’s the animated embodiment of a vegetative state; the only thing separating it from complete nonexistence is the fact that it technically does exist, and you can’t help but feel that pulling the plug and putting it out of its misery would be a mercy to everyone. There is no reason for this show to exist. There is no reason for me to have watched it beyond the first episode. But I’m an anal-retentive moron who never likes leaving a job unfinished, so here we are. And hey, at least now I can pass the warning along to you, so now you won’t be tricked into thinking _one of the most popular shows of its season_ is worth checking out. Seriously, this shit almost has more members on MAL than Place Further Than the Universe, how the fuck is that in any way justifiable? I’d summarize the plot, such as it is, but that would be given this show far too much credit. It’s an isekai, so you already know the drill: teenage guy gets transported to a RPG-based fantasy world, instantly becomes the most powerful motherfucker in existence who gets all the girls and never has to be meaningfully challenged in any way, whether physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, or any other way that might actually make for a halfway-compelling story. Okay, technically, this guy’s in his thirties and working at a video game company (he gets sucked into the world of the RPG he and his team have been struggling to finish), but he reverts back to his teenage self the moment he sets foot in Candyland, so it doesn’t make a difference. And technically he’s not a virginal weirdo who can’t process sex through anything other than nosebleeds; he actually does get laid a couple times… but only offscreen and by random one-off prostitute NPCs we barely get to see, not by any of his steadily accumulating harem. Then again, considering how many members of his harem are Literal Children, perhaps that’s for the best. But on the other hand, at least if this show evoked moral outrage in me, that would, in fact, be a reaction of SOME kind. And that would have had some value, _any_ value. But no, the fact of the matter is, this show has no idea of where it wants to go, and it spends the entirety of its run time going nowhere, advancing no character arcs, plotting no greater narratives, introducing no interesting tidbits of worldbuilding, setting up no fun group dynamics for the central team to have any sort of chemistry, pulling off no feats of even notable animation, and never even attempting to rescue itself from its own lack of inertia. Again, no hyperbole here; we spend twelve goddamn episodes with Satou and his ever-growing harem and the only thing that changes between the start and end is the number of girls palling along with him. The few stabs at genuine emotion skip the apparently unnecessary process of making you actually, like, care about these characters and just assume you’ll already be invested in their well-being from the second they’re on screen. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the show’s run time is spent on watching this personality-defunct team going camping, eating dinner, learning to leaf-whistle, and a million other boring little distractions that do nothing to endear us to the characters in any way. But at least the complete lack of narrative moment is only boring, whereas the fight scenes are both boring and ugly as sin. Clearly I need to apologize to Overlord, because I was not aware of how abysmal CG monsters could look. There’s something almost infuriating about how little effort was put into this show, how clearly no one working on it (besides the aforementioned musical daredevil) gave any sort of shit at all. It isn’t even trying to hide the naked cynicism of its existence, the fact that it only exists for the sake of selling the cheapest possible power fantasy and profiting off the rock-bottom standards it imagines its audience to have. But then it can’t even do the power fantasy well enough to justify the callous disregard for quality on display. None of the girls are interesting or hot, even by the very generous standards of cheap waifu bait; they might as well not even have personalities at all, for how token and half-assed their supposed fetish gimmicks are. The deadpan isn’t much of a deadpan, the hardass isn’t much of a hardass, the snarker isn’t much of a snarker, the flustered virgin isn’t much of a, well, you get the point. The only one who leaves any sort of impression is the bratty, squeaky-voiced loli, and that’s solely due to the rising desire to gag her with a dirty sock before she throws one more obnoxious tantrum about wanting to jump Satou’s completely uninteresting wizard staff, may it remain forever flaccid. And _speaking_ of Satou himself, good fucking god, he is legitimately the most insufferably bland motherfucker to ever grace the protagonist role. I don’t know whose decision it was that he should deliver all of his lines in the exact same quasi-paternal nice-guy drawl with an aw-shucks half-smile, but whoever it was should be fired, because the end result makes you want to reach through the screen and scream “EMOTE!!!” in his face, just so he gets pissed off and shows that he has the capacity for at least a single other emotional state. Especially when his nice-guy fantasy presentation clashes with his tendency to objectify every woman and girl he comes across, making internal comments about their boobs and attractiveness in the same dreamily genial way he patronizes them in reality. Because that’s what real nice guys do, right? Oh, and he’s not a lolicon. He’s definitely not a lolicon. It’s one of he first things his internal monologue tells us, so he definitely wants you to know that he’s not a lolicon. Never mind how much he clearly enjoys the feeling of a thirteen-year-old’s boobs pressing against him, he is in no way a lolicon. And maybe if he tips his fedora harder, he can make you forget that most of the girls in his harem are his actual slaves, all of whom he took from other owners and could free at a moment’s notice with no averse affects or risk of them abandoning him, making them his equal traveling companions, but chooses not to because… I guess he gets off on being called “Master” by a ten-year-old cat girl. But he’s not a lolicon, guys. Swear. At this point, I’m certain I’ve put far more thought into this waste of space than its creators ever did. Honestly, I feel dirty even affording it the benefit of my full thoughts here, because it doesn’t deserve any thought at all. It deserves to be wiped of the sole of our collective shoe and tossed in the garbage bin where it belongs. Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody is the single most mindless show I’ve ever watched, bereft of even the slightest speck of value to justify its existence. It never should have been made. I never should have watched it. But I did, and shame on every decision that brought us to this point.
__~~~Skill Acquired: Standardized~~~__ Controversial opinion: I'm not a fan of Isekai anime. There are few out there that I usually enjoy, but I wanted to try out something different as I'd heard good things about several recent ones. One of those was _Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody_, which a friend described to me as having a protagonist who has to learn skills to become more overpowered as time passes. While this could be a clever idea, the show quickly becomes a standard modern Isekai anime with little new to offer. Let's start with the main protagonist, Satou. Like other shows of this genre in recent years, he appears similar to how most Japanese men view themselves. Considering this type of show is often wish-fulfillment, it makes sense but makes for a bland-looking main character. As a character, he feels like a bigger imbecile than other Isekai protagonists. His biggest gimmick is claiming to be "just a merchant" when he uses insanely powerful skills, but no one should believe that, given how fast he learns and masters anything he does. The fact that no one seems to notice is either a testament to poor writing or thinking the audience won't pay it much mind. He also never keeps his resistance skills turned on, leading to at least one moment where I about stopped watching (around episode 8 if you've seen the show before). There's supposedly a manga-given reason for not having these abilities always on, but it isn't addressed in the show. Overall, I wish he was written smarter, or if he wanted to lay low, he made better efforts to fake being weaker than he is. I witnessed two other extremely uncomfortable things that made me push my score further down. First is the harem situation. Look, it isn't uncommon for Isekai to have a harem surrounding the protagonist, and it's something I've had to get used to as an anime fan. But there were multiple girls under 16 in this show who were supposed to be enticed by Satou. The oldest of the bunch by looks and age is Liza at 18, leaps and bounds better than Arisa, 11, Lulu at 14, and Nana, who's only been alive for a month, but looks to be in her late teens or early twenties! If they were all around 16, I could forgive the ecchi moments in the show, even if Satou does his best not to be involved in the harem side of things. As it stands, I can't ignore these incidents due to the ages of these women. The other thing requires a bit of a trigger warning. If you don't want to deal with issues of slavery at this time, please scroll to the bottom for final thoughts. Yes, there is slavery in this world, and several characters are legally slaves to the protagonist. At no time does Satou seem to consider freeing these women truly, nor does he fight to abolish it in this world. He goes about life and doesn't seem phased after a short while here and doesn't even attempt to justify his lack of advocating for the enslaved. I doubt I would've been swayed by his reasoning even if he did protest fighting against the institution, but it's clear the author didn't consider it as well. I've heard a few recent Isekai touch on the issue, but it's clear, at least for this one, that the author didn't pay it much mind other than an excuse to get more women into Satou's group. To summarize, this show may be an okay Isekai to introduce someone to the genre. However, lackluster characters, an underage menagerie of girls, and the refusal to acknowledge the horrors of slavery hindered my enjoyment of the show. I don't think a second season is in my future, so that this show will be a 50 or 5/10 for me. Only watch this if you're a hardcore fan of Isekai anime or can stomach the issues I presented.