“The Boss” is an episode that has all the ingredients for a good episode of Quality assurance in another world– and I would say it almost succeeds… though I still feel like the show is missing some key elements that would make it something truly satisfying. The way Haga and co. use gameplay glitches to get out of sticky situations is still good – and I appreciate the chemistry our core group develops – but this is just one of those anime that struggles to add up to more than the sum of its disparate parts.

Much of this is due to the show’s mediocre production values, coupled with its general lack of ambition in terms of scope and scale. Here, the group must face off against a whole mob of nasty debuggers in what could be their most dangerous adventure yet. Still, somehow, this final confrontation was the the least exciting part of the entire castle infiltration story. Most of the conflict takes place in the boring main entrance area of ​​the typical castle setting – and all of the Play Ing henchmen are too cocky and stupid to do anything except spout lame villain cliches and occasionally take turns going around and attacking our heroes one by one. Quality assurance repeatedly emphasizes how powerful and dangerous these crazy debuggers are, but they seem about as threatening as a troupe of amateur theatrical actors on a day trip to the Renaissance Festival.

Their lack of personality doesn’t serve Play Ing’s villains well. In addition to their completely anonymous character designs, every single one of them is written and portrayed as if the anime went haywire and threw in a gang of those typical sociopathic school bullies from every terrible high school death game show to clog up the backlogs for the past few decades. There’s only one reason I even know Sakai and Kana’s names: because of ANN’s cast announcement article, which I pinned to avoid referring to them as “Jackass” and “Lady Jackass” for this entire review.

There are still some things to like, though. Despite the cheap effects, I once again appreciated Haga’s creative solution to dealing with the bad guys. Freezing them all in a failed cargo hold is appropriately grim for such a horrific bunch – and the show even foreshadowed Haga’s plan well early on in this mission. Plus, Shacho is at least the kind of scumbag who could be interesting if Quality assurance decides to ever do anything with him again. He’s an idiot, sure, but he seems a human Idiot, with the way he (sort of) apologizes to Amano for killing Lu and offers to team up with Haga. We need more characters like him in this series. Haga, Amano, and Nikola are a fun bunch. However, if their only hope of salvation is to finish the plot of this ridiculously flawed RPG, then it would be beneficial for everyone involved (including us) if the time spent on this story ended up being worth it.

Evaluation:

Quality assurance in another world is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, which can also be found on Þjórsárdalurhis blog and his podcast.

Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., is a non-controlling minority shareholder of Anime News Network Inc.