©Masami Sato/Kodansha/’This World Is Too Imperfect’ Manufacturing Committee
With its deceptively simple story, atmospheric setting and assured path, the primary episode of High quality assurance in one other world was one among my favourite premieres of the summer time season this 12 months. The subsequent two episodes that got here out are… not fairly pretty much as good, I will admit, however I do not wish to give anybody the fallacious impression! High quality assurance continues to be a really good present with some refreshing twists on the drained “Trapped in a VR Recreation” premise. It is simply that the execution falls brief in just a few key areas.
Let’s begin with the positives: in all three of those episodes, High quality assurance performs with some actually enjoyable concepts about Haga’s job as a debugger and tester for the digital sport he’s been trapped in for the previous 12 months. His enthusiastic persuasion of poor little Nikola to spend a whole day operating her cheek towards the town partitions to examine for bugs in collision detection and the like was the funniest gag of the present. There’s quite a bit to love about Haga’s easy, sincere, decided strategy to doing his job irrespective of the circumstances. If punching each wall and exploiting each enemy AI sample has even an opportunity of breaking him and his associates out of this jail, then Haga goes to show Nikola to be the very best wall-puncher who ever lived.
Talking of Haga’s associates, I really like the varied merciless fates that awaited them once they dared to mess with the unstable godlike powers of their debug slates. One man received sucked into house, one other woman has been repeating the identical infinite dying/respawn loop for a 12 months, and one significantly unfortunate bastard received caught face first and ass up in the midst of stable earth. The truth that all of those doomed debuggers are most likely nonetheless consciously is only a grotesque cherry on high of the trauma cake. If you mix all that with the hilariously grim NPCs that Haga and Nikola discover within the traditional T-pose, it is clear that the writer Masamichi Sato is aware of a factor or two about video video games, each as an artwork kind and an business. I’ve to respect that.
However as a lot as I really like the concepts that High quality assurance is, I want it may match them with extra persistently compelling visuals and storytelling. The animation has by no means been the first focus of this present – even within the premiere, which I gave 5 stars to – however it’s began to slide off that precarious razor-sharp edge that separates “easy however efficient” from “just a bit awkward-looking” paintings. Scenes just like the Evil Debuggers throwing darts at a bunch of crushed NPC skulls needs to be downright unsettling. Nonetheless, the present has misplaced a little bit of the deliciously ominous temper it displayed within the premiere, and now scenes like “grotesque homicide performed as sport” don’t fairly hit the mark as they need to. Similar goes for the reveal of Tesla the AI – the one possessing Nikola’s physique and urging Haga to take out the debuggers who aren’t creepily obsessive about the trivia of their work. It’s not essentially the most mind-boggling twist ever, however it nonetheless may have been given a bit extra weight and gravitas than it in the end obtained.
There may be sufficient sturdy base materials for High quality assurance to outlive my whining in regards to the mediocre presentation. My largest concern is the long run. After the premiere, I used to be satisfied that this may very well be the following nice underdog isekai anime. However proper now, it looks like the present will accept simply “fairly good, all issues thought-about.”
Judgement:
High quality assurance in one other world is at present streaming on Crunchyroll.
James is a author with many ideas and emotions about anime and different popular culture, which can be discovered on Twitterhis weblog and his podcast.
Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., a completely owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., is a non-controlling minority shareholder in Anime Information Community Inc.
