All The Announcements from Anime NYC 2024

Loner Life in Another World Lives and Dies by Its Protagonist

ANN's coverage of Anime NYC 2024 sponsored by Yen Press and Ize Press!

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After a few technical delays and some brief promotion for HIDIVE, the panel dived straight into the premiere of the show's first episode. As is evidenced by the title, Loner Life in Another World is an isekai parody starring a loner kid named Haruka who gets isekai'd alongside his classmates but ends up separated from them and decides that he'd rather keep it that way. That's…more or less the core joke. At this point, isekai parodies are about as frequent as the ones that play the tropes straight, and despite labeling itself as the former, it doesn't divert from genre expectations.

I did get a kick out of the joke with Haruka seeing the isekai portal swallowing up his classmates and trying his best to dodge it because getting isekai'd sounds like too much of a pain, but that was pretty much the highlight. The rest of the humor largely centered around him that all of his seemingly useless skills have some actual utility. While stuff like a pair of random contact lenses having the Appraisal skill is kind of amusing out of context, in execution, it doesn't feel any different than if our protagonist had acquired his uber skills in the "normal" way.

It doesn't help that the gags here basically live or die on how much Haruka can carry the show himself since he is, after all, doing this solo. Still, considering that he isn't even properly named within the episode, it goes without saying that he doesn't have the comedic energy to make that work.

If nothing else, it inadvertently demonstrates how much these kinds of isekai comedies can be carried by the strength of their supporting cast. But since none of Haruka's classmates have names either, and he's trying to actively avoid interacting with them, I don't have much confidence they'll be able to pick up the slack. There are certainly worse isekai comedies out there, but there isn't much here that hasn't been done funnier elsewhere, so unless the humor picks up later on, there's not much to recommend with this one.