The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Let This Grieving Soul Retire!

Krai makes an oath with his friends to become the strongest hero in the world...but his hopes are quickly dashed when he realizes that his talents lie elsewhere. Despite the reality check, the expectations from the people around him seem to rise exponentially every day. Now Krai must deal with this huge misunderstanding as well as the outrageous consequences.

Let This Grieving Soul Retire! is based on the light novel series by Tsukikage and illustrated by Chyko. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Tuesdays.

You know you're in for a rough time when a fantasy anime spends the first half of its premiere expositing about all of the RPG-mechanic-adjacent world-building that we are all too depressingly familiar with by now. Let This Grieving Soul Retire! has decent enough production values and is at least attempting to be entertaining in a workplace-comedy sort of way, but man, this show just isn't giving us anything to work with at all. I would have an easier time writing an in-depth recap of the bowl of microwavable Campbell's Chicken Soup that I ate for lunch on Friday.

All you need to know is that everything about this show's characters, setting, and tone consists of minor variations on themes and archetypes we see pop up a dozen times each year. We've got a fantasy world full of monsters, we've got a network of adventuring clans that compete for wealth and fame, we've got several characters who possess absurdly overpowered skills that put them leagues ahead of anyone else in the monster slaying game, et cetera, et cetera. Just about the closest thing that Let This Grieving Soul Retire! has to a “gimmick” that might set it apart is the fact that our hero, Krai, didn't get unceremoniously booted from his party by a conniving tart, or a smug douchebag, or whatever; rather, he recognized that his ordinary capabilities were never going to measure up to the rest of his friends in the hilariously named “Grieving Souls” clan, so he opted to see himself out and pursue a more anonymous life. Naturally, a series of comical misunderstandings about his abilities and intentions make that impossible, and Krai ends up roped into more misadventures and shenanigans than he ever bargained for. Some other waifu-material types of girls also show up to become increasingly obsessed with Krai, because why not? We've got to have something that keeps the viewers interested in seeing more.

It's a well-worn comedy trope that seems to be riffing on what is going on with The Eminence in Shadow's plot, except in this case, the hero is the least delusional one in the group. I have yet to catch up on that show, but friends have been insisting it is a crowd-pleasing blast for years. Somehow, I doubt that Let This Grieving Soul Retire! will end up garnering the same reputation. There's nothing terribly wrong with this premiere, other than the fact that every attempt to make me laugh or get me interested in its world slid off of my brain like so much melted cheese off of an underbaked pizza. It's just the kind of anime that could not make less of an impression on me if it tried. I'll wager that I won't even remember that I watched this episode by the time I have breakfast in the morning.

I have decided to start this out with something positive: instead of adventurers and an adventurers' guild, this show has hunters and an explorers' guild! That's new and semi-creative! Yay! Does it make up for the rest of the world-building being RPG-inspired fantasy's lowest standard? Well, no. But we must find hope wherever we can in these dark creative times.

I'm probably being a bit harsher than is strictly necessary, because there's also something at least a little different in our ostensible hero, Krai. Krai, who looks like he's always in need of a few hours of sleep, is the unlikely leader of the strongest clan (a grouping of parties together under one united leader) in the capital. He doesn't look all that impressive, and if you ask him, he in no way deserves the position. But Krai is almost certainly selling himself short; while he probably is exactly as unobservant as he claims to be, he also likely has amazing instincts and judgment that he's unaware of. Sure, he could have coasted to the top of the organization on pure luck, but the few glimpses we get of him acting in a leadership role imply that he's simply suffering from a low estimation of his skills on top of needing more rest. Given that his childhood friends, with whom he started the party The Grieving Souls, are all more overtly talented in swordsmanship, magic, and other classic fantasy skills, it would be easy for him to write himself off because he lacks those talents.

The other possibility is that he's fully aware of his gifts and is just incredibly lazy or finds adventuring, er, hunting, to be too much work. Right now, that feels like a tossup; we see him not noticing a slavering beast behind him in a dungeon, but we also watch him very cannily figure out which of the slew of would-be clan members are likely to be the best picks. He's also risen to level eight when most people are boasting about being level three or four, and he's unlikely to have attained that rank by riding on his friends' coattails. It's clear that this is meant to be the hook (along with Tino's thighs, which have the misfortune of being attached to a really obnoxious person), and it isn't terrible. But it's also not quite enough to make this stand out, and I know that the source novels and manga had me dropping them shortly after this. Still, this will likely fit the bill if you're looking for something comfortably familiar but still a touch different.

You know, after some years of doing Preview Guide, not to mention premiere reviews for another site before that I've hit a point where a show will get automatic credit if it does something even slightly unexpected. Congratulations, Let This Grieving Soul Retire!, you managed to step over that low, low bar with your protagonist, Krai Andrey.

See, there are only so many varieties of LitRPG potatoragonists out there. You've got the cool loner who's just better than everyone else (Kirito), the bitter misanthrope who will show them, he'll show them all (Naofumi), the pervert who's really just misunderstood (Rudeus), the unlikely reincarnation (Boxxo), and so on. But Krai feels different, or at least has an unusual combination of traits.

It helps that the writing around him is a little self-aware, but not so much so that it posts big signposts on every single play on audience expectations. He gripes about how hunters never listen to others and then… proceeds not to listen to a single thing anyone says to him. He's not so much downtrodden as reluctant, stumbling into success as he fails to convince anyone around him that he really doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't pay attention to his surroundings except what's convenient, but also has occasional flashes of canny insight. There are some nice touches around his character design as well, like the rings that bedeck his fingers and jewels in his ears on top of his Kirito-esque black jacket, signs of his party's wild success at raiding dungeons.

But ohhhhhh do I hate Tino. While I commend the animation team for allowing her thighs to touch and paying some attention to the way the fat and muscle sit when she kicks higher than her head, I let out a groan every time the camera fondled her ass, which was often. But that alone isn't enough to dislike her; I've loved plenty of female characters despite them being constantly subjected to male-gaze camera work. No, I can't stand her because she's shrill and obnoxious, her emotional dimensionality restricted to screeching and flailing at Krai for his attention. Which she'll never get, because he's a hunter and hunters never listen. Let This Grieving Soul Retire! probably wouldn't have grabbed me under the best of circumstances, but Tino's earsplitting screech made me count the minutes until the episode concluded.

I'm all for a fun subversion of tropes. In this case, the episode at first looks like Krai was either kicked out or quit his childhood friends' party because he wasn't as amazing as the rest of them and is now trying to find another party to join on the down-low. The twist is that not only was he not kicked out/didn't quit, but he's actually both the party's leader and greater clan leader—and desperately wants to quit.

What makes this silly plot actually work is the subtext in the scene where he tries to quit the party and ends up as their leader. What he assumes is that his friends didn't listen to him. After all, now his reputation precedes him to the point that people believe their own impressions of him over his own words—e.g., he says he slept in but they believe he actually wanted to secretly scout the hopefuls from within the crowd. However, the key to his failed retirement scene is that he had no such reputation yet.

The reason his friends ignored him and made him a leader isn't because they didn't understand what he said but because his not being there with them would ruin their whole dream. What they want (and what he truly wants) is for the six of them to be together forever. They don't care that he's weaker or less talented but they can tell he cares. That's why they foist the role of leader on him. Now he's the most important member of the party. His responsibilities are far more than fighting—so who cares if he's not on the front lines all the time?

Of course, his misunderstanding gives him serious impostor syndrome—especially as his legend grows through no work of his own. But the fact of the matter is, as we see, he is level 8. He's strong by any metrics and has magical items that can easily capture and restrain a level 4. The whole “super strong but doesn't realize it” trope is a common one these days but this show might have the humor chops to make it work. I mean, it's not every fantasy anime that gives us a leg-kabedon, right?