The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Loner Life in Another World

Haruka is the only one in his class who didn't receive a "cheat skill" from God during the class's sudden summoning to another world. He is determined to enjoy a "loner" life in a different world using leftover bad skills.

Loner Life in Another World is based on the light novel series by Shoji Goji with illustrations by booota and Saku Enomaru. The anime series is streaming on HIDIVE on Thursdays.

I will credit Loner Life in Another World for this: Despite being the ten-thousandth cookie-cutter isekai anime we've gotten since the year began, this show at least attempts to have a personality, mainly by way of vaguely self-aware jokes. When our main hero guy, Haruka, initially tries to nope out of getting isekai'd along with his whole class because he realizes it would be a pain in the ass? That's kind of a joke! When he realizes that he's been stuck with all of the lame F-tier skills that none of the other kids wanted because of his dallying? That's also kind of a joke (albeit a pretty cliché one, at this point). I chuckled a bit at the concept of the “Company Communicator” class, which is more of a reaction than a lot of these shows get out of me. The show also looks perfectly functional, which is another basic quality-of-life feature that is easy to take for granted until you end up spending many years of your life watching shows that look like their animation cels are actively melting under the unforgiving heat of an exploding star.

Unfortunately, the thin veneer of ironic smarm is essentially the only differentiating factor that Loner Life in Another World has going for it. Once Haruka gets into his new generic RPG life and starts incessantly monologuing about his stat points and skill combos, it becomes clear that everything else about this anime is just business as usual. Watching this premiere, I was reminded of the time I spent in my high school college prep program, which required hundreds of hours of community service on top of our regular coursework. Sometimes we got to do fun and unexpected things that qualified as “community service” (I once served as a referee for an international Cup Stacking tournament), but we'd also often find ourselves doing the usual work of cleaning up trash and pulling weeds at public parks and the like. There'd always be at least one guy — and sometimes that guy was me — who would try to make the drudgery a little easier with an endless stream of quips and snarky observations. Whether or not you prefer some inconsistent color commentary to simply working in complete, stoic silence is a matter of personal preference. However, at the end of the day, you're still spending all day picking up trash and getting covered with sweat and grime.

That's exactly how I feel about Loner Life in Another World. Do I prefer this approach to telling a shamelessly lazy and unoriginal isekai story to an anime that tries to play it all completely straight? I guess so, though it's not like I'm champing at the bit to endure either variation of a tortuously bland experience. There are some anime that I wouldn't wish on even my worst enemy. This one is the kind of show I could see myself recommending to a childhood bully or to that one guy who flipped me off on my way to work the other day for daring to drive only five miles above the speed limit instead of twenty-five. It's a socially acceptable torture that gets you slapped with a minor misdemeanor, at worst.

I hope you enjoy listening to Shūichirō Umeda and tinkly background music, because that's pretty much all you get with the first episode of Loner Life in Another World. Granted, it's there in the title, but from what I remember of the manga version (I can't speak to the original light novel), he's not a “loner” for all that long – or at least, not alone, which isn't quite the same thing. In any event, this is twenty-odd minutes of Haruka talking to himself as he enters his isekai experience, and after a little bit, it becomes very, very grating.

That's too bad, because this episode is entertainingly self-aware. The minute the giant glowing summoning circle appears on the floor of his classroom, Haruka decides to nope the hell out of there, knowing full well what's about to happen. Unfortunately for him, this is the world's most determined isekai, and not only are the doors sealed shut and the windows unbreakable, but even hiding in the ceiling doesn't save him. All it does is ensure that Haruka is the last guy to get to pick his skills, meaning that the exasperated god throws all the leftovers at him and tosses him out into the world. This entire sequence is much more amusing than it ought to be, largely because Haruka is not only genre-savvy, but he's also not interested in the boilerplate isekai experience. Sure, parts of it sound okay, but our hero seems aware of the basic differences between fiction and reality, which is refreshing.

Regretfully, that one joke can't carry the entire episode. In its defense, it doesn't exactly try, eschewing checklist action and instead opting for mildly silly animated menus and a slide show of Haruka finding ways to make his skills awesome and useful. But the fact remains that most of the episode's runtime is devoted to the usual fighting goblins, learning the ropes, and eating, all while discovering that “loser” skills are actually great. By the time his other classmates, all suitably grouped in their pre-transportation cliques, showed up, I was practically begging to hear someone else talk or for Haruka to find someone to narrate besides us.

The ending theme suggests that his new listeners are going to be the girls. Possibly all of them, since the images are 99% female, thus supplying the requisite harem. This, of course, brings up the horrifically bad idea of giving the girls white skirts on their uniforms, which most of them still appear to be wearing. (Did only Haruka's title come with new clothes?) Not only is that awful for mucking around in the forest, it's downright cruel to force teenage girls to wear white bottoms, and I, for one, protest this evidence of the patriarchy. And that right there should probably tell you how little there is to talk about in this episode because if there's space for me to be thinking about a poor costume choice, then surely that was space to make the story more interesting.

I could complain about so many little things in this anime. Take his appraisal contacts for example. How can he put them in with leather gloves on—and without contact solution too? And does he ever take them out? He's going to get an eye infection! Then there is stuff like, why would a normal villager have insane luxury items like spices or a bag of holding? Why does he think staves are a bad weapon? (Historically they are insanely strong.) And why is he so okay with murdering intelligent life—i.e., goblins who are simply gathering mushrooms? I mean, it's not like they attack him first?

However, focusing on the details would be missing the biggest problem with this anime. Basically, the premise of this episode (and seemingly the whole show) is that Haruka is alone in the fantasy world—even if its by choice. It is insanely difficult to do a story with only a single character. It puts all the wait and responsibility on a lone actor to draw in the audience. Simply put, if you don't care about the main character, you don't care about the story.

Now, this has been done successfully before. The anime example that comes to mind is So I'm a Spider, So What? The vast majority of the story is focused on our spider heroine attempting to survive the dungeon alone. But it only works because Aoi Yūki is just that damned good of a voice actress. Her constant running monologue and wide acting range make it impossible to love the character despite her faults. And to be frank, while he gives it a good try, Shūichirō Umeda is no Aoi Yūki.

So, all this is a long-winded way of saying that I did not connect with the main character and found the whole episode boring. I don't think Haruka is a main character capable of supporting this story and so I'm just going to call this one quits right here.

(Though, to be fair, I did, at least, enjoy his attempts to avoid the summoning circle while everyone else just stood there slack-jawed.)

Oh man, the season is JUST starting and already my resolution to find something interesting or unique about every generic isekai/LitRPG fantasy is being challenged. I feel like a kid struggling with a prompt in a school essay: “The most unique thing about Loner Life in Another World is ________.” Oh god the clock is ticking, I only have forty minutes left to finish my essay! Uhhhh…

The most unique thing about Loner Life in Another World is that the protagonist gets the supposedly crappy skills because of his own choice to try to avoid getting isekai'd. Usually, when that happens it's arbitrary and his classmates treat him like garbage because they're meanie poopooheads. This time, he gets there late because he doesn't want to be bothered and ends up with the leftover skills.

Whew! That was pretty hard because Loner Life in Another World is as generic as they come. And you know what, if they couldn't be bothered to make something interesting, I'm not going to bother writing something interesting. Do they give me a checklist of tropes? I'm going to give them a checklist of complaints! Why look, I already get to check the first box: “Compare the story to a checklist.”

Hey, do we even learn the protagonist's name? He's the only one who speaks the entire episode, without exaggeration, so I guess he didn't need to mention his name to himself. That's the only thing he didn't describe, as he goes on and on and on describing everything that's on the screen. You put the meat and mushrooms in a pan, you say? Why, we couldn't possibly have surmised that from the visual of you putting meat and mushrooms in the pan. You feel the need to tell us that the cave you pitched your tent in will be a good shelter for the time being. But what is a cave? Please explain, gentle protagonist! I, a person with functional eyesight and basic literacy could not possibly figure this out on his own. Reader, you may be shocked to learn that his supposedly useless skills are, in fact, very very good! He levels up and all his stats double!

It's just… uuuuuuuuuuugh. It's slop! Please people, have higher standards! Want something better to spend your one precious life on! Demand basic storytelling competence! Aspire to be more than the lowest common denominator, for all of our sakes.