Especially relative to many of the other titles in the deluge of isekai anime we've gotten in the past few years, Headhunted to Another World: From Salaryman to Big Four! (henceforth Headhunted), sounds on paper like it should be such a fun series. I mean, Just Some Guy summoned by the Demon King to handle the bureaucratic side of his reign? Sure, that sounds silly. And perhaps equally as important, since this is an isekai title, it sounds fresh. And with better writing, it easily could've been both.

Despite the expectations you're probably tempted to have, the anime plays the idea of a salaryman from our world joining the Demon King's legion to handle things like resource management and negotiations more or less completely straight. For better or for worse, it's exactly what it says on the tin: resource management and negotiations, but instead of a bunch of people wearing suits, it's our titular salaryman and a bunch of fantasy creatures/races/items/etc. There are some funny moments, but it's not so much a comedy about goofy isekai hijinks involving a salaryman who suddenly finds himself in this position of power in a fantasy world, as much as it is just bureaucracy in a fantasy world. “Ah,” you might now think, “so then it's a political thriller?” Oddly enough, also no.

One of the core issues of Headhunted is how much effort it puts into trying to flesh out its world, despite that world being a standard-issue RPG world without any unique qualities. There's no need to put much—if any—stock into worldbuilding. After all, in the context of isekai anime, isn't the whole reason you use generic fantasy RPG worlds in the first place so they can act as a shorthand for “fantasy world?” This anime nonetheless fluffs out a lot of episodes by doing this anyway. Unsurprisingly, it does so with no meaningful payoff. Even by the end, the world is as boring and nondescript as ever, despite how much time is spent explaining why things work the way they do in this world.

For every bit the worldbuilding is arbitrary, the characters are boring. It feels weird to criticize a series about a salaryman, who are oftentimes shorthand for an archetypal businessman of one sort or another in Japan, for being boring. You might think, “Wouldn't that be a feature, not a bug? Shouldn't the protagonist be boring?” And to a certain extent, I'd agree. Making him too interesting might risk undercutting the series' concept. But Dennosuke is a plain salaryman in stark contrast to a fantasy world. Once that's established and you start to want more from him as a protagonist, you quickly begin to realize that's more or less all there is to him. Just the same joke, told repeatedly because this series, for whatever ill-advised reason, wants to play the idea of a salaryman in a fantasy world straightforwardly.

Neither the soundtrack nor visuals stand out as being particularly good or bad. If anything, I'd say they're pretty unmemorable. But to its credit, while the animation quality was never anything impressive, it was mostly consistent in its general quality, and that's something. That said, the sound design of this series could've used some work—more than a few times, I couldn't help but notice the absence of a sound effect where it feels like there should've been one. This never happened to a distracting extent, but it happened often enough for me to notice that this wasn't exactly a one-off issue. And with regards to whether I preferred the dub or the sub, this is a series where I think that, overall, the subbed version is markedly better. This is probably thanks to Akio Ootsuka's perfectly equal-parts-intimidating-and-awe-inspiring Demon King, and Konomi Kohara's just-high-energy-enough Ulmandra.

This anime had potential, but unfortunately, it couldn't live up to it. It's almost frustrating how easily it could've been a comedic subversion of all things isekai and salaryman life, but just isn't. But even outside of that scope—purely on its own merits of what it is, not what it feels like it could or should be—this is little more than an unremarkable isekai series that managed to fumble an interesting concept.