Quality Assurance in Another World

Episode 12

Quality Assurance in Another World is one of those shows that has become just as frustrating to watch as it can be enjoyable. There are still a lot of ideas and video game in-jokes to mine from this concept, and episodes like “The Diamond” prove that the series is perfectly capable of acting on them…when it feels like it, that is. Until the mood strikes, though, Quality Assurance seems content to fiddle about and waste a maddening amount of time being neither compelling nor especially funny, which is a far cry from where I hoped the show would be after I watched that wonderful first episode.

Take Kinoshita, for instance. They're a player that has been trapped on the thousandth floor of the titular “Diamond,” a ridiculously huge labyrinth that is buried underneath Sai, and they've been trapped for ages in a loading error that has caused their entire character to be reduced to a floating placeholder node. With only the typo- and formatting-filled books of the dungeon library to keep them company, poor Kinoshita is overjoyed to have someone new to talk to when Haga is transported into the depths of The Diamond by a scheming Alba.

This is an interesting new character to add to the mix, both from a writing and a visual standpoint, and I am curious to see how Kinoshita will factor into the final act of the season. I also wish that this episode didn't feel so aimless and stodgy getting to this story beat, as we spend practically half of the episode going through the obvious motions of having Alba betray the group and send them all into The Diamond's endless mazes. Nikola and Tesla's side of the story feels especially stalled out, as almost nothing of import is done with either character outside of separating them from the rest of the group.

The underground casino is another concept that is funny in concept but very mixed in execution. I like the little nods to real-life video game bugs and shortcuts, like giving generic nothing-lines to random NPCs meant to fill space, or the generally predatory and often imbalanced nature of the casinos that are included in games like this (and no, I'm not bitter at all of the money I have wasted in the casinos of the Pokémon and Like a Dragon games! Why would you even ask that?). The whole sequence just doesn't come together right in the final edit, though, leaving a lot of the jokes to fall flat and robbing this very urgent and dangerous situation of most of its tension. The gang has been down in the Diamond pits for days at this point, and it somehow feels like both an eternity and no time at all has passed.

At this point, I shouldn't be expecting more from Quality Assurance than to provide a wonky but still functional way to kill a half-hour, but man, I wish that this 'toon had been able to live up to its potential. We've barely got any time left in the season to bring things back up to pace, too, so I think the best we can hope for is a finale that leaves us feeling fair-to-middling instead of actively bored and resentful.

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Quality Assurance in Another World is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.