Quality Assurance in Another World

Episodes 5-6

Quality Assurance in Another World took a week off but it's making it up to us now by airing Episodes 5 and 6 back to back. It ended up working out in the show's favor, too, because while Episode 5 would have probably felt like a bit of lackluster table setting all on its own, the mission to infiltrate the Play Ing foes' castle holds up a lot better when you get to power through two episodes of the storyline in a row. I've become exhausted with the binge model of television viewing as of late, which is part of why I love covering anime that still releases on a weekly seasonal model so much, but I'm starting to think that Quality Assurance is one of those shows that does benefit from getting as much of its story out there as quickly as possible.

What I enjoyed the most about this pair of episodes is how we see our newly established team of heroes work together and overcome the challenges that can keep a fantasy adventure chugging along in a serialized fashion. This week, the gang is doing their best to sneak into the castle owned by the assholes from Play Ing that got Lu the NPC killed in Episode 4 and Quality Assurance does a great job of incorporating the usual Fantasy RPG tropes with the specific quirks of the bug-hunting expertise that Haga brings to the table. It would have been easy for the crew to rely on the usual “get arrested on purpose and break out of jail” routine, but the show smartly adds in the fun detail of Haga using a physics glitch on a chest to fling the party to their destination. Likewise, in Episode 6, the climactic fight gets resolved by exploiting the mission's busted frame rate to give everyone the reaction time they need to avoid getting killed. Even the problem of avoiding the Play Ing goons is resolved when Haga realizes that a major story quest like this one would have to be instanced into discrete gameplay environments for different parties that are playing through the same content, just like in a real MMORPG, which means that player characters like the enemy debuggers simply can't interfere with our heroes so long as they are protected within their instance.

I'm not going to pretend that it all makes perfect sense or that it is executed flawlessly. Even if you go with the show's flow and handwave all of the possible inconsistencies in the game with one of Haga's casual shrugs, the show's lacking production values continue to get in the way. The end fight, specifically, doesn't quite communicate the frame-rate-busting slow-motion that the team is using; it just looks like your average sub-par anime slow-mo with a cheap glitch filter slapped on top. Given how reliant this story is on the particular visual and programming foibles that come from trying to wrangle a massive game in a 3D engine, maybe this is an anime that would benefit from being done entirely in CGI, even (or perhaps especially) if the results aren't as polished as something that we'd get from the likes of Studio Orange.

Still, I had a good deal of fun with this pair of episodes, and I think it bodes well enough for Quality Assurance's future. This remains a flawed and inconsistent piece of entertainment, but it continues to get just enough right that I don't mind coming back for more. Especially if Nikola gets her wish and is allowed to buff up with a genuine character class, soon. Let the girl do more than wave a dozen dildos around, please! (Note: The dildo joke was pretty funny).

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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.