Anime Review: Life with an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout Episode 1

Life with an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout

Studio: OLM Team Yoshioka

Genre: Comedy, Romance, Fantasy

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Anyone else starting to get fed up of these ridiculous isekai plots that seem to just be trying to mark themselves out as different from every other ‘reincarnated into a fantasy land’ series out there? The incredibly wordy ‘Life with an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout’ is the latest one this season (and by no means, the only one) and is based off a manga series rather than a light novel for once. The premise for this one – two middle aged men are suddenly transported to a fantasy land with one unusual caveat: one of the men is transformed into a cute blonde girl. What follows is a series of events where the two must take on the role of heroes and defeat a demon king to get back to their normal lives and bodies. But can the two carry on as normal friends or will they fall for one another along the way?

There are glints of potential from the plot summary – for starters having more mature protagonists rather than teenagers makes a nice change (even if they are described as being old men despite being just over 30). The series is obviously quite self aware of the typical tropes it’s presenting and subverting and it leads with comedy first and foremost, suggesting the anime is aiming to be a parody of sorts. Unfortunately however, in this first episode at least, this is where it falls flat. The anime just… isn’t that funny. It has one joke which it tends to keep running over and over throughout the first episode and I can already tell this series is just going to fall into a case of ‘will they, won’t they?’ between our transformed protagonist, Tachibana and his old friend Jinguuji. It’s a shame because there was actual potential here for something great. Two best friends who have known each other for over twenty years, who rely on each other, and are thrown into unusual circumstances together could have made for some great emotional drama. The gender bender element is a detail which is laughed off, and Tachibana himself seems to have little issue with suddenly being in another body and indeed seems to automatically get quite into the role of a heroine.

This is OLM Team Yoshioka’s first anime and whilst the presentation isn’t bad by any means, it also comes across as painfully average. The art and animation is fine but nothing spectacular and ultimately just not very memorable. I’ve heard that the manga is very funny but for whatever reason this didn’t seem to translate too well into the anime form. I think the real problem with this is the lack of diverse comedy – everything in the first episode just plays off Tachibana and Jinguuji’s sudden romantic attraction to one another and ultimately this gets old very fast. The opening looks to throw a whole bunch of colourful characters into the mix, most who look like a mix of other tropes (one looks suspiciously like the protagonist of a certain other popular isekai video game anime) but it’s hoped they’ll be fleshed out a bit more. Speaking of the opening, it also commits the crime of revealing way too much about what plot points are going to follow.

Ultimately this anime is a light watch but I personally would find it hard to recommend above other isekai out there that do the job just that little bit better. If the gender-bender angle appeals to you then this is probably the series for you, but don’t expect anything too deep or complicated with this series. It’s here to have fun and poke fun at the characters and I’m sure it’ll certainly have it’s fair share of fans, but ultimately this series just didn’t have enough substance to appeal to me.