©Masami Sato/Kodansha/”This World Is Too Perfect” Production Committee
Quality assurance from another world is one of those shows that is both frustrating and enjoyable to watch. There are still plenty of ideas and video game jokes to be mined from the concept, and episodes like “Diamond” prove that the series is more than capable of acting on them… when it feels like this, that is. However, until I feel better, Quality assurance Seemingly content to fiddle around and waste a maddening amount of time without being compelling or particularly interesting, it’s far from the show I was hoping for after watching the fantastic first episode.
Take Kinoshita for example. They are a player trapped in the 1000th level called “The Diamond”, a massive maze buried beneath Sai, and they have been stuck in a loading error for a long time, causing their entire character to be Trapped in the game. When Haga is led deep into the diamond by the scheming Alba, poor Kinoshita has only the dungeon library’s books filled with typos and formatting for company, happy to have someone new to talk to.
This is an interesting new character from a writing and visual standpoint, and I’m curious to see how Kinoshita will influence the final act of the season. I also wish this episode didn’t feel so aimless and boring in terms of story pacing, since we spend almost half the episode going through the obvious action of having Alba betray the team and sending them all into an endless maze of diamonds. Nikola and Tesla’s story feels particularly stagnant, as little of anything significant is done with either character other than to separate them from the rest of the team.
Underground casinos are another concept that is interesting in concept but complex in execution. I like the little nods to real-life video game bugs and shortcuts, like giving random NPCs generic wireless to fill space, or the generally predatory and often unbalanced nature of casinos included in games like this ( And no, I don’t resent the money wasted at the casino at all Pokémon and like a dragon game! Why are you asking this? However, the entire sequence didn’t come together well in the final cut, causing a lot of the jokes to fall flat and taking away much of the tension of this very urgent and dangerous situation. The group has been in the Crater of Diamonds for days, and somehow it feels like an eternity and Time has not passed at all.
At this point I shouldn’t expect more Quality assurance Not to offer a wonky but still effective way to kill half an hour, but man, I hope this “cartoon” lives up to its potential. We also have very little time this season for things to get back to normal, so I think the best we can hope for is an ending that feels middling rather than downright boring and resentful.
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Quality assurance from another world Currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, which can also be found in twitterhis blog and his podcast.
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