Quality Assurance in Another World – Episode 1

What’s about it? Nikola lives a peaceful life working at the village inn, until one day a herd of dragons attack her home.  In the midst of the chaos she meets a quirky scholar named Haga, whose primary job is to study anomalies affecting their world.  While everything seems like a standard fantasy story it’s gradually revealed that Haga has more going on than he appears.

The premiere definitely had me fooled, so much so, that the big reveal at the end took me by surprise.  I’ll admit I’m not usually a fan of stories about VR games, but I appreciate the themes the genre tries to examine.  I mean think about it: if you’re trapped in a VR game for a long time, can the player even connect to the real world anymore? There’s no doubt that such a scenario can really distort someone’s perception of reality, which can lead to devastating consequences.  In spite of the interesting questions the VR game genre asks, I’ve never been able to click with it.  

My personal preferences aside, the show deserves major prompts for being confident that the audience will pick up on the subtle clues that something isn’t right about the world the characters are living in.  Everything just seemed too “perfect” and there’s just a general sense that nothing feels “natural” about Nikola’s hometown.  The character designs and bold linework are the best part of the episode because it makes everything seem more lively and colorful.  

Basically, the show has a lot of charm and even the action sequences are unique because there’s actual strategy involved when fighting the monsters.  As noted by the villagers, Haga’s fight with the dragons isn’t flashy or “cool” to look at, but it doesn’t have to be since protecting the villagers is more important than anything else.  

At his core, Haga is a kind person who’s trapped in a miserable cycle of having to repeat game events over and over again.  The circumstances surrounding how he got trapped into the VR game are suspicious since we never saw the faces of the people controlling the VR game machinery.  What is the true purpose of imprisoning Haga and his comrades into the VR game? The possible reasons for Haga’s suffering are numerous and it’s honestly a miracle that he hasn’t lost his mind yet.  It’s admirable that Haga hasn’t given up and continues to formulate plans on how he can do things differently to save Nikola’s town again.  

It’s a bit challenging to discuss Nikola’s character since aside from being spunky and curious there isn’t much there to chew on.  For the time being that’s okay, since Nikola and Haga established a fun rapport with each other, which will probably be a delight to watch moving forward.  Quality Assurance is not the most original show to grace our screens, but it has a lot of heart and definitely deserves more eyes on it.