After years of isekai protagonists getting underage slave girls for their harems, I guess turnabout is fair play as we have an adult woman fantasying about having the 15 year old protagonist work as one.
This woman, the protagonist’s case worker at Hello Hello Work Station, this series version of the Adventurer Guilt, is not the only adult woman lusting after him. So does the adventurer who hires him to help her mine the mountain she owns to pay her tax debt. Granted, the white haired cute, un-threatening young boy protagonist is not rare in fantasy anime like this (see last season’s Izure Saikyou no Renkinjutsushi e.g.) but I can’t remember seeing this level of thirstiness bordering on sexual harassment before. A new milestone in anime has clearly been (b)reached.
Otherwise, Kanchigai no Atelier Meister is depressingly familiar in its setup. Our hero, Kurt started out as the jack of all trades for a famous group of heroes, until he got kicked out for being useless at the start of the episode in a much ruder fashion than was necessary. He sets about finding new work but the tests at the job centre show his skills to be abysmal across the board. As he starts doing odd jobs like repairing the city walls it becomes clear he’s actually overpowered but years of abuse have left him with such low self esteem he can’t see it himself even when everybody else does. This first episode’s title even lampshades this: “the common tale of how the guy in charge of chores with low self-esteem turned out to actually possess incredible skills”. The only real twist is that Kurt’s skills do not lie in combat, but in support, especially alchemy related tasks and that his views of what is normal are skewed by his upbringing in an isolated village where everybody could do the things he does.
And even these are not particularly novel ideas; Izure Saikyou no Renkinjutsushi‘s protagonist was also some sort of alchemist with support skills while we had the naive hero who doesn’t understand his own strength because everybody else in his village was stronger all the way back in 2021 with *deep breath* Tatoeba Last Dungeon Mae no Mura no Shounen ga Joban no Machi de Kurasu You na Monogatari. The combination of these two tropes with being kicked out of the hero’s party is somewhat new, at least for anime, but is it enough to keep interest?
Having read some of the manga version of this series, the appeal lies in the tension between Kurt’s blithe ignorance of his own worth and everybody else’s dawning horror of what a monster he is and their increasingly desperate attempts to keep him from realising the truth. It could get a bit grating. So far the actual animation quality has been decent enough with strong character design. I particularly like Yulishia, who reminded me of Togame from Katanagatari. Whether I will keep watching this will depend on the rest of the season, which does look packed so the likelihood is great I’ll drop this a few episodes in.
