Migmi Archives | 100 Word Anime

Here, in Suppose a Kid From the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town?, we have an adventure slash fantasy story based on a light novel that isn’t an isekai.

However, if we wanted that fish out of water experience we instead have a kid who has lived in a mythical village in the middle of nowhere his whole life moving to the kingdom in order to become a soldier, which is apparently a dream of his due to the one book he read as a child and because he considers himself the weakest person in his village. Basically we have a character with no knowledge of the kingdom or its problems stumbling about and being ridiculously over-powered so not so different from the standard isekai plot really.

Last Dungeon - Lloyd — *^{Lloyd is so wholesome… that and a little bit naïve, ignorant and very oblivious.}*

Is Suppose A Kid from the Last Dungeon enjoyable?

If I had to say whether I liked or disliked Last Dungeon (etc), I’d probably land on the side of enjoying it more than anything else. That isn’t actually indicating that this series is particular good at anything but it does avoid making any unforgiveable missteps and it is following a basic formula that works well enough provided you are into that kind of thing.

Lloyd arriving in the city with his dream and having it dashed pretty readily early on before a weird set of circumstances allow him to move forward before the next obstacle arrives and so on and so forth means we’re always kind of moving forward and Lloyd’s over-arching goal of being a hero keeps the plot from feeling stagnant even as they trot out the same jokes and story beats again and again.

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And because this is an anime based on a light novel, pretty much every character Lloyd gets close to or interacts with is a cute girl of one type of another. Whether it is the infatuated older sister type in the form of his house mate (who serves a fairly important purpose in the first arc and there-after just becomes the butt of the loli-character’s jokes), his village chief (the loli), the first girl he meets and saves in town who has instantly fallen in love with him and as built her own delusion around their relationship and so on and so forth.

There are a few male characters sprinkled into the cast but largely this story is all about the different girls who clamour and position themselves around Lloyd despite his absolute obliviousness even when they outright declare their intentions to marry him.

last dungeon 5 — *^{Why yes, this crazy girl who just pushed someone into a wall is the girl you met the other day.}*

Most of the girls are actually pretty fun to spend time with. I kind of liked the pre-existing relationship between Marie and Alka and Marie’s small attempts at rebellion against her former master that were always fairly quickly shut down. Riho ends up being delightful and really I would have loved to have seen more stories revolving around her and Lloyd. Phyllo who comes in later doesn’t offer a lot but she’s largely inoffensive.

The weak link in the harem is Selen who unfortunately gets the majority of screen time as well as the love-struck maiden saved by Lloyd. Honestly, Selen really just ate screen time and her ongoing, loud delusions were most definitely the low point of the story. That they ultimately use her particular brand of crazy to amusing effect during the climax doesn’t really make-up for all the episodes before where you were just kind of hoping that someone would squish her flat.

Last Dungeon A 9 — *^{Oh yeah, that’s healthy.}*

The other fairly weak part of the story comes in the form of the antagonists. While there’s a decent enough build up to the various villains throughout the series as they move in shadows, set up their schemes and seem to actually be quite decently suited to challenge the protagonist, when we finally get their motives out in the open it all just kind of falls flat. Less was definitely more and unfortunately what little hope there was of elevating ‘Suppose a kid’ from absolutely mediocre and forgettable got squashed flat as you realise just how poorly thought out the villains’ plots actually were.

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A final point of weakness is in the entire male cast. Lloyd serves well enough as innocent protagonist but every other male character seems to exist only to be evil or to be the butt of some kind of joke, usually of the physical humour kind. Whether it is Alan being injured in order for the girls to practice healing magic, the former soldier who ends up falling in love with agriculture or just girls kicking guys just because they can, none of the male characters actually gets to be fleshed out as a character.

I get the story isn’t going for being deep and meaningful but it would have been nice for one of the male characters to not be villainous or a punching bag.

Last Dungeon A 3 — *^{Just not sure that was called for.}*

Where I did enjoy the story was in Lloyd’s absolute ignorance of the events going on around him. Despite everything that happens in the first four episodes, he still remains completely clueless as to how strong he actually is. Watching him do that absolute extraordinary and genuinely still have an inferiority complex actually remains fairly amusing for the duration of the anime and is given just enough nuance so that when he falters in the final fight of the series you actually do feel a little bit for this kid who just wants to be a hero.

Likewise Alka’s casual use of extraordinary magic for petty reasons as well as her absent minded-ness, while a repeated gag in the series, mostly hits its mark and remains amusing enough.

Visually, this one is pretty unimpressive with action sequences being very simple and lots of scenes where backgrounds disappear altogether. The characters are cute enough and distinct enough but they don’t move all that much and get used to scenes of the characters eating or drinking tea because they do have a lot of ‘chats’ for an adventure-fantasy story. The monsters, particularly the giant tree thing, are almost comically poorly done and clearly it was intentional, but it doesn’t make it any more interesting to look at.

Last Dungeon A 8 — *^{Motion lines let you know there is movement happening here.}*

Basically, there’s no real reason to rush in to watching Suppose a Kid From the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town. Likewise, there’s no reason to avoid it. If you aren’t in the mood to overly think something and actually just want a sweet protagonist and a few kind of lame fight scenes with a plethora of cute girls thrown in, then you could do worse than this anime. For me, I had enough fun here but I know I will very quickly forget about this anime and may very well end up rewatching it in the future just because I forgot I watched it the first time.

Images from: Suppose a Kid From The Last Dungeon Boonnies Moved to a Starter Town. Dir. migmi. LIDENFILMS. 2021.

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Karandi James

last dungeon 7 — ^{Yep, that is one terrifyingly ordinary looking kid.}

Is ‘Suppose a Kid From the last Dungeon Boonies Moved To A Starter Town’ worth watching?

Watch or Drop? Rules

Rules modified for the Autumn 2021 season.

The anime must be new (not a sequel or spin-off).
I’ll watch as much as it takes to make a decisionas to whether the anime will be added to the watch/review list or dropped and forgotten. For good.

Suppose a kid from the last dungeon boonies. — *^{I’m kind of glad the belt around the head thing didn’t last all that long. She looked really quite ridiculous.}*

First Impressions:

On the surface level this ridiculously titled anime is pretty blunt and in your face with over-aggerated reactions standing in for actual comedy and seems to have the fairly stock-standard storyline of kid from country moves to city with big dreams which are quickly shattered before he does something great and blah, blah, blah.

Honestly, three episodes in and there really isn’t anything remarkable here about any of the ingredients and a lot of them seem like a fairly bad idea. What I actually can’t say though is that Suppose A Kid From the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town is bad; because there is something about the combination that fundamentally works and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t moderately enjoy these first three episodes even if there are questionable choices in writing and character development and the setting is screaming generic fantasy (though it isn’t an isekai).

Is it good enough to keep watching?

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Series Positives:

This is kind of hard because while I kind of enjoyed the first three episodes, it is more because of a culmination of factors rather than any one thing. Not one character has really distinguished themselves as they are all pretty tropey in their own way and one or two of them are actually quite obnoxious.

What I will say is that the cast as a whole kind of complement each other and with the number of characters introduced in these first three episodes very few of them out-stay their welcome (though I could probably do with less Alka). They are however all fairly distinct in their design and certainly colourful enough. Even if you are in danger of eye-rolling while watching them they aren’t boring.

last dungeon 6 — *^{Wow, only in the city a few days and he already has a fan club.}*

I think the other positive I’d like to highlight is the potential here. While the set-up is pretty standard, it will be interesting to see where (if anywhere) they take Lloyd once we get over his initial introduction in the city and through the first crisis that has cropped up by the end of episode 3.

I kind of like the idea that Lloyd’s ancestors were some sort of saviours that were super strong and ultimately decided not to involve themselves in human conflicts but will assist against external threats such as demon lords (and as soon as they dumped that bit of exposition you knew exactly what was going to be threatening the city – at least early on in the story). Part of me really wants to see what they will do with this bit of world building or whether it was just a random background fact that will get forgotten in a haze of Lloyd reacting to different situations.

Series Negatives:

Nice guy protagonists are a dime-a-dozen and Lloyd, while aggressively inoffensive, is so bland in terms of personality outside of being nice that I’m almost certain that if he were a food he’d be an uncooked grain of rice.

I mean, he is nice. Very nice. He bows to people and introduces himself nicely and he cooks. He likes to be helpful and is incredibly modest (or clueless) about his own strength and abilities in comparison to others. However, ultimately he’s really just there at the centre of the story but there’s nothing else to say about him other than nice guy who is super strong.

last dungeon 8 — *^{Normal/boring – time will tell as to which is the better descriptor.}*

The other negative is more just how over-the-top some of the character reactions are. Marie has some incredibly over-blown reactions in these early episodes which makes it hard to take her overly seriously as they move the story to her being the lost princess who has to save her father and the kingdom from war. Selen was cursed and saved, almost incidentally, by Lloyd and has since become feverishly obsessed with him. She could be an interesting and nuanced character but instead she’s just hitting the fan-girl switch in every scene she’s in.

Admittedly, this isn’t a show killer, but it doesn’t really suit my preferences and while there are some moments where these characters are kind of amusing there are more moments where they definitely push too far and ultimately I’m left shaking my head.

Verdict?

This might be a weird verdict but despite the mixed impressions, I did enjoy these three episodes and the anime met my number one criteria for things I will watch through: It made me curious. I’ll sit through all sorts of things if they manage to make me more curious than frustrated and this one certainly did that. Not to mention, while all the individual pieces aren’t much, the combination is actually better than it should be and these first three episodes just kind of slid by in an instant. Maybe I’ll regret adding this to my watch list but I’m still going to go for it.