So yet again I turn to Crunchyroll and found another isekai to enjoy.  Now I actually didn’t know it was an isekai I just randomly picked this solely because the title caught my eye.  This show stars Haruto who in his first life was a shut in due to being bullied in school and stayed that way till he passed away.  He was reincarnated into another world where he was supposed to be by far the strongest; however, due to how power is measured in that world nobody actually knows that’s the case and he’s mistaken for being the weakest.  Cast out of the family he was reborn into he was taken in by another family and now has to protect them from the family who abandoned him in the first place all while desperately trying to find a way to live the laziest life possible.

As an idea I love this story a lot as it puts a unique spin on the overpowered isekai character.  Instead of everyone knowing he’s overpowered Haruto is constantly seen as a nobody and due to his desire to live a lazy life he takes full advantage of this.  I like how different this is from your typical story with overpowered characters as usually they are less subtle with how they handle their powers.  I also like how Haruto actually has a new family in this world and he isn’t simply placed in the world randomly.  He actually has new parents and siblings and the parents wind up being the antagonists.  Again I love how this is so different from what we normally see with isekai shows as you rarely see any familial bonds here. 

The reason why Haruto is mistaken for the weakest is hilarious as well.  He is several times stronger than everyone else but there’s a pretty funny number trick used to make his power show up otherwise.  I won’t spoil it but I found it to be enjoyable and it does get explained early on in the show.

Haruto’s goal is also interesting as usually you have these big elaborate goals of heroism or ambitious goals of various kinds like leading a country. Haruto has no such ambition and simply wants to be as lazy as possible, which as someone who sometimes works too hard it’s a goal I can get behind.  However, Haruto himself is a mixed bag.  I love his powers as they don’t have an element behind them so rather than flashy fire or lightning powers he essentially makes various utility barriers and items to make his life easier like teleportation doors, constructs and somehow even found a way to load anime from his old life.  He even made a replica of himself.  However, Haruto as a character is not interesting.  Sure he’s lazy but that’s not really the problem he’s just dull.  He doesn’t really have any kind of personality and the fact that he made a replica means we have to deal with two of him and that is frustrating as the replica has his same lackluster personality. 

Haruto is a lot of fun to watch when he’s using his powers because he has so many applications to them and there’s a lot of creativity here; however, Haruto as a person is not interesting.  In fact that problem applies to most of the cast.  While Haruto does have multiple parts to his personality and is fairly fleshed out everyone else is pretty one note and most of them don’t make the best impression.  They all fulfill their roles in the story but beyond that I found the cast almost entirely forgettable.  This also makes it hard to get invested in anyone at all because there’s nothing about these characters that I found a reason to really get behind and truly care about what happens to them.

So overall I have mixed feelings about this show.  On one hand I love all the action scenes and the scenes where Haruto shows off what he can do because his powers are incredible and the humor behind why people think he’s so weak is really well done.  Plus the story is legitimately interesting as Haruto’s new birth family plays the primary antagonist and Haruto’s motivation are unique for the isekai genre.  With that in mind Haruto himself is a buzzkill with very little personality to him and so scenes where Haruto is talking or having monologues fall flat because it’s hard to be invested in him.  Even worse there’s two of him and they are both equally bland.  So it makes the show hard to surmise as I loved parts of it a lot and found myself completely bored with others.  I will try subsequent seasons though to see if Haruto has any character development because that would really elevate this show greatly but if there are no signs of that I might wind up giving up on this one.