Another isekai to add the growing list I decided to review The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated In Another World as an Aristocrat a title that is way longer than it should be. In this case the greatest assassin was raised to be an emotionless tool in order to be the best weapon he could be; however, age always wins out in the end and as he got older he took one last job before retiring from in field work. The problem is after the job he was betrayed and lost his life at the hands of the agency he worked for his entire life which caused a reawakening of his emotions. He’s greated by a Goddess who makes him a deal. He can be reincarnated into another world, but he has to kill the hero in 18 years who will end up destroying the world they end up saving 16 years after the assassin is reincarnated. Reborn as Lugh Tuatha Dé he finds himself in the household of an assassin family with special skills of his own choosing as he is once again raised to be the perfect assassin.

So one of the things I like most about the story is how Lugh is clearly not meant to be this hero as we already know a hero exists. The circumstances of the mission are also rather complex as Lugh has to wait 16 years for the hero to save the world and then kill him in the following two years. It immediately sets up the task to be rather daunting and hard to reach and it does a great job of setting up the stage. Lugh himself is a great character as he’s very witty, tactical and the way he plans out all of his actions is very entertaining with incredible attention to detail. As the season goes on you can see to a degree why he picked the skills he did and the payoff for it. He also manages to recruit allies and between this and the differences in how he was raised in each life you get to see an interesting inner conflict in Lugh. His new family, while also assassins, have a different philosophy compared to the organization Lugh worked for in his previous life and being raised in such an environment that promotes free will versus suppressing it helps spark his reawakened emotions to start coming to the surface. We often see moments where he clearly thinks his actions are motivated by what is the most logical but many characters are quick to point out that there’s a degree of impracticality to his motivation that can only be described as empathetic. The story doesn’t spoon-feed the viewer that this conflict is going on so it blends well with the story adding to the overall entertainment value. 

The other characters for the most part are good. Lugh manages to ally himself with women around his age with particular skills and backgrounds that made them easy to recruit and control while also having tragedy that his actions managed to resolve and help them heal from. His new father is an interesting and well developed character but the only real problem is Lugh’s new mother. She’s best described as overly affectionate to the point where I found it even creepy and inappropriate at times and I’ll admit a couple of moments this character legit made me uncomfortable. If they had dialed that down quite a bit I would have enjoyed this character as well. I’m not a big fan of the fact that all of the women Lugh recruits also seems to fall in love with him. It definitely feels like this is a bit of a harem anime but really with the type of story we have going on here it feels a little out of place. While I do enjoy harem stories the combination of a harem and assassination isn’t something that seems to blend well together.

The Goddess is a very interesting character herself. I was surprised to see that she shows up several times in the season with people she isekaied into that world for the same purpose before Lugh. You really get to see how she made a lot of effort to try and make her plan work and the fact that she gets a decent amount of focus really makes me want to know if there’s any kind of hidden agenda to her motivation. After all Lugh was betrayed in his previous life so we can’t rule out that possibility in this one too. This element of uncertainty only serves to enhance the overall viewing experience.

The action scenes are really interesting too as Lugh manages to bring in knowledge from his previous life and blends them with the knowledge of his new life to create unique weapons that really get the job done. Using those tools Lugh manages to pull off some incredible stunts such as long range executions, incredible stealth, hand to hand combat, acts of subterfuge, and even high powered explosives.  Lugh’s assassin background gives him a much less direct approach to combat so there’s an element of suspense to the fight scenes as it’s not just a matter of overpowering the enemy but also outsmarting and out maneuvering them and getting caught or having a failed plans means a high chance of losing. 

We also get a lot of moments where we see Lugh fine tune all of his skills not just the assassination skills, but magic, and resources as well. The level of detail the season goes into that shows the repertoire of skills Lugh has or obtains is impressive. Each time he develops a skill it has it’s own story behind how he masters it and it shows new sides of his tradecraft. 

Overall I ended up liking this show a lot. It has a very interesting main character with an internal battle that I was very quick to be invested in. His tactical skillset and mythical approach are fun to watch as he develops new skills, new resources and executes new plans. The show does a great job in adding suspense with not just the combat but also the story itself as we really don’t know what everyone’s motivations are outside of Lugh. The only real flaws include one of the reoccurring characters is a bit uncomfortable to watch at times and a harem aspect that doesn’t really lend itself well to the story at this point but these are far from anything that would ruin the overall experience of the show. This is on my list to keep up with for sure.