Somewhere between the release of .Hack and the year of 2013 the isekai genre devolved into a downwards spiral of recycled ideas being vomited out by any studio looking to make a quick buck. The World’s Finest Assassin tries to break free from this cycle, spicing up the genre by making the protagonist a world-class assassin instead of a loser otaku. If that isn’t enough to satisfy you, he’s also an anti-hero with the mission of bringing down the hero of the world. Apparently, any slight change to an isekai is enough to get an A+ for originality from the anime community.
You know, sometimes I feel bad for isekai protagonists. It must be terrible having every single girl in existence want to get inside your pants. Lugh is such an attractive human being that even his own mother can’t help but be strangely obsessed with him. It’s honestly quite impressive, he only had to manipulate 2 girls to swear absolute loyalty to him, and they’re so dedicated to him that they’re even willing to clean up his wet dreams for him. If that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is. In case you were thinking that his actions are morally wrong, don’t worry. His emotional manipulation is definitely 100% only for his mission. He would never actually have perverted thoughts about minors… except for a wet dream when sleeping with two of them… and he might kiss one… and get excited at seeing them naked… but besides that he’s fine!
The producers for this anime are absolute fucking geniuses. Airing this at the same time as Mushoku Tensei’s sequel is such a brilliant way of avoiding controversies. Who’s gonna worry about this 60-year-old assassin sleeping with kids when Rudeus motherfucking Greyrat is running amuck on the front page of every social media site. This is by the same author as Redo of Healer, so it’s damn right the boundaries are going to be pushed at every chance possible. There’s some child trafficking themes (which by the way, are handled fucking horrendously), some pedophilia, and overall just a little bit of something for everyone. At the end of every episode, I thought to myself, surely this can’t get worse. But it did. It got worse with every new fucking episode. The production team knew it too, the initially good art style visibly degraded the further the season progressed. It was a smart move including numerous still shots of naked girls to take up screentime, why worry about animation when there’s some nudity on screen. Why doesn’t the author just make a hentai? The world may never know.
Anti-heroes can be a great part of an anime if done correctly. They can push character decisions and motives past being a basic right or wrong. They can allow the viewer to question their own sense of morals through the actions of another character. Or sometimes anti-heroes are just included to look cool, which is essentially what World’s Finest Assassin does. He’s a professional assassin, the finest even, that never feels much attachment to the lives of others and is willing to do whatever is needed to complete a mission. There are, of course, no consequences for this because it wouldn’t be cool if a badass character suddenly cared about the act of taking a life.
The rest of the cast are forgettable. I was hoping that the world’s hero who our assassin protagonist was supposed to track down would be at least interesting, but they end up being a no-show for the entire season. The main harem basically consists of a servant girl, a girl of nobility, and a well-spoken ara ara girl. Unsurprisingly they’re all painfully bland with their defining personality traits being them wanting to suck off the main character. You’d think that severe mental trauma from witnessing your friends get raped as a child would be quite a life-changing event, but apparently not in this anime. All is solved after the protagonist shows up, buys a girl being trafficked, and adds +1 to his collection of love interests. By the way, the main love interest is also his cousin. You can’t make this shit up.
Audio-visuals are passable. As mentioned before, the art has a pretty noticeable drop as the anime progresses, but it never gets to the point of making the experience worse than it already is. The opening is pretty overrated but at least it’s unique and not just another copy-paste of an existing isekai theme song. None of it really matters though, as this anime would still be a 1/10 even if it had the greatest damn visuals of all time.
“The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat” is another awful isekai that desperately tries to disguise itself as smart and original. It shouldn’t even be worth a full review yet here I am, actually putting some thought into the meaning behind something that never had any thought put into it in the first place. For the love of God, avoid this if you have any sense of human decency left in you. At least other similarly trashy isekai have some self-awareness.
This is a straight 1/10 and it isn’t even close.
