Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend I quite understand the “die-and-reincarnate” school of the isekai genre. I have liked a few of them in my time, but generally in spite of that central conceit, not because of it. In The Land of Leadale is fairly genre-typical. Somewhere in Japan a power outage at a hospital cuts the life support systems, and a patient passes away. She is reborn into the titular MMO as her elf avatar Cayna. It’s fairly standard stuff, although there are a handful of caveats here to separate us from the most basic spins on the genre.
For one, Cayna doesn’t simply get zooped into the game as she remembers it. 200 years have passed, and she can’t use her foreknowledge of the game to just cheat her way out of any bad situations, Otome Flag-style. (Not a knock, I quite like Otome Flag.) This also gives us a central mystery, which prevents Leadale from feeling like it’s aiming for a pure wish fulfillment vibe that it probably couldn’t pull off.
The visual work on this thing is, to be nice, a bit simple. But the series makes the intriguing decision to strive for a pseudo-retro look, especially in gag faces and chibi cut-asides. It’s a small thing, but it does help the anime stand out a bit, and turns the lo-fi production into a charm point instead of a detriment.
If you can’t practically hear the “ha ha ha ha!” radiating from this image, we are from different generations of anime fan, to say the least.
About that central mystery: because Cayna’s been MIA for so long, Leadale is both not as she left it and seemingly not in great shape in general. When she plonks down a stack of silver coins the innkeeper at the inn she’s staying at hurriedly tells her to not flash so much money. Later that night, she’s nearly robbed in her sleep, with only bit of magic that she presumably set up beforehand preventing such from coming to pass. We do gain some insight into what’s gone on in Leadale in the intervening 200 years, but it’s not much. This is all we get.
Cayna seems to adjust pretty quickly. Again, not rare for this genre, although the few cuts back to her pre-reincarnation life are bizarrely depressing for a show that’s otherwise fairly cozy and upbeat. There’s also a funny bit where she learns (from a magic tower guardian who talks like a delinquent schoolgirl) that because of something she did in the game some time ago, she has kids. Frankly, as someone who tends to play video games pretty fast and loose, the idea of things I do in them having long-term consequences is terrifying, but that’s just me.
If it seems like I’m struggling a bit to come up with things to say here, that’s because I kind of am? In addition to this not being my genre, In The Land of Leadale is a fairly slight series in just about every respect, at least so far. It has some charm, but not much else. On the other hand, I’m loathe to condemn something that is so outside of my usual wheelhouse to begin with, to say nothing of the fact that this is a series that’s clearly not trying to make a bombastic first impression. If any of this sounds appealing to you, maybe give Leadale a shot. Its first episode is, if nothing else, a breezy and pleasant watch. (Those cuts to the hospital aside. Again, this is a weird genre convention that I don’t totally understand.) You could certainly do a lot worse.
Grade: C
The Verdict: If you like simple, cozy slice-of-life style isekai maybe give this one a look. Otherwise, you can pretty safely pass on it.
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