Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town Season Review

“My dream is to become noble and strong, to protect the smiles of those dear to me… To become a soldier, like that hero!”

Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town wins the seasonal award for being my, “Most Correctly Predicted Downfall.” Back when I reviewed the first episode, I stated that unless the show found a means of compensating for some of its weaker elements, “I don’t think its sense of humor will be able to carry it much further.” Sure enough, this quickly turned into one of the shows that I struggled to get through each week. The show does attempt to shake up the story by introducing new plot elements and jokes, but nothing lands well. The stories come across as half-baked, with no real time investment or developed drama behind them. As viewers, we’re informed that the stakes are high and these events are really significant to our characters, but when we only spend an episode or two on each story, there simply isn’t room to foster engagement. Ultimately, Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town tries to branch out and improve its longevity past the first episode, but it doesn’t possess the means necessary and turns into a chore to watch.

For those who are unfamiliar, Last Dungeon follows the exploits of Lloyd Belladonna, a young man from the legendary village of Kunlun, as he leaves his home and endeavors to become a soldier and help people. The central joke of the series is that, as the weakest person in his village, Lloyd’s perception of what it means to be strong is significantly skewed, and he is oblivious to the fact that he greatly overpowers everyone outside of Kunlun. The joke was executed well enough, and was outright hilarious early on, but it began to suffer from diminishing returns rather quickly. The show tries incorporating a different punchline by having Lloyd unwittingly amass his own harem and using the resulting internal conflicts for humor, but this proves to be less funny and more arduous. Since the show’s pacing is oriented towards dragging the viewer from one punchline to the next, it doesn’t offer the characters the time necessary to become fleshed-out individuals. They’re all rather one-note, and Lloyd might be the biggest offender. Despite being central to the story, he doesn’t really have much of a personality beyond politeness. Given his bland characterization, it’s really hard to get on board with any of the competing suitresses as there is no clear chemistry between them. Only Selen appears to have a moderately understandable reason for her affections, and she undermines it by turning those affections to 11 and breaking off the knob. Compare this to last year’s My Next Life as a Villainess. After watching that show, I could have pointed to any of the show’s seven primary pairings, told you why they made sense, what the key characteristics of the relationship were, and explained what Katarina brought to the dynamic. I can’t do any of that with Last Dungeon.

The broader narrative is divided into brief story arcs, and as much as I’d love to move on from complaining about the characters, they remain a crippling factor when talking about how the story progresses. The show usually presents some threat that our protagonists need to deal with, Lloyd just waltzes in and unwittingly fixes things, and one of our characters faces some major emotional trials in the process that I couldn’t even begin to care about. It’s like someone tried to adapt One-Punch Man without even a hint of competency *Insert Joke About J.C. Staff Here*. If you indulge me with a minor spoiler discussion, the first story arc follows a daughter’s attempt to rescue her father from the influence of a demon lord. The show puts on an awkward and rushed kabuki attempt at drama, but even that gets interrupted when the daughter realizes that she’s dealing with a demon lord, and the rules of Kunlun will allow her to enlist Lloyd’s aid. This ends with Lloyd literally wiping out the demon lord with a handkerchief with no understanding of what’s going on. No one learns anything. No one develops emotionally. There are no stakes to speak of.

The production for the first episode was pretty bad. Unfortunately, it never really rose beyond what was exhibited in that first episode. I’ve been a fan of some of Liden Films’ work in the past, but they really seem to have spread themselves thin this season. If I were to characterize the show’s appearance in a single statement, I’d say it “aspires to mediocrity.” If this series was released a decade ago, I’d still find the visuals underwhelming, and its aesthetic feels bland even when one sets aside the subpar animation. Character designs are remarkably unmemorable, and when an episode started with 3 secondary characters talking to one another, I found myself struggling to recall who any of them were. The responsibility of making the characters memorable is admittedly split between both the artistic direction of a series and the writing, but it’s probably fair to argue that both sides fail in equal measure here. The show’s opening is completely unmemorable, and still somehow shows off the very best animation the series has to offer. The show uses a very bright color palette, but that somehow lends to the sense that it is an empty and disposable product with little staying power. Even the distorted and cartoony cutaways that Last Dungeon employs for its comedic moments feel far too cheap, and they’d logically be the most likely to get away with cutting corners on visual quality. By the final episodes, it seemed as if those constituted half of the animation in the series. Long story short, this is an ugly show.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• If I were to try and explain Lloyd Belladonna’s character to a fan of anime, I’d say he was what you’d get if you took Bell Cranel from DanMachi turned his obliviousness up to the maximum level and gave him Saitama levels of power. Then sit him in the oven for 12 episodes, never developing as a character, and you have the perfect recipe for Lloyd Belladonna.
• Reviewing a full season of a show you don’t like is always tricky, because in a normal casual environment, you would simply stop watching the show once you found you weren’t getting enjoyment out of it. From a critical perspective though, one generally wants to finish a series if they’re going to review it in its entirety, so you can run into the dilemma where one ends up struggling to get through it, and risks holding that against the show. I suppose this is what one means when one suggests that the product is less than the sum of its parts. Long story short, this show was a pain to get through.
• The attempts at romantic humor really do fail on every level. I mainly focused on the fact that Lloyd doesn’t work as a romantic lead, so all of the infatuation feels bizarrely forced, but there are so many other aspects where it falls apart. Perhaps my biggest gripe is that the chief of Lloyd’s village, Alka, is one of Lloyd’s many suitresses. She appears to be only 12, but follows the standard fantasy cliche of actually being hundreds of years old. This is very unsettling, and Lloyd’s naivete only compounds the issue. He feels more like a preteen than a teenager, and the result is, to put it lightly, very uncomfortable.
• There is a… gag(?) where characters are named after drugs and chemical ingredients, such as Riho Flavin (riboflavin), Allan Lidcain (lidocaine) or Mertophan Dextro (dextromethorphan). I guess the joke is that fantasy names are overly complicated? It’s quite possible that this is a joke that didn’t translate well, so I don’t know how to feel about it.