Why am I writing about this show again? It’s not that I like it, but sometimes, my brain will draw a connection that I can’t ignore. Luckily, this blog is a ghost town nowadays, so I can write down whatever nonsense I come up with. But first, let’s get the boring plot out of the way.

Not much has changed, because this is one of those series that is all about the mundane. Ah, but y’see, because the mundane is happening in an isekai, it’s suddenly exciting. Man opens a shop and sells ordinary goods like clothespins and zirconium necklaces. An absolute nothingburger in real life (hell, he’d probably go broke), but it’s the tits in an isekai. Man builds himself a home complete with a plain ass white picket fence. A rather boring pipe dream in real life (hah, becoming a homeowner in this day and age?), but super duper amazeballs exciting in an isekai. Eventually, the daughter of a rich merchant gets kidnapped by a bunch of bandits. A noble had hired them to commit this dirty deed, because that’s what the super rich and corrupt are wont to do: kidnap girls and do terrible things to them. Mind you, I’m not even being flippant. Judging by Epstein and his ilk, this stuff happens all the time in real life too. We just don’t call them nobles anymore. What is the term now? Oligarchs? Sure.

So naturally, it falls on our dull as white bread Kenichi to amass a group consisting of a bloodthirsty knight, beast cats who wear clothes even though they’re completely covered in fur, a bobcat (not to be confused with the aforementioned beast cats), a has-been mage who can only get it up once a day, and an old lady who can cook a mean stew. Why such an eclectic bunch? Because everyone else is literally too scared to do anything about it. Bandits steal our wives and daughters? Welp, back to our daily lives! But our hero has a laser pointer, so we’re off to save the damsel in distress. Make sure you make it official at the guild, because we can’t forget procedure during a crisis. In the end, Kenichi will also have gained a daughter. Put that on the list too; “having a daughter” is yet another ordinary real life thing nobody in Japan wants to do, but is somehow fascinating and obligatory in an isekai. If only Shinzo Abe and his cult had isekai’d his nation…

So what am writing this post for if the plot is so boring? Because Kenichi is also so boring. He’s so, so boring. He’s yet another mundane modern isekai protagonist in a backwater fantasy world — a world where people are impressed by clothespins, a fact that I will forever reiterate whenever I talk about this anime. And I guess he can draw? Those two traits are all he needs, really. He now gets to fend off female admirers left and right. A cat girl randomly snuggles up on his chest at night. The buxom daughter of a well-known merchant has already fallen for him. And oh yeah, he can always have a tryst with the young innskeeper every time he goes to town. There’s no doubt that as the story progresses, he’ll meet and collect more and more paramours. And the only thing these women will have in common is that they’re mind-blown by his ability to procure ordinary modern conveniences. Y’know what this reminds me of? A passport bro.

What are passport bros? I’m not actually sure who came up with the term or where it was coined. I simply know that there’s a subset of men (sometimes middle aged but not always) posting and seeking support on how to find wives overseas. Why overseas necessarily? Well, let’s not beat around the bush. These men often complain that the women around them are too difficult. Too ideologically “tainted.” Too unbound by hierarchical structures where one partner dictates most of the household decisions. And so they huddle together on these message boards or Discord servers in order to hope, pray, and commiserate — hope that they can afford to go to certain countries, pray that they can find women with “traditional” values, and commiserate over the oh-so-unfair criticism levied their way. Why can’t anyone just understand that modern women are the devil? And as I watch these fantasy isekai women throw themselves at Kenichi, I couldn’t help but think of passport bros.

Was Kenichi also turning women down left and right in his own world? Doubtful. If he had a family or even just a lover, he wouldn’t have adapted to his newfound life so easily. It’s almost always implied if not outright stated that these protagonists have no strong emotional ties to their previous worlds. Family? Friends? Pshaw. Especially not lovers. The modern isekai relies on the premise that these things simply don’t exist or matter. That’s why they almost always embrace their new lives with gusto. Show up with a smartphone and blow the natives away. Or order a cheap bathrobe from Amazon and now they think you’re fit for royalty. The harsh truth is that these heroes can’t build a life worth regretting in the real world; if they could or did, they wouldn’t be so happy to leave it all behind. So they have to level the playing field drastically.

I can imagine a bunch of single, lonely guys pattering away at night on Discord or Reddit. Just a couple tips between bros. “What’s the best way to get isekai’d without too much pain?” “How to convince the evil goddess to give you a seemingly useless on paper but in practice absolutely bonkers OP skill.” “How to score a harem of waifus in five easy steps.” “How to always find a former slave girl to adopt as your daughter or sister.” “What you must know before you inevitably defend your waifus from other rich, greedy (usually corpulent) villains.” Well, have you considered ordering pepper spray for your harem? And thus a new series is born: “How the D-Rank Adventurer Solo’d the A-Rank Dungeon Boss With Pepper Spray In Another World!” Which isn’t even satire, because Kenichi recently learns that he’s not the only isekai hero in his world. There is actually another hero who (as you can see in the screenshot above) literally defeated a dragon with mayonnaise. At least pepper spray can actually be considered a weapon. Well, I guess non-Americans seem to think mayo is a weapon too.