Right off the bat, The Villager of Level 999 tell you that monsters have encroached on real world Japan. As a result, so has classic RPG mechanics such as a class system. We’re all assigned a role at birth. Some people are warriors, some are mages, so on and so forth. Well, that’s certainly one way to do it. But why would you need to be a mage when you have the power of gun? Why would you need to be a mage when you can safely shoot down monsters from a distance with a drone? The answer, apparently, is because modern technology has somehow disappeared from the world. This is an alternate universe where society has devolved back to a fantasy medieval setting with kings and demon kings. Even so, what happened to the rest of the country? Even if people no longer know how to create a smartphone — even if we no longer have modern conveniences like an electric grid or modern plumbing — where are the ruins? Where have the skyscrapers gone? Or the extensive subway system? Where is the evidence that we once lived? My point is, why make it Japan at all? Why isn’t this just a generic fantasy world. After all, it sure as hell looks and feels like one.

Other than that, the rest of the setup is just kinda… unremarkable? Like the title suggests, our main character is a villager who has somehow hit the level cap. How did Kagami achieve this? Nope, can’t tell you yet! Like it’s supposed to be some special secret or whatever. Opposite Kagami, we have Rex, your classic “yuusha” — the designated Hero — but he’s not the paragon of all things good that you might expect, because the first thing he does is recruit a party of only cute girls.  He’s essentially trying to create a harem. Next, he goes into a nearby dungeon to retrieve some special sword that can defeat the demon king. Rex quickly learns, however, that our protagonist had already stumbled upon it one day, pulled the blade out of its resting place, then sold the weapon to a shop like it was just a generic piece of loot. I dunno, is this supposed to be funny? Or should I clap because some tropes are being subverted? It’s the classic case of how you can have all the ingredients, but that doesn’t mean you’ll create something special. You still have to put them together correctly, and whatever this was — again, perhaps a joke or subversion — it didn’t land.

But the rest of the anime feels plain and vanilla. Alice, a demon girl — actually, the demon princess — soon begs our protagonist to help her out, because her father, the demon king, is sick and might die to the next adventurer who challenges him. Then we get into all this spiel about how humans and demons are not so different, the two sides being enemies is totally arbitrary, how she wants to broker peace between the two sides, etc. Unfortunately, the demon army suddenly attacks the nearby city, and now our villager protagonist has to confront the general. I feel like I have nothing to say about any of this, because there isn’t really a hook here. The way everything has been presented, it’s very much done by the numbers. No flair, no twist, no real storytelling. Just here are two people in the forest, yapping about the conflict. Alright, there’s one twist: Kagami recruits a female monk who has trained so hard that her breasts burned off. Again, is this supposed to make me laugh?

I think perhaps the biggest crime is that Kagami lacks a substantive personality. You can get away with a plain story if your characters are likable, but that isn’t the case here. Our protagonist has a bit of a devil may care attitude, but he’s bland as all hell in every other respect. For the first two episodes, he doesn’t do anything but “vague talk” about the plot. “You don’t really know how the world works.” “What’s messed up is how the world works.” In other words, “Oh my god, you gotta keep watching. You won’t believe what you’ll learn if you’ll keep watching!” Bro, just give me a reason to watch from the start. You don’t have to do this. But I digress. Kagami has, of course, the generic anime main character design. He doesn’t seem to wield any special powers other than that he’s really, really non-descriptively strong. By his own admission, he has no purpose; he only wants to make money. He’ll help people, but he thinks the princess’s talk about ending suffering is self-righteous. “I’m just making money to get by, like anyone else.” Why would I wanna watch a show about someone like this? If half-assed could be personified, it has to be Kagami. Nothing about this guy so far makes me want to get to know him better. Well, it goes to show that you can grind to level 999, but you can’t give yourself a personality.

Sadly, even the blandest anime protagonist has more scruples than our world leaders.

Anyway, I see there are already two new episodes of Hana-Kimi as well as another episode of that maid show. It’s gonna be a long day.