©左藤真通・講談社／『この世界は不完全すぎる』製作委員会
Well, Gaydle’s subplot isn’t much, is it? Taking the poor kid down before he can do any more damage is a conflict that almost brings Haga and Akira to blows, but the episode doesn’t even do anything about that potential friction before the group reaches their next checkpoint. The drama between Haga and Akira is completely abandoned when Gaydle’s village is in the rearview mirror. We skip forward a whole month and just trudge up to meet Akira’s companions in Sai. Aside from the cheap attempts at germaphobes, it feels like the only real point of this difference is to make the same points about the dangers of using debug mode and taking down Nikola so we can give our heroes a new goal to work towards.
The Sai stuff isn't much more interesting either, as the rest of the episode mostly serves as table-setting for whatever this Alba storyline will do in the final stretch of the season. The new fixers we meet from Akira's company are… fine, though they don't make much of an impression beyond the oddly tense make-out scene we get between Akira and her boyfriend. Think about it, when you combine that with Akira's unusually brazen fan service scenes in the unisex bathroom later on, the whole episode elevates Horny Dial to a much higher level than it should be for quality. Odd.
The most interesting development of this episode by far is the revelation that Sai’s resident magician, Alba, is Tesla’s “little brother,” who doubles as another member of the game’s AI director. The idea that there are a whole bunch of weird computer gods like Tesla for our heroes to deal with is something I wish had been conceived of earlier and explored more. It would have undoubtedly been a lot more satisfying than any story about Gaydle and the Titans could have been.
Unfortunately, unless I spend too much time complaining about how cheap Quality Assurance continues to look, I don’t have much left to say about “Alba,” whether we’re talking about the characters or the episode itself. At this point, I just hope the series hasn’t squandered all of its best ideas, because it would be a shame if the season ended with a somber finale.
Rating:
Quality Assurance in Another World is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, you can also find this information on Twitter his blog and his podcast.
Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., is a minority, non-controlling shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.
