An Appraiser, a Cliffhanger, and a Dozen Unanswered Questions

A Review of The Strongest Job Is Apparently Not a Hero or a Sage, but an Appraiser (Provisional)!

Image from Crunchyroll

The anime starts like other isekai. Our main character is walking back to class. When he opens the classroom door, he is exposed to a blinding light. When the light subsides, he finds himself in the middle of a field in another world. Before he can adjust to his new surroundings, he is attacked by a horned bunny. However, Hibiki was accidentally able to defeat it by falling on it.

After defeating the horned rabbit, Hibiki discovers that he has an appraisal skill. It doesn’t seem like much, but he is able to get a lot of information from it, like people, places, and monsters. He also discovers that he was sent by the Chief god in this world, but offers no explanation. While traveling, he finds a road, but is attacked by a monster. Before he is killed, Emalia, who was guided to Hibiki’s location by spirits, rescues him. After working together to kill a rare horned rabbit, they go to the guild in a nearby town to trade it in for money. Both travelers are eager to form a party with one another.

Thoughts on the series

I watched all twelve episodes, and I am not really sure what to make of the show. It follows the basic premise of a lot of isekai: a higher power summons a person to another realm, and is given a skill in the new world. Even though a lot of isekai follow the same starting point, what makes them stand out (at least to me) is how they handle the protagonist in relation to their adaptability in the new world, honing their power, making allies, and finding their purpose. The only thing that I think that the show got right was the camaraderie between Hibiki, Claude, Lillian, and Vene. They have good chemistry with each other and work well as a team. The first half of the season is entertaining because of the different hijinks the characters get involved in. However, as the show goes into the second half, you start to see some major flaws.

As the main character, Hibiki is overshadowed by the other characters of the show. That is kind of hard, considering that he is given many amazing skills by the gods. However, that is part of Hibiki’s problem. He is given these skills, but he doesn’t utilize them well, and he doesn’t grow as a person. Oftentimes, he offers little help in fights, which require Lillian and Claude to do a lot of the heavy lifting. It starts to become hard to root for the character.

Hibiki is not the only underdeveloped character. When Emalia is introduced in the first episode, there is an initial thought that she and Hibiki would form a team, especially since the spirits sent her to help him. However, she was called away because of an emergency summons from her family, which ended up being a non-issue. She really hasn’t seen that much throughout the series after that. It was a weird choice to sideline a strong character like her for the majority of the season.

Then there are a lot of underdeveloped plot points. Several of the gods seem to have an invested interest in Hibiki, and they never say why. They step in when they see Hibiki in trouble by offering him more gifts. By the end of the show, we have no idea what purpose Hibiki has in this world.

Going along with the god angle, the gods seem to fear the god of reason. The Chief god even takes it a step further to use his power to keep the god of reason in a deep sleep so that she can’t cause trouble. However, the chief god loses much of his power, which causes the god of reason to wake up. The god of reason not only looks exactly like Hibiki, but also wants to talk to Hibiki to ask him his opinion on the world. He said that he enjoyed the world he was living in. She thought his answer was satisfactory and decided to go back to sleep. The whole scene just left a lot of questions. Why does the god of reason care what Hibiki thinks of the world, and why does she look like him? Would she have destroyed the world if Hibiki didn’t like it? Why are the gods afraid of her? There is an implication that the god of reason has immense power, but we have never seen any of it on screen, so the audience has no way to gauge whether she is a real threat or not.

Unfortunately, that is not the only unanswered question in this show. They dedicated one scene that showed that some of Hibiki’s classmates and teachers had been transported to this new world. They seem to have immense powers, and they are fearful of Hibiki’s safety. However, the series implied that none of the classmates and teacher were in the same room as Hibiki teleported to this world, so why do they assume that he is not only there, but that he might be in trouble. It suggests that the characters know something that the audience doesn’t know. However, it is hard to determine their motive since it was a short scene with little dialogue.

There was potential with Ivel being the big bad of the season. We see her searching for something while traveling with Emalia, and then later betraying her. However, whatever Ivel is trying to accomplish is not clear. It seems that she has some type of issue with Claude, which is never explained. She also set a trap for Hibiki, which is never explained either. It is implied that Ivel is working for someone else, but we have no idea who or why they would want to harm Claude or Hibiki. It creates a dissonance as the audience, we are not sure if Ivel is truly evil or not. We don’t know if she is being forced to do these things or if there is a greater purpose to her method of madness. Without knowing her true motive, it is hard for the audience to declare her truly evil or not.

The biggest plot stretch is when the gods took away Hibiki’s powers so that Emalia could be summoned to save him. Once she got him out of harm’s way, she was instantly transported back to her original location. No explanation of why Hibiki losing his powers would summon Emalia. It leaves the audience wondering why Hibiki’s fate is connected to Emalia. They didn’t spend that much time together in the series to make a substantial bond. It makes you wonder if this was the gods’ doing or if there’s another cosmic thing tying these two characters together.

The show does leave a cliffhanger in case they do a second season with Emalia running into Hibiki’s classmates and teacher and offering to lead them to Hibiki. However, I have doubts if they would do a second season. I get leaving some unanswered questions at the end of the show so that the viewers would want more. However, I felt that the show left basic questions unanswered, which causes viewers to have a disconnect with the show and makes it harder for people to be connected to the characters and the plot. Without those connections, it makes it less likely for the audience to want to continue with the series.

Overall, the show is not the worst I have ever seen because I was able to make it through to the end. I feel like the creators were trying to make a backstory before starting the real story if they ever get to a season two. That is a huge risk to take, though, with viewers hoping they would come back for more with so little answered throughout the season. The only series I have seen done that was Parks and Recreation. The first season was so horrible because of the lack of character and plot, but they were able to turn it around in the second season. Can this anime accomplish the same feat as Parks and Recreation? Only time will tell if they ever get a second season to prove themselves.