The summer 2024 anime season has several series with “Another World” in their title, so how do you pick which isekai journey to make your own? A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring has twins, but don’t let your mind wander into the gutter. This is a wholesome found-family story. Featuring murder hobos. Anyway, “wholesome” might be subjective. So, let’s check out episodes 1 and 2 to see if Journey Through Another World is worth your time. Because time is money. Let’s stop wasting it and go!
Here’s the premise: Kayano Takumi died. Well, he was killed. Accidentally! Those space-time continuum rifts are dangerous, dayo! Fortunately for him, Syl, the god who killed him, has his own realm where Takumi can live again. It’s called Etelldia. Yay for reincarnation in a D&D-inspired isekai world!
Takumi introduces us to his short backstory of reincarnation without filling in the details. Re: Monster did that, too. But it still built up a mystery and left us wanting to know more. If Takumi’s past is unimportant, why does the story occur in an isekai world? I have questions I shouldn’t be asking in episode one. I suspect it is a shallow story. We don’t get to the intro song before Takumi meets a pair of blue-haired twins. If we hadn’t figured it out before, the theme song hammers home that the show is all about child-rearing in a fantasy world. The overly descriptive title was potentially also a clue.
Goblins, Dwarves, and an Evil Ring
Japanese-created fantasy worlds are intriguing. What do you compare them to? Dungeon Meshi and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End seem inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and the old Wizardry games rather than Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Then, many isekai shows are inspired by Japanese fantasy RPGs like Final Fantasy. Sword Art Online seems to fit in this latter category, and so does Journey Through Another World. My bias lies with stories inspired by the legends of real-world cultures rather than Massive Multiplayer Online RPGs (MMORPGs). Dracula is based on Romanian myth. And Tolkien looked to Norse mythology to tell a new story from an old one about a ring. It’s the historicity of these tales that gives these stories gravitas. That’s what does it for me.
But I’m still a sucker for a good story. Is there a good story here? Fair warning if you’ve yet to watch episodes 1 and 2: We’re about to get stuck in the spoiler weeds to answer that question.
Murder Hobos
That’s tabletop roleplay lingo for players who kill everything and anything they encounter in the game. No monster or NPC is safe. I’ve played Pathfinder with 10-year-old boys and witnessed this firsthand. Murder hobos are hilarious and scary, especially when they’re mini versions of yourself.
The twins Alan and Elena might be murder hobos, and it didn’t take them long to eagerly rack up kills. In both episodes. Someone better call PETA. Making kills makes daddy proud. “Cute murder hobos” might be a stronger premise in the series than child raising. You know the murder hobo twins are going to protect daddy and give him all the loot. That’s how you run a fantasy world empire: with child laborers, ruthless assassinations, and rosy-cheeked cuteness. “Do it for Papa. Then we’ll go home and eat sweet bread and laugh about this. Mwahaha!”
Sharing a Magical Make-Believe Moment
My friends who’ve got little kids and watched Spy X Family agree that the show understands parents. The story is not really about spies, assassins, or mind-reading little girls. It’s about the toughest job in the world: parenting. You can see it in how Yor doubts her parenting skills and how Loid struggles to juggle his work and home life. Every parent has been there.
But how about Takumi? He finds exceptionally skilled twins in the forest and takes them in. Was Takumi a parent before? We have no idea. How many of us have died and gone to another world, then adopted two forest kids? Yeah, I thought so. It’s hard to believe that Takumi was an older brother before or that he wants to be one to Alan and Elena. Sure, I can buy that he wants to help them, but adopting them? There’s no setup to connect me to any of the characters or to help me believe Takumi has ranks in the “Fathering” skill. Watch Bunny Drop (Usagi Drop) instead, or The Jungle Book. Those stories made a connection with the audience and created shared magical moments based on unlikely families.
Watch Journey Through Another World If…
I was scratching my head wondering, whom could I recommend Journey Through Another World? That was until the end of episode 2 when it clicked: this is a show for gamers who want to see cute kids beat up monsters with their pack of furry friends. You might also enjoy the show if you loved Sword Art Online and think kids are kawaii. Or if you want to watch murder hobos kick ass and share a picnic. Maybe you’re just intrigued and want to know how Alan and Elena found themselves alone in the A-Rank-only forest of death.
Personally, I didn’t feel any connection to Takumi, and Alan and Elena are flat NPCs that are adorable but soulless. Where are the temper tantrums or the spaghetti sauce on the wall? These are my real-life dad struggles. The comedy is thin and didn’t keep me entertained either. Ultimately, Journey Through Another World is that obnoxious friend telling you how to raise your kids when they have none of their own. They live in a dream world where children are robotic angels who never throw curveballs at your best attempts to show them love. I’d rather hold out for Dungeon Meshi Season 2 and Spy X Family Season 3.
A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring streams on Crunchyroll with subtitles and a dubbed version available. I give it a charitable one out of five chibi Godzillas. Meh!
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Are you watching Journey Through Another World? Did you know it’s based on Shizuru Minazuki’s original light novel? Alpha Manga digitally publishes the English edition of the manga adaptation, illustrated by Tomomi Mizuna. Have you read it? Keep those comments spoiler-free, but we want to know what you think of Takumi, Alan, and Elena’s story. Let us know.
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