AKA: Lv2からチートだった元勇者候補のまったり異世界ライフ (Lv2 kara Cheat datta Moto Yūsha Kōho no Mattari Isekai Life)

Genre: Isekai, fantasy

Length: Television series, 12 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on crunchyroll.

Content Rating: PG (Violence, mild fanservice.)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Isekai Cheat Magician, Banished From The Hero's Party I Decided To Live A Quiet Life In The Countryside, Tsukimichi -Moonlit Fantasy- (Just adding some other isekai titles that sound similar; can't speak for the quality, since I haven't seen either of the

Notes: Based on the light novel series written by Miya Kinojo and illustrated by Katagiri, published by Overlap and translated and released in English as an E-book by J-Novel Club. There is a manga also written by Miya Kinojo and illustrated by Akine Itomachi that's released in English courtesy of Seven Seas Entertainment.

Rating:

Chillin' in Another World With Level 2 Super Cheat Powers

Synopsis

When Banaza is summoned to another world by the magicians of Klyrode, he is analyzed as having no divine revelation, and as such is completely worthless to them. Without the ability to send him home, said Kingdom instead is "offered some land" somewhere near a cursed forest, which means he's basically sent off to die as to not trouble the kingdom who stole him from his home without the means to send him back.

Review

Normally, I wouldn't give a show like this anything outside of "a wide berth", but admittedly, I eventually decided to start on this journey once I learned that Rie Kugimiya would be playing one of the main characters in it; namely the wolf demon Fenrys (shortened to Rys.) Not that I'm saying Rie Kugimiya is typecast or anything, but if you mention her name, most people would probably remember her for her work in either Shakugan no Shana or Toradora. Or maybe that's not the case anymore, since both of those shows are approaching the status of "being old". I eventually got a friend of mine in on this, which turned out to be a good thing, because while Kugimiya plays what is easily the best and most interesting character of them all (outside of my morbid curiosity about another character in the show; more on that later), this is still an incredibly self-indulgent show, maybe even more so than In Another World With My Smartphone.

Originally named Bananza, our main protag takes on the name Flio once he gets settled into his new role as "center of this universe and solver of everyone's problems, mostly by accident" after he's sent off to die and not become its problem anymore. (The irony is at least a bit amusing.) Part of this is done under the guise of anonymity. The supposed angle of Chillin' is that Flio wants to keep a low profile, especially in light of his sudden rise to unlimited powers, but that's also not going to work if the show wants everyone to worship the ground he walks on. When Flio kills three slimes in self-defense, that was apparently enough EXP to get him to level two, where his stats go from the "piss poor" that got him exiled as a potential embarrassment (but looked like pretty typical level 1 stats to me), to basically every stat that isn't his level be the sign of infinity, ∞. Which isn't the amusing part, but then he proceeds to cleanse the forest he was sent to (on the suggestion of his "bag of holding" that can now talk), he gains another 366 levels in what is an onslaught of "you have levelled" screens with overlapping voices. Every now and then, Chillin' had it in itself to bring out a chuckle or a smirk, like now, but that's about as courteous as I'll be towards this ridiculously blatant power fantasy.

As humble as Chillin' wants to portray Flio to be, there's still something to be said about how everyone continuously falls to his feet; man, beast or otherwise. Much of the humor is based around how Flio and his to-be wife are continuously doing stuff that they don't think much about, but is completely outrageous to pretty much everyone else in this world, like making a pet out of a being known as a "Psycho Bear" (supposedly the strongest of the magical beasts.) Though that one was at least credits to Rys instead of Flio; she is one of the strongest generals among the demon people, after all. The show introduces us to the concept of "malicium", which is the essence that Flio cleansed the forest nearby his new living space from and is presumably the reason why the demon race is such a threat, but once the show gets moving, that concept is almost completely forgotten about since most demons -- even those with a more typical animal consciousness like demon horses -- seems to be able to exist just fine among regular humans (for whom the "malicium" is very toxic.) Flio's old world had a lot of fantastical racism against anything that isn't human, and while that isn't quite the case in this new world, there is still a faint sense of "humans are the real bastards", at least starting off. Though, to its credit, Chillin' quickly settles on "everyone mostly just wants to live out their lives in peace", which is a stance I can get behind.

And for the record, Rys is honestly kind of delightful despite her clearly being characterized as a perfect wife in training. She constantly refers to Flio with the term "danna-sama" (somehow being translated as "master" for some reason), but she never really loses her spark despite her odd flavor of demureness. Her moments of jealousy when other girls seems to take an interest in him never really goes in any bad directions, and she's otherwise sharp as a tack when it comes to figuring out what's going on among the other demonic beings. It is a little odd that she doesn't seem to think much of it when Flio learns he is responsible for the death of Rys's brother, even if she explains the logic behind it. While I'm probably always going to hold Rie Kugimiya's role as Touko Matsudaira as the peak of her career, she really is a good choice for this oddball wolf demon.

Flio also gains a "rival" in a man simply referred to as the "Blonde Hero". To drive home the point of how Flio is so humble and good, this man is of course an arrogant asshole to the highest degree, and the show spares no time in dunking on him by "blessing" him with no stat growth despite levelling to 91 (I guess 999 all across the board is only marginally impressive -- it is less than "∞") and making him out to be a coward and an entitled idiot. The guy spends the remainder of the show bumbling into one situation after the other, including releasing not one, but two great evils for Flio to spend a few seconds defeating. And he is, inexplicably, followed by Tsuya throughout most of the show. She is the aforementioned other character of interest for me within this show, because for a long while, I genuinely thought she was secretly an evil person manipulating things behind the scene in light of how big of an entitled idiot the Blonde Hero is. But as it turns out, they're a perfect match, brains and all, and I'm almost filled with regret that we don't really get to see more of how the two of them will develop as they continue to influence each other -- amazingly -- for the better.

Another major character in the show is the djinn Hiya. She is unleashed by the Blonde Hero and tasked with killing Flio, and this is where the show gets downright unsavory. Rys takes the attack meant for him, which is apparently bad enough that Flio's heal spell isn't strong enough to deal with it... which is kind of rich coming from one whos stats are infinity all over the board, but not to worry. This hilariously dumb attempt at drama showcasing how much Rys has come to mean to Flio is then followed by Flio apparently absorbing djinn magic, gaining the ability to heal her back to full anyway by using time magic to revert her injuries away and then going into full on rage mode by punching and stomping the djinn to death. Or rather, he would have, if not for Rys's timely intervention. This is the kind of dumb edgelord drama that puts a sour taste in even a bland nothing like this, and after that, Hiya is completely forgiven anyway and becomes a part of the Flio household. I can't even..... Yes, it was on the suggestion of Rys, and with a pretty amusing "it'll look good on our resume" comment at that, but honestly....

I don't want to harp on about characters forever, so I'll round off this character introduction cavalcade with the first group of guests that becomes a part of Flio's household; a group of knights he meets when "getting his adventurer feet wet" as he puts it. Balirossa, Blossom, Belano and Byleri seems to fit nicely into the Knight, Warrior, Mage and Archer types as roles go, but in an admittedly decent touch, some of them had lives even before becoming members of the royal army. Blossom used to be a farmer, which went some ways as to explain her very amazonian build, while Byleri used to work with animals, so they still had things to fall back on, but Balirossa and Belano grew up in more upper class enviroments, thus having no life skills to fall back on. And also, Balirossa catches the eye of Gholl, the current demon King. Gholl initially drops by to check on Flio after his stunt with the cleansing spell, and, like almost everyone else not complicit with sending him to his death, takes an immediate liking to him. Gholl is perhaps the only other character in the cast who is at least somewhat interesting, although one of his decisions later in the show is baffling to say the least, as is the absolutely nothing that comes out of it.... well, in this season at least.

Chillin' clearly wants us to like its characters -- the ones it wants you to like anyway -- and... honestly, I'm just not feeling it. Our main buddy Banaza/Flio came from a world where he was a trailblazer of racial tolerance in an otherwise hugely racist world, only to be summoned to a world where he is immediately discarded for his average stats in favor of a cartoonishly arrogant fop and then sent off to die. His soon-to-be wife doesn't specifically fall into his lap, but she might as well have. Chillin' wants to show how badass he is by having him start punching a genie to death with his fists in a fit of rage, and then just moments later, he forgives her for all that since he basically copied her powers and appropriated them for himself somehow. And did I mention that said djinn somehow needed to take the heads of half a populus to work her powers... until she became the servant of Flio, thus essentially making her safe for everyone? You could probably argue that she never needed to take heads as payment, as it was only used to show her as evil or something, but that just makes the whole thing even more pointless. And as mentioned earlier, the fact that Rys doesn't see anything at all problematic with getting cozy with the man who killed her brother purely by accident "because warrior honor" or something like that smacks of Chillin' wanting to have its cake and eat it too. It is understandable that Flio would like to live in peace, although it is a little cheeky for Chillin' to have him want to open a store with his recently aquired wolf wifey, as if that doesn't sound a little bit familiar. (At least they're not travelling.)

Which is not to say that all the ladies in Chillin' are hankering for that Flio nectar, curiously enough. Our foursome of knights do show some interest early on, but it seems like Rys is the only one who really loves the guy. Balirossa even manages to catch the interest of Gholl when the latter comes to check out Flio and his arrangement, but Balirossa for her part is terrified of him once she learns who he really is. Granted, she is mistakenly assuming he wants revenge for her drawing his sword at him, but he honestly just appreciated her courage. That does unfortunately not change the fact that his pursuit of her is scaring the living daylight out of her, and the others -- her close friends in particular -- sees fit to encourage this potential relationship. Like a lot of other isekai, the demon people are... mostly honorable, and Gholl in particular seems to chafe under the expectations of being the leader of his people. There's also the matter of Yuigarde, Gholl's brother, who would like nothing more than to usurp his brother so he can go on the warpath he so desperately wants, but while he is portrayed as an uncompromising bastard, is later shown to take his underlings to relax in the local hotsprings. The tone of Chillin' is just all over the place, between all the set dressing and the things that just seems to happen.

The end to this season is also just a huge plate of nothing, although I suspect that someone had hoped for more seasons. Since the novel this is based on isn't even done yet, it's hard to say whether the story is complete or not. The novel series did stop its run in 2019, but the light novel is still ongoing, as is the manga. I did compare this with In Another World With My Smartphone earlier, and to be sure, the two shows are about equally self-indulgent and just plain boring. It was, as Allen stated in his review (referring to someone else) certainly harmless, but my synchro with Tim made it quite clear how tedious it was. I genuinely don't know if I think Chillin' is any better. The only thing it really has over Smartphone is Rys and her sometimes amusing antics, but I also have a sneaking suspicion that when another six years have passed, her -- and the time Flio was gonna beat a djinn to death with his bare hands -- is going to be the only thing I remember from my time with this show.

A few amusing antics that doesn't really come close in saving this show from being another self-serving boilerplate of an Isekai. Just not worth it. — Stig Høgset

Recommended Audience: The fanservice is almost solely provided by Rys and is relatively mild. (Covered up nudity after her first wolf-to-human transformation, some skin and cleavage shown even with her dress on.) The violence is also relatively mild, typical shounen stuff, except for when Rys takes that attack meant for Flio, which produces quite the explosion of blood. The worst part of the show is probably when Flio beats the offending djinn to within an inch of her life and expects the audience to find it cool. (Which some probably will do.)