AKA: 解雇された暗黒兵士（３０代）のスローなセカンドライフ (Kaiko Sareta Ankoku Heishi (30-Dai) no Slow na Second Life)

Genre: Fantasy

Length: Television series, 12 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on crunchyroll.

Content Rating: PG-13 (Mild violence and fanservice.)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Chillin' in Another World With Level 2 Super Cheat Powers, Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill, Good Bye Dragon Life [sic]

Notes: Based on the light novel series written by Rokujūyon Okazawa and illustrated by Sage Joh, originally published on the user-generated novel publishing website Shōsetsuka ni Narō, later to be picked up by Kodansha and published under their Kodansha Ranobe Books imprint.

Rating:

Chillin' in My 30's After Getting Fired from the Demon King's Army

Synopsis

Having been fired from the demon army due to his inability to use magic, Dariel finds himself more or less adopted by Rax village through his rescue of one of its residents, Marika, from a huge demon monkey. He was initially adopted by the then demon king Granbarza when he was a child, but his inability to find his magic powers led to him having a relatively low status among most of the demon people. While he never had it in him to use magic, it turns out that his ability to access aura clearly marks him as a human. Dariel quickly settles down in the village, a few hiccups aside, but things are going down in the demon kingdom, so Dariel and the rest of the residents in Rax will soon find themselves in the middle of it all.

Review

I've often lamented the lack of proper adult main characters in anime, or greatly appreciated when a show saw fit to have one, before. Chillin' in my 30's -- and yes, I'm shortening it as such, because purposefully long anime titles are kinda obnoxious -- really should be a show I liked with all my heart, yet here I find myself at the halfway point between "this is great" and "this is crap," and I'm not sure which direction I should go. I also want to mention that names here are gonna be a bit of a hassle, and I'm going to have to settle on one of the spellings. The main one is Marika/Malika for our female lead, but I've also seen the village they live in spelled as both Rax and Lux, and those are the ones I remember offhand. I don't even want to know how many spellings there might be for characters like Granbarza, Bashbarza, Zebiantes, or Gashita. Honestly, outside of Dariel and Marika, a lot of the names in this show are just odd, but it is a fantasy show, so I'm just going to have to pick one spelling and hope for the best here.

Dariel is certainly an adult; that much is clear, and I do appreciate that he approaches all his problems by thinking them over (if he has the time for it). For what it's worth, he is a kind person, and this colors everything he does. When he was one of the members of the demon army, he made up for his lack of magical ability by being very thorough in everything else he did. This doesn't change much when he is fired and finds himself working as an adventurer for Rax village, and doubly so when he gets involved in the business of his former demon race acquaintances once they start moving into the neighboring territories. While his heroic abilities and his adeptness in using aura are something that feels too much like it's just given to him, the few scattered flashbacks we do get in this show allow us various insights to how Dariel grew to his position in the demon army and how many of them miss him now that he's gone. One of the earliest episodes, for instance, involves a race of miners known as "Knockers," and no, it's not some kind of boob joke. They are tiny, clearly nonhuman characters who wear hooded capes, and their tails can be seen poking out from underneath. Seeing how Dariel interacts with them is honestly kind of adorable and endearing, even if the lesson learned from him dealing with the megalomaniacal idiot taking over his job is... less than subtle, to put it mildly. So why am I not as into his character as I feel I should be?

Part of it is probably because of how they play him out. It's not uncalled for that he feels a bit like a fish out of water when he gets thrown out of the demon kingdom, but he's still put to acting like a bit of a hapless idiot when the comedy calls for it. From what we learn, he ran the logistics for a rather large portion of the demon army, but he doesn't have the survival skill to prepare for any outside journey? It's a bit of a setup, seeing as the first human character he meets after being fired is the daughter of the mayor of Rax village, Marika. From there, she takes him back to the village and introduces him to her father, and her sudden interest in her "savior" is also part of why Dariel tends to act a bit like a hapless idiot.

That is not entirely without reason, though, because Marika... well, let's just say there's a reason why I "airquoted" the word "savior" when I described the rescue. Marika is strong. Physically strong. Monstrously strong. Once she has set her sights on Dariel, one of the running jokes is how her running embrace leaves Dariel an unconscious wreck in need of medical attention despite his perfect hero status. Dariel jumped into the fray because, as a soldier in the demon king's army, one of his duties would be the safekeeping of noncombatants. Marika might've appreciated the rescue, of course, but the show makes it quickly clear that she never really needed to be saved when she picks up an entire (fallen) tree as if it was nothing. She's also very young, which I hope is at least part of the reason why Dariel is apprehensive about leaning into her very obvious hinting, and she has a bit of a yandere streak whenever someone insults Dariel and his abilities. She's also... probably around 16-20 somewhere. I can't recall whether they mention her age at any point, but she's clearly a lot younger than Dariel. The show also wants us to be intimately familiar with her ample chest, as any shots of her head are sure to be followed with the camera angling down to her massive cleavage. Which is not to say that the show is chock full of fanservice, mind you, and what is there is almost embarrassingly chaste, all things considered. But all the women in this show are stacked to the high heavens, to the point where a cape-wearing Laidy (and yes, her name is spelled like that in the Crunchyroll subs) shows up later on; I half-expected her to be the "flat-chested, twin-tailed, vaguely tsundere character who was envious about Marika's size" type by the way she was staring at Marika's chest when the two met. But nope; she had huge boobs just like everyone else.

A plus point, then, for having most of the women in this show being more than just wallflowers for the audience to ogle. Two of the four Heavenly Kings of the demon army are women, and as we mentioned, Marika is an immensely strong woman despite her status as a noncombatant. And the former hero (who had to retire due to grievous injuries, apparently) also had no problem choosing a woman to inherit his role as the main hero. The only really weird part is that they are also about as young as Marika is, but the show kinda has this "it's a young person's era" vibe to it, and Dariel and the others seem happy enough to lend them whatever support they can, even though 30 isn't that old. It just might look like it because most of the cast look more like they're in the range of eighteen to the early twenties at the most, while the others are actually older people in their fifties.

Storywise, the show isn't entirely unappealing. Aside from the things I mentioned about Dariel and how he handles things, Chillin' in My 30's tends to favor an "everyone is fighting for their people's safety" angle, and one has to wonder how all of this got started. (Although there is a solid dose of realpolitik in the mix, I can guess with a fairly solid certainty.) I do appreciate the idealism nevertheless. And honestly, while I was a bit uncertain about Marika at first, she really came into her own as the show went along, with such highlights as not putting up with any kind of nonsense from anyone that could threaten the village or any of its guests and residents. This doesn't always show through in the actions of the characters, though, and the biggest seesaw on that end is Grandbarza, the man who adopted Dariel and raised him. His son, Bashbarza, is the one who fired Dariel under the pretense of lack of magical abilities, but as the show goes on, it becomes more and more clear that the firing was done under a fit of jealousy. Dariel was liked by the demon race people, the other generals in particular, and it's this jealousy and pettiness that drives Bashbarza. As I was to learn later on, though, Grandbarza was a bit of an absentee father to a son who clearly wanted to make him proud. You could argue that as the general of the demon army, he simply didn't have the time for it, but he still had time to be a good father for Dariel when he should have been dividing his time equally between both of them. The show isn't even blind to it, as the demon lord himself calls him out on it at some point in the show, and the show spending its second half dealing with the fallout for this while making a rather half-hearted attempt at covering for it doesn't really help. It's a jarring tonal discord, since I can't really say for sure what the show is trying to say here, but quite frankly, my opinion of Grandbarza is that he was a great father to Dariel, but a pretty terrible one to Bashbarza and, judging by the little we get to see of her, not the best husband to his wife either. There is just so much favoritism going on here that it leaves a sour taste on whichever scenes between Dariel and Granbarza that would otherwise be heartfelt and sweet. That should be.

As for the comedy, I wish I could say that it's all good. While Chillin' in My 30's has its share of amusing gags -- such as a lot of Dariel's reaction commentary -- it also borrows too much from the playbook of "dumb ecchi show gag list," such as accidental boob grabs and "Waaah, you have my panties" scenes and more. Marika crushing Dariel's ribs with her power hugs was a bit amusing the first two or three times, but that also got old after a while, although her monstrous strength does lend itself to other amusing scenes, like when she put the fear of God into Zebiantes in a second flat with the help of a bottle cork. Then there's Gashita, who just remains annoying all throughout the show; at first when he was a jealous idiot towards Dariel, and then after Dariel saves him from a bigger monster, he doubles down by becoming "the annoying fan" from Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, more or less.

It's almost a good thing that the show isn't very battle-heavy, because it simply doesn't have the animation chops for it. The background work is generally fine, and the characters seem stable enough, but the battle scenes that do happen tend to devolve into cel pans and speed lines, with some middling CG animation making up some of the magical effects. This is a very prime example of animation done on a tight budget; it's not terrible, but it's not exactly great either. The soundtrack is pretty good, though. It's gentle whenever it's portraying the quiet country life Dariel likes to be a part of and dramatically hectic when it needs to be.

So, I guess that's where we all stand in the end. The show is almost perfectly average. Not mediocre per se, as Chillin' in My 30's is both funny and not; it's dramatic stuff is weighty enough as plot elements but isn't given enough time to properly allow for that weight to be felt. I do appreciate what it's trying to do, but it doesn't quite get there due to its sense of timing and eagerness to sweep things under the rug as soon as possible. And it also leaves too many things unfinished; some of those things I would like to see play out. Like, out of the four generals, Doroye was the one who lamented his departure the most. She was the frailest out of the four and as such, appreciated Dariel's services the most, but there might have been more to it than that. It wouldn't have hurt to see more about why Grandbarza ended up being such a poor husband and father to his wife and son, respectively, or even what the deal is with the demon king, whose appearance is apparently based on how the other demon races see him. While he clearly wants things to be better for everyone involved, there is also a sense of malice behind his attitude when you disappoint him. And he seems to be perfectly informed about everything going on around him, yet he is never really seen outside of his throne room. A throne room placed right over what looks like a bottomless pit. Which is to say, while the ending is conclusive enough for a season, it really leaves too many things unfinished. It is based on a light novel that's still in the process of being written, so that's not entirely on the show.

But yeah, that puts the show squarely in the middle. I don't necessarily recommend watching it unless you're really starved for shows with adult leads rather than teenagers/high schoolers. — Stig Høgset

Recommended Audience: You get PLENTY of opportunities to look at Marika's rather sizable cleavage because the close-ups of her tend to go between her face and her chest, one way or the other. In addition, you get your typical accidental breast grabs. (Marika doesn't really mind; Zebiantes and Laidy are less pleased with it.) By and large, it's pretty tame stuff.

There's also violence. Most of it is pretty clean and nonbloody.