It’s time for another isekai series about a girl being trapped inside of a video game called In the Land of Leadale. While this premise has been done to death, this one seems to take a little more of a campy approach. I figured that I would check it out as the source material has been getting some good attention lately. Did the first episode live up to all of the chatter about it?
Let’s Go!
First Episode Synopsis
All I can say is that they found a new way to isekai the main character. We are treated to an opening scene of a city whose power is going out block by block with a heart monitor serving as background noise. Suddenly, the power goes out at the hospital and…
CUE THE OPENING!!!
After a rather dismal opening song (just wasn’t my cup of tea) we see a blonde elf by the name of Cayna waking up. She suddenly realizes that she is in the VRMMORPG Leadale except… everything feels so real. She then realizes that her mind must have been transported into the game while her physical body has died.
She takes no time to even mourn her own death as she hops out of bed and heads downstairs to an inn to eat breakfast. She learns that 200 years has passed since she last played the game. The seven kingdoms were united into three and the inn she’s at isn’t as busy as she remembers it. When asked about why she’s in this part of town, she says she is looking for the Silver Tower.
The staff at the inn freak out because the Silver Ring Witch lives there. Cayna immediately freaks out and runs back upstairs because as a lvl 1100 High Elf who used to torment players all the time in PvP… SHE was the one who used to be called by that name! She makes some excuse about finding medicinal herbs in the forest and sets off to her tower. She talks to some giant gear in the wall with a face that acts as the tower’s watchman. After having a snippy conversation with it, she takes some items from her storage there and heads out, promising to check on the other towers.
She runs into a horned bear on the way back… kills it… saves a man… and gives the meat to the inn. They celebrate with wine, she gets drunk and… end of episode one.
Worth Watching?
MAYBE – I will say… the show wasn’t that bad at all. It had some comedic moments… sometimes a little too over the top for my liking but the comedy was decent. The lack of surprise that she had died in the real world was rather odd. Not many people would just brush it off like that.
Outside of that, the first episode was a bit campy. We have an overpowered high elf trying to fit into a world she’s both familiar and unfamiliar with. 200 years have passed and the world she used to play in has changed. She now has to re-adapt herself to this new world so I’m assuming that we will meet some people along the way as she does just that.
She learned that she has a son through some sort of foster system from the game. She also made brothers and sisters for him, too so there’s no doubt that we’re going to get to see them later on as well. As an introductory episode, Leadale did its job very well. It gave you the kind of show it can be but I gave this the MAYBE tag because I’ve also seen Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody which was a slice of life anime trying to be a fantasy isekai with some action sprinkled in and it was BORING.
I’ll have to give this show some more time and hope that it doesn’t follow down that route. I don’t mind a fantasy setting with little action as long as the story and the characters are interesting. So far, there’s not enough to judge if that’s the case but we shall give this a chance. I did enjoy the first episode so I hope the rest of the show can make as good or a better impression!
