What’s this?
Kotone is a magician who ends up working at a real estate agency in a fantasy world. Kotone helps various clients, from a necromancer to a guild clerk raising a pegasus, find a place to call home.
real estate is based on Chiyo KenmotsuThe manga and broadcasts on Crunchyroll the Wednesdays.
How was the first episode?
Richard Eisenbeis
Classification:
Oh look, a light-hearted anime about cute girls in a fantasy world who runs a real estate agency. As they eat, meet people, and go on everyday adventures, the show pokes fun at RPG tropes such as adventurers ransacking people’s homes or the prevalence of bikini armor. The first episode even comes with a good takeaway for those in the service industry: listen to what the customer wants, not what you think they’ll want based on appearances.
But here’s the thing about real estate: It’s not really a fantasy story despite its outward appearance. Rather, it is a social commentary on modern Japan. With the fantasy aspect removed, Kotone is just your average Japanese college graduate. He studied hard, graduated and then gave up his dreams and moves to Tokyo to get a job that has nothing to do with what he studied. Upon arrival, his first challenge is to find an affordable place for an entry-level (read: underpaid) worker in the most expensive city in the country.
Of course, every place you can afford has some kind of terrible drawback. One has a shared living space (where people are guaranteed to steal your stuff). Another is a dilapidated skyscraper that lacks an elevator. And, worst of all, the last apartment has *sighs* foreign neighbors! Oh, didn’t you get it? Yes, demi-humans are non-Japanese people in this fantasy analogy. They look different, they have “weird” customs, and they don’t speak the same language after all.
I have lived in Japan for 17 years and I am in my sixth apartment. I can’t count the number of places that wouldn’t rent to me because I was a foreigner. (Many rental ads even go so far as to list “no foreigners” along with “no pets” and “no musical instruments” in their rental requirements.) So I appreciate that this anime has the inclusive message that having foreign neighbors is not an inconvenience. Rather, foreigners are seen as friendly and welcoming. Heck, the real estate agency even has a foreigner of their own, Fa, who can break the language barrier, making real estate a company that actively supports the foreign population of the city. (Although the fact that Fa is portrayed as a girl due to her not understanding the local customs [like the need for clothes] is a completely different can of worms). But frankly, when it comes to Japan addressing its institutionalized xenophobia and speaking out against it, I’ll take what I can.
Nicholas Dupree
Classification:
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: an adaptation of a Weather Manga Kirara The “Cute Girls” manga features a handful of candy-colored anime girls who are apparently in their teens but don’t appear to be more than 10 years old, where they have low-stakes comedic outlets and occasionally end up in fanservice outfits. But what if I told you that this time the pretty girls were in a generic RPG fantasy world, and they occasionally made very tired jokes about the kind of houses you see in fantasy settings? If that sounds like a good time, then you have a lot more patience than me to real estate.
Watching this show was like trying to eat a bag of cotton candy from a dollar store as fast as possible. I feel bad for saying that after loving the equally cloying healer girl and enjoy other low-stakes comedies like Aharen-san this season, but something about the execution here just isn’t working. The characters are too flat (no, not like that) and simple to be entertaining in their own right, and the premise of a real estate company wears out surprisingly quickly. By the second house tour of the episode, they’re not even making RPG-specific jokes about the houses anymore, and the whole humor of the premise starts to feel like an afterthought.
So, okay, so this is maybe meant to be more of a workplace comedy, where the joke is that the girls are basically a fling party doing mundane paperwork and real estate stuff. But that only works if the characters are funny or have good chemistry, and that’s not the case here. Nobody’s personality is very strong or memorable, and their conversations are pretty boring. The only one that stands out is Fa, the monster girl who exists between a girl and a pet, and whose gimmick is that she hates wearing clothes and is always trying to get naked at work. That’s not much of a joke, but sadly I remember her, and that qualifies her for the funniest part of this premiere.
So without character-driven humor or a unique hook, all that really remains is if you just want to see these generic girls being teased together, and there’s certainly plenty of that. Fa and Kotone share a bathroom together. Rakira blushes when Kotone calls her pretty, and her adventurous outfit is a tank top and miniskirt combination, and the show literally calls her an exhibitionist. At the end of the episode, Rakira and Rufria sleep in the same bed so that the latter can “comfort” herself after a hard day’s work. It’s as cheeky as you can get, but without any personality and with the blobby art style, it all seems like hitting plastic dolls and making kissing sounds. But honestly, even that sounds more appealing than watching another episode of this. I’m not immediately opposed to this style of show, but real estate it’s too empty to work.
Rebecca Silverman
Classification:
If you’ve been waiting for your CGCT program, here it is! real estate It has all the hallmarks of a genre-in-waiting: stunningly young-looking women, a censored bubble bath scene, an adorable theme, and a bit of yuri bait. And really, I’m being unkind to the censorship statement, because while the bubbles are strategically placed, the bath scene isn’t meant to be particularly lewd, and isn’t actually framed as such, it’s really just Fa and Kotone taking a bath. .
The concept is probably the best part of the episode. While it’s a bit of a stretch that the real estate agency RPG is actually called “Rent Plan Guide Real Estate,” the way it works is much more adorable. Dragon goes to hunt houses. The idea is that fifteen years later, for all intents and purposes, the game is over (i.e. world peace achieved), the fantasy realm functions a lot like our boring old world, and that means everyone needs a place to hang out. to live. But there are still entertaining remnants of the old sword-and-sorcery way of life that show up, like a house that’s also a dungeon or one that requires you to let adventurers come in and search your drawers and take your stuff. as “loot”. There are also remnants of how the world used to work where everyone still has classes that can be used if needed: Kotone is a mage, Rufuria is a priest, and Rakira is a warrior. But there are little comments about them scattered throughout the episode, and the highlight is when Kotone sees Rakira in her warrior uniform (a bra and shorts) and comments that there doesn’t seem to be enough armor to be of any use.
The story itself is mostly relaxing and sweet, which is certainly not a bad thing. The stakes are low-key, with the main plot of the episode revolving around searching for homes for two, with a little lesson in listening to what the customer really wants rather than what you think they want to include. Fa risks being a bit annoying (although she does have a real point about her tail making wearing clothes tailored for humans uncomfortable), but for the most part she’s pleasantly bright and gentle, which is absolutely not. something terrible if you just want to relax with some fantasy.