Van, the fourth son of a powerful noble, is only two years old when he remembers his past life as a salaryman in Japan. With his adult brain in a young body, he's considered a child prodigy...until he displays the "Production Magic" skill when he turns eight. In a family that favours offensive magic, this crafting skill is considered useless in battle, and Van is banished to oversee a tiny country town in disgrace. With only his personal maids, the memories of his past life and his "worthless" magic, Van improves the fortunes of this little village, and himself.

I'd tell you to stop me if you've heard this one before, but then I wouldn't be doing my job here, because you've definitely heard this one before: A lonesome, overworked Japanese man dies and is reincarnated as a child in a fantasy world. He's doted on by anachronistic Victorian maids in his new medieval setting, and his interior age makes him seem like a child prodigy. But oh no, his magic isn't considered valuable, so he and the adults who dote on him are sent away to a remote frontier town. Also he buys a slave who doesn't want to be freed. Yep, the gang's all here for this one.

We've officially reached the point where these isekai anime are making me feel like I'm going insane. I could swear to you on a stack of Shonen Jumps that I already watched the opening scene of this premiere like 20 times in the past year alone, and when the reincarnated Van slowly opened his eyes to remark about his tiny little baby hands, I was actually tempted to go back and double-check the premiere of Hell Mode to see if this was just outright plagiarism. I didn't do that, of course, because it took all of my draining mental and emotional faculties to get through just this one episode of Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord, let alone going back to other, even worse shows I already watched. But still, I'd like to register my continuing annoyance that the scripts for these shows are such shameless retreads of material that already sucked hard to begin with.

This anime is interesting in the fact that only the final few minutes of the episode are relevant to the ongoing story. The rest is little more than a prologue to what this series is actually about, ie. a once-promising noble youth is cast out by his family because of his "garbage magic". Basically, this episode is a lengthy introduction to the characters and setting. We see Van as a child being hailed as a genius because of his adult mind in a child's body. His work ethic also takes him far in both his studies and swordsmanship. Since he has the social skills of an adult, he integrates well with the people of his father's territory. It's clear to all that he's primed to be the next ruler... Until it's revealed he has the lowest form of magic, production magic.

It's not hard to see where the series goes from here with his exile and how idiotic the idea that production magic isn't the single most useful magic possible. It's basically alchemy. Gather the materials, whatever you want appears. Instead of a hundred blacksmiths slaving at the forge for months to turn out subpar weapons and armor, you could outfit an army in a single day with high-quality equipment using the same base materials. You could build a castle as quickly as your magic would allow, as long as wood and stone and whatnot were gathered first. You could build aqueducts and dams in days, if not minutes. Hell, depending on how the magic works, you could potentially mine an entire vein of ore in an instant, saving decades of mining activity in the process. At most, all you'd need is some blueprints, a scale model or a prototype to copy. You'd be a walking industrial revolution.

Yeah, the really sad thing about this one is that it isn't lacking in potential. Van seems to be a genuinely nice person, and it's hard to fault him for wanting to break free of the expectations of those around him. He's getting a chance to relive childhood, so why would he want to waste it being tutored in academics and swordplay to the point where he has no free time? In fact, he sees his banishment as a relief until he realizes that numerus peoople under his father's employ have been ordered to follow him. He seems to have a decent head on his shoulders too.

The clearest example of this is obviously the plotline about the slave character, Khamsin. Van sees Khamsin being dragged to the market by his cruel father, who's planning to sell the boy into slavery. Understanding that slavery is bad, Van buys Khamsin from his father and immediately declares his freedom. So far, so good--but then he's told that he can't bring Khamsin home as a random dirty straggler, so he'll have to keep him as a slave for his own good. And Khamsin is perfectly delighted by this, to the point where he doesn't want to cover up his slave crest. The kid is stoked to be Van's slave that his skin turns several shades lighter! It's a hard decision whether to roll my eyes or feel sick at yet another instance of the "noble slavery" falsehood.

I found most of Easygoing Territory Defense to be fine, albeit cliche, until that scene. I'm also endlessly sick of useful magical gifts being treated as useless in these stories because they're not offensive magic. Production magic is useless because people can also make material goods without magic? What, as opposed to fire? You can make fire with physical materials too! If I blow out a candle, is that magic? Does it prove that fire magic, the most quintessential magic in all of fantasy fiction, is useless trash? Is making fire a more useful skill than instantly building things out of raw materials? We know how this'll go too: Van knows about modern technology, so he'll use his magic to make guns and shit. But wouldn't it make more sense for his father to be mad that, say, making things is considered below a noble military family, rather than agreeing that the entire concept of crafting material goods from thin air is "garbage magic"?

I will give Easygoing Territory Defense credit where it's due, however, and acknowledge that this show is a stronger production than many others of its type. That is a remarkably low bar to clear, mind you, but I'm not actually trying to damn this new show with faint praise (at least not too much). Easygoing Territory Defense is genuinely a decently-made show. The storyboarding and solid character designs are strong enough to carry the premiere even when the character animation isn't all that fluid, and the episode is edited well enough that it didn't feel entirely excruciating to sit through the same old song and dance of meaningless exposition and pointless plot developments. Also, I laughed a bit at the Costco joke the writers managed to sneak in.

Here's my dark confession: I actually had a little bit of fun watching Easygoing Territory Defense, simply because I was laughing at the names as they came up. The family name is Fertio, for crying out loud. One of Van's brothers is named Murcia Elago. Like Murcielago, get it? That was certainly worth a chuckle. I can't help but giggle as I try to pronounce Khamsin's name correctly. And yes, I let out a genuine laugh when the armsmaster Dee started doing Kazotsky kicks across the training yard. Hey, it's just an inherently funny dance move!

Unfortunately, the rest of Easygoing Territory Defense is about what you'd expect from 90% of the anime that stole the same basic premise from each other over the last 15 years or so. Van is a bit more likeable and proactive than the usual isekai Potato-kuns, and he's definitely against the practice of human slavery, which is always a bonus (and still yet another terribly low bar to be praised for clearing). An isekai protagonist with 20% more charm and wit is still terminally deficient compared to most other anime protagonists, however, and it's not enough to make up for the boring worldbuilding and storytelling. I think the absolute best I can do for Easygoing Territory Defense is to acknowledge that I was slightly too harsh in comparing it to the genre's worst slopfests earlier. This isn't as bad as those, and maybe I'll even talk myself into doing a full-series review at some point. But the barest minimum of recognizable human spark isn't enough to make this the kind of trash that's worth digging out to enjoy on a weekly basis.