One day, an ordinary (if very small and young-looking) highschool boy named Hibiki Manabe is suddenly transported to a vast grassland in another world where monsters lurk. Wandering aimlessly through this fantasy world he's never seen before, Hibiki suddenly realizes he's been given the skill of "Appraisal" and the occupation "Appraiser (provisional title)". And so, with the guidance of a beautiful blonde elf named Emalia, Hibiki becomes an adventurer. Together with the cursed beastman Claude, a sage from the future named Lillian and the sacred white cat-beast Vene, he gradually grows stronger as he searches for a way to return to his original world.

Quick, everyone, for 100 points: What kind of premiere is worse than a painfully generic isekai that doesn't have a single ounce of creativity or vision to its name? I'm sorry, your time's up. The correct answer is "A painfully generic isekai COMEDY that doesn't have a single ounce of creativity or vision to its name and also can't tell a joke to save its godforsaken life."

I'm sure this was already painfully obvious on account of its title, but just in case you're new enough around these parts to be ignorant of the industry's reddest flags, The Strongest Job is Apparently Not a Hero or a Sage, But an Appraiser (Provisional)? is not very good. I believe the technical term that an AVGN-inspired critic such as myself is expected to use would be "a shit sandwich with a side of suck-ass fries", and I'd then be obligated to say I'd rather do some humorously disgusting thing involving animals and their feces than watch any more of it. Is The Strongest Job is Blah Blah Blah the worst isekai anime I've ever forced myself to endure for the seasonal premiere gauntlet? No, not really, but it honestly is just a matter of degrees with most of this crap.

It takes 28 seconds for the first stat screen to show up. By the 1:14 mark, we've got our first boob gag. 7 minutes in, our lead outright says he's in an isekai, 15:05 and we get a fucking "BAKA HENTAI" uppercut into the sky that hasn't been funny even once in all the decades it's been used for, and by the end of the next-episode preview, the same "joke" about Emalia's tits blowing a single load-bearing button off her shirt has been repeated three more times. That doesn't necessarily tell you everything you need to know about The Strongest Job is an Appraiser?, but it's probably a pretty good hint as to whether or not you'll think it's worth sitting through.

That's actually kind of a shame, because if this didn't keep going for the lowest common denominator, it could be a bit more fun than it is. The hapless isekai victim du jour, Hibiki, is apparently the rare teenager who hasn't been wishing for his own isekai experience, because he's not thrilled when he realizes that he's in another world with a weird disembodied voice telling him random bullshit. He's even less thrilled when a horned rabbit attacks him, and things really just keep going downhill from there. The episode very clearly wants to be funny and self-aware, and it's just as plainly not quite making it work. I'm sad, because I think I might've liked the show this thinks it is.

Part of the problem is that it keeps going back to the unfunny joke that Emalia's tits are huge and her shirt button keeps popping off. It also has the dubious distinction of making me stare in disbelief and literally mutter "The fuck...?" as Emalia gets flustered thinking about Hibiki and her boobs literally inflate and spread apart. Only for them to be their normal size and pressed back together like nothing happened in the very next shot. The humor works better when the focus is on Hibiki not being genre-savvy, but even then it's not particularly entertaining. Hibiki is also just as lame a protagonist as the rest of them, the RPG world he's been isekai'd to is just as unimaginatively designed, the supporting cast of Big Titty Waifus is just as cynical and vapid, and the supposed "hook" of the series is yet another of those dumbass attempts to "subvert" classic RPG cliches by pointing them out.

Even though none of these shows can be bothered to distinguish themselves from one another, however, I strive to work harder than the actual anime and differentiate one lukewarm bowl of fanta-slop from the next. Because of this, I'm docking half a point from the show's score since it's attempting to be a comedy and its jokes are all annoying and predictable. Boring wastes of time are bad enough, but cringey jokes make the viewing experience an actively unpleasant one.

I think the best thing I can say for The Strongest Job is an Appraiser? is that it tries, and it tries earnestly. It really, really wants you to like it, to find its jokes funny, to giggle whenever it reminds you that Emalia's shirt is too small. It also wants to let you know via the theme songs that there'll be at least four girls surrounding Hibiki as the story goes on, one of whom is a catgirl and another of whom is a loli. Trying isn't quite enough for me, but I could still see this taking a couple more episodes to settle into itself. It's almost certainly not going to happen, but that's still something, I guess.