Alternative title(s): Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road
Light Novel Adaptation by J.C. Staff
Streaming on HIDIVE
Premise
Menou is an executioner with one task – to kill the unfortunate souls who have been warped here from a place called ‘Japan’ before they can use their otherworldy powers to devastate the land. However, that job becomes more complicated with the arrival of a girl with the power to defy death.
Zigg’s verdict: An Easy Cut
I actually had a fair bit of hope for The Executioner and Her Way of Life given the amusing potential of a premise that could skewer a lot of tired tropes about the isekai genre. Unfortunately, what we’ve got here is instead another classic example of ‘doing the thing and then pointing out you’ve done it’ not being anything approaching actual satire or comedy. As a result we get most of the tried and true cliches about being transported to another world, except this time with an air of knowing detachment that makes them even more unpalatable, if that’s possible. Not helping is the heavy handed, leaden dialogue, including a laughably clumsy use of ‘as you know’ exposition which is then rendered completely irrelevant by immediately showing the events so awkwardly described.
Tonally we’re kind of all over the place too. The knowingly meta premise and (sigh) psycho lesbian assistant suggest a comedy, but the level of violence and straight-faced horror tropes are more in line with a serious drama. The net result is a narrative which sort of ping-pongs uneasily between the two and can never settle into a groove enough to make the jokes funny or the shocks impactful. It’s not even a case of the show trying to hide the ‘twist’ from the audience either, as they shoot that shot within the first few seconds of the episode. The Executioner and Her Way of Life certainly isn’t without promise, and the idea of Menou becoming attached to one of her targets does hold some intrigue, but the poor execution (ahem) of this first episode suggests that the writing isn’t going to be anywhere good enough to make the most of that potential.
The Glorio Blog 
This idea isn’t new in the Isekai circle. There’re plenty of series that attempt to do something like this, some more success than other. I would say this series is at the middle of the anti-isekai sub-genre. The worst example of this kind of series is a series called Cheat Slayer written by Kakegurui’s author Homura Kawamoto where the author basically draw “totally-not-Aqua”, “totally-not-Ainz”, “totally-not-Kirito”, Subaru, Bakarina and a bunch of popular series MC-expy, turned them into murder/rapist and have the MC kill them. It was so bad that the manga got cancelled after 1 chapter.
Indeed, I wasn’t trying to imply that the idea of subverting isekai in one way or another was a brand new concept, just that this particular setup had some potential that it mostly squanders. I did hear about Kawamoto getting in trouble over that manga, not sure if I’m thankful or disappointed we didn’t get a chance to see him go further.