Alternative title: Henjin no Salad Bowl
Light Novel Adaptation by SynergySP and Studio Comet
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

After being cornered by rebels, Sara da Odin escapes through a portal to another world. She quickly meets a detective, who is forced to look after her.

Euri’s verdict: It was fine

This show drops the term ‘isekai’ four times in the first six minutes – enough regularity to make me ponder how dangerous it’d be to drink every time it was mentioned – so I’ll be the first to tell you how surprised I am that I made it to the end not hating it. It has issues, but as far as reverse-isekai stories go, this one seems okay.

Sara da Odin, the peppy, young protagonist of the show, is a fun contrast to the older Sousuke, a private detective who seems a bit down on his luck. They don’t have many opportunities to play off each other in this opening episode, but seeing them team up on an investigation is a promising glimpse of what could be coming.

While the show doesn’t do anything too egregious (though I remain cautious about how skeevy it might become), I spent much of the episode just thinking about Hinamatsuri. While not one-to-one, there are a lot of similarities. Sara and Hina are both young girls with powers who are taken in by an adult man, and both Livia and Anzu are separated from the protagonist, and, oddly enough, both end up in the company of homeless people.

The main difference between the two shows, to me at least, is that Hinamatsuri‘s sense of humour is better. Again, we’re only a single episode in, but Salad Bowl has few genuinely funny moments amongst all the set-up. In fact, Sara’s demonstration of her explosion magic would have been funnier if they decided against repeating the scene from various angles. In my opinion, the episode’s funniest moment came during the bathing scene of all places, where a ticker at the bottom of the screen reminds viewers that they need a fishing license to catch sweetfish from the Nagara River.

You can do worse than watch A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics, but if you haven’t yet watched Hinamatsuri, maybe watch that first and wait for opinions on episodes two and three.