Roll Credits: The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat - Moving Pictures

Have you ever just devoured an entire season of a TV show in one day? I don’t mean something on your second screen while you’re doing something else; I mean just watching the show until it’s done. Well, that’s what happened to me with The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat, from 2021, on Crunchyroll.

The plot sees an assassin from a world like ours being reincarnated into a world of swords and sorcery, with all of his memories from his original life. Why would a Goddess deign to grant him such a boon? Well, she has tasked him with killing the world’s Hero (only after they have killed the Demon Lord) to save the world, and he agrees to do it.

The nameless assassin is reborn into a noble family as Lugh Tuatha Dé, a line of assassins for the royalty, and the anime thankfully skips over most of his childhood. It does focus on periods of his upbringing which led to him meeting the other characters: Dia Viekone, who teaches him magic, and Tarte, whom he saves from starvation (and wolves) and makes his attendant.

World’s Finest Assassin is humorous without being a comedy and goes at a nice pace… until the episode where we meet his third confidant, Maha. Lugh is old enough to be considered a man and has been sent off to learn a trade — merchant — to fall back on, in case he should need to stop being an assassin. It also serves as a cover identity, allowing him access where “Lugh” wouldn’t be able.

Maha is living with some street urchins, and suddenly the tone of the episode is almost the opposite of what it had been. Suffice to say, they’re saved by Lugh, in his merchant identity, and this helps him establish an information network all of his own.

After that episode, things return to normal with Lugh training Tarte and Maha to also be assassins. Things come to a head when the suspected Hero invades Dia’s country, even though Lugh isn’t ready to take him on, and the Demon Lord hasn’t even appeared.

Thinking back, I’m not quite sure why the show grabbed my attention so adamantly. Some of it is likely down to how the first episode began, with Lugh and company rescuing some slaves at auction. I definitely wanted more of that, and every time there was a skip of only a couple of years I was honestly a little disappointed. Of course, it makes sense to draw you in with “group of assassins does assassination” and then fill in the blanks from there, but still. It can sometimes feel formulaic, and yet it still left me wanting to see more.

It’s also clear throughout that Lugh has some kind of plan in motion, though we’re not made privy to it in its totality. He wants to live his life anew — but he’s not forgotten where he came from. He invents a pressure cooker, finds a way to create a “brand new” cosmetic simply unheard of in this world, he’s perfectly capable of manipulation, torture, and (obviously) killing…

The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat was a great watch, even with sometimes dodgy subtitles (his name isn’t Luke, and the Japanese opening theme doesn’t mention dogs), and I’m really looking forward to the second season in 2027.