Spoiler: This review contains spoilers for The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, Episode 1 “I Got a Job”
If you went into The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, thinking this was going to be an anime where characters sold beans or made a living counting beans, well… you’ll be happy to know that you weren’t the only one (Spoiler: a bean counter is an accountant who obsesses over budgets and expenditures and sadly does not feature any beans).
Salaryman Seiichirou Kondou finds himself in another world when he attempts to save a young woman named Yua Shiraishi. Yua immediately finds her place in this kingdom as the Holy Maiden who is supposed to save her people, but Seiichirou is a different story. He doesn’t have a purpose. But it’s not like he can go back home, so he decides that he’ll live life as he did in his own world: work, work, and work.
Sleep is for the Weak Beans
Disclaimer: this is not true.
The dark bags under the eyes, the flat tone, the disquiet when you don’t have work and feeling the itch to work; it was like seeing my life play out in front of me, except in a 2D male character. Seiichirou isn’t used to the laid-back rhythm of the kingdom. He’s surprised when he’s offered tea instead of his first assignment. He uses his allowance to purchase things that would make his job more efficient like a magic pen that never has to be refilled. Even when there’s nothing for him to do, he’s seen dusting the office. He’s never relaxed and that speaks to the attitude Japan’s corporate work culture has instilled in him.
He doesn’t know any other kind of life that isn’t devoted to his job. Despite the world changing, he hasn’t changed at all. Seiichirou even goes so far as to purchase and guzzle a worrying amount of nutritional tonics in an effort to push past the fatigue in favor of productivity. He’s neglecting his health and it’s shown in the last few minutes of the episode when he tries to down his umpteenth tonic and suffers some sort of attack.
Seiichirou is a Good Bean
If there was one way to get me to watch isekai, injecting some BL would be the way to do it. But given the way Episode 1 went, I might not have ever guessed this was a BL story. There were the lingering gazes, the hyperfocus on the handsome commander Aresh and his very pretty eyes, and how Aresh seemed especially aware of Seiichirou, but that could be because of a number of things. Maybe Aresh is suspicious of Seiichirou. Maybe he wants to recruit him for something.
Either way, it didn’t feel like a typical BL anime but I didn’t mind because this anime did the impossible: it made me invested in math.
While working on the budget requests, Seiichirou notices there are some discrepancies with the numbers but when he tries to point it out to Helmut, he’s deflected. Both Helmut and his coworkers try to sweep the issue under the rug on account of the accounting department being a “funnel” but Seiichirou refuses to turn a blind eye to it. In an odd way, it’s perhaps because of his workaholic tendencies that he’s able to uncover the truth.
Unfortunately, that’s going to be used against him.
The prime minister, smelling blood like a shark in water, immediately gives Seiichirou a position of power so that he can continuously exploit him. And Yua is in a similar position. Seiichirou, being the almost-thirty-year-old elder that he is, tries to warn Yua to gather all the facts before making an informed decision because he makes a good point: neither he nor Yua what the Holy Maiden is supposed to do. It could be extremely dangerous and she might die. But Yua, impressionable and innocent, thinks this is Seiichirou being heartless and selfish.
The animation was a little choppy but it wasn’t so bad that it detracted from the overall experience. I blame the nobles; first they steal from the defense funds and now they steal the money intended for this anime’s budget!
The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter is streaming on Crunchyroll. Both the light novel and manga have been published by Yen Press.
