Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita (Humanity Has Declined) First Impressions--Try Our Bread

Aww, it's all cute and pastel and... wait what.

 
I was planning on taking notes on what I wanted to write about while watching this, but the only thing I wrote down was "magical slice-of-life apocalypse." I think that summarizes this first episode pretty well. That and carrot bread suicide.

I went into this liking what little I'd heard about the premise and thinking that the character designs were cute. The second assumption still holds up, but it's juxtaposed against surprisingly dark undertones for how cutesy the series presents itself. Look no further than the opening scene for this, when our unnamed protagonist is instructed to turn the chickens "into meat." When the chickens run away, the town has to contend with a food shortage (apparently becoming vegetarians is not an option). Later on, Watashi (how they name her in the credits) outright states that humans are going extinct. For all the magical realism, this show is seriously portraying the themes of the end of the world.

 
And this continues with the fairies. Adorable at first sight, they quickly dip towards the strange and creepy when you realize that their ever-smiling mouths don't move and they have a thing for dark humor. It's clear that the "mysteries" of the suddenly appearing canned food and pre-skinned chickens are caused by them--and as a side note, if humans in this world can't catch pre-skinned chickens, I kind of understand why they're going extinct--but the "how" remains to be explained. They obviously have access to some pretty advanced technology (the self-mutilating bread explains that they can synthesize food out of anything, but that doesn't guarantee the taste) but apparently can't make sweets, the thing they love the most. There's a lot of interesting world-building potential here when you get past the downright strange things that happen.

 
I'll be surprised if anything else this season will be able to top this show in outright weirdness. But I have to admit, it exceeded my expectations. I was expecting something cute with fairies. I got that, but also end-of-the-world commentary and bread suicide. It certainly stands a chance of being the surprise hit of the season if it keeps rolling with this genuinely interesting world.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.