With his powers, Kenichi immediately takes a fancy to the allure of easy commerce, ordering mass-produced items never seen before in this world and hawking them in the town square to generate some easy, new-world coin. The locals are stunned by his ingenuity and craftsmanship, which he's more than happy to take credit for, wowing them with things like clothespins, sweets, and glass jewelry. Before long, he's racked up a small but mighty cadre of allies, namely the amply-bosomed daughter of the regional merchant magnate, and a gang of beastfolk whose men provide plenty of hired muscle and whose women provide scantily-clothed and also large-breasted feline companionship. Based on their behavior, breasts, and constant clamoring to cuddle with Kenichi, presumably, they're supposed to be somewhat sexualized beings, but their character design is so utterly unappealing that their presence feels like a net-negative.

Sadly, the harem element that unravels throughout this season never makes it into appetizing territory. Part of it is that none of the characters have any chemistry, although this isn't exactly untreaded harem territory. The characters of all genders simply exist in this world to fawn over Kenichi's godlike ability to conjure mind-blowing items out of thin air. There's minimal accompanying intellectual curiosity– no questions of, “Hey, how did you make that house appear,” or “What are these sorcerous machines you keep producing?” When everyone is an idolizing NPC in your self-insert, why bother adding any dissent or critical thought? The only snag– viewers aren't Kenichi, and although there's a level of escapism inherent in all isekai shows, it simply isn't that satisfying watching someone else coast through a life of magic and mistresses.

That isn't to say there's no strife in Kenichi's life. Despite his goal of living a relaxed life, trouble seems to find him on occasion. He gets rolled up into some merchant spats, busts a kidnapping operation, adopts the world's most low-maintenance teenager, and gets sucked into digging canals for a royal. Still, he's able to dispatch every single problem with ease between his hired beastfolk goons and his infinite shopping hack. Bad guys and hungry mouths are no match against crossbows, heavy machinery, and infinite groceries, and the only other issue in his life–Kenichi's perpetual buffet of sexual advances–is curtailed by his bored disinterest.

Unfortunately, the very thing that makes this show's premise interesting is also its greatest downfall. If you can conjure almost anything you want out of thin air, what's the point of having any inconvenience or problem? At times, the series almost answers this dilemma by introducing a handful of shopping constraints, but it falls short. For example, despite Kenichi's vast collection of various vehicles and construction equipment, he can't buy diesel online. Instead, he hatches ways of making his own– initially by trying to modify lighter fluid, and then later by borrowing some local alchemic tricks to create biofuel. He also shows his posse how to make cheese, even though he bought all the ingredients (and cheese is available online?). It's a cool concept, and forcing Kenichi to use ingenuity and science gives viewers something to root for.

These moments are fleeting, and even when he is presented with larger engineering challenges like terraforming or digging irrigation, they're largely hand-waved away with the usual machinery or local manpower. The episode where he's commissioned to create a canal system spends most of its time showing Kenichi blessing his harem with baths, causing a ruckus over who gets to share his tub.

It should be clarified that the issue with this wish-fulfillment fantasy isn't any of its elements– it's not the infinite item hack, everyone exalting Kenichi as a wizard of procurement, and it's certainly not the harem. It's that none of it is interesting, because none of it serves a purpose. Not even the fight scenes, which can't decide if they should be comedy or action, and whose dilemmas are solved just as uncreatively as would be expected of someone who can buy anything online. Not even the harem, of which 2/3rds of the are either ugly catgirls or children.

And it's not just the catgirls that are unattractive, although they give off strong early-2000s How To Draw Manga vibes. The series as a whole is unattractive. Anatomy is a suggestion with a moving target. On top of that, everything is lifeless and static, with an over-reliance on tediously long still frames. When one character is talking, everyone else is frozen around them. There was one scene in episode 9 that made me check my watch because one of the characters sat frozen in a grimace for 15 entire seconds. Textures are flat and out of place, seemingly generated from a preset pack; characters step through mud puddles that wiggle more like eels than water. The only thing that looks good is the evergreen trees, which is no small feat considering how many scenes are set in a forest. Genuinely, kudos to the one team that's just extremely good at drawing vegetation. Maybe they should've made an entire series about Kenichi camping in the woods.

Then again, that would turn the series into more of a slice-of-life, and even that doesn't work, because the show isn't a slice of anything; it's neither relaxing nor engaging, and even the very thing that Kenichi craves– a simple life in the countryside– fails to materialize. The series could've gone far just by leaning into that alone– showing Kenichi farming, or learning how to set up a greywater system, or any number of vaguely interesting, mundane-but-necessary processes that humans realize they miss when they're suddenly plucked from their modern lives. Would that not be the perfect antithesis to an infinite shopping platform? The yawning gaps between consumerism that only millennia of civilization can fill?

Instead, The Daily Life is like a capitalist fever dream, one in which on-demand goods not only occupy every square inch of our needs and desires, but even provide the basis of dropship commerce. Forget exploring a new land and learning the customs of its people, or discovering new flora. No, the first order of business is flipping goods for a profit, in a world where you've already been granted a silver spoon and don't deserve any of the things you have. It's a hollow existence, and so it follows that any show that forces you to gawk into the maw of undeserved rewards is hollow as well. The Daily Life is like the anime version of an influencer unboxing video; vapid and filled with junk.