This review was originally written on my MAL account on September 30th 2021

So after long last, finally I’ve decided to do another review, and that for a series that truly deserves more spotlight. Let’s not waste any time and begin.

TLDR: don’t watch this for a complex story but for the wacky fun adventure you and the characters will find yourselves in and you’re gonna have a great time with this, highly recommended, this is a hidden gem.

STORY(8/10):

If you are looking for a complex story with tons of worldbuilding and depth and whatnots, then you can immediately turn around and avoid this. But if you are looking for a wacky fun adventure in a fantasy land with a morbid sense of humor, see how the characters created a BL boom, get stuck inside manga panels or a time loop, try to prevent skinned chickens from taking over the world and see the rise and fall to ruin of multiple entire civilizations then you’ve come to the right place.

The story is exactly as the synopsis says, simple and straightforward, and nothing more, but man is it ever fun to watch. It’s just the journey of our nameless mediator „Watashi“, one of the last members of the now almost extinct human race that has to deal with the hijinks of the fairies and their supernatural technology in their pursuit for fun. It never pretends to be something bigger and always knows exactly what it wants to be.

The episodes themselves don’t have much connection to each other and are split into mostly two parters with some twist at the end of the first part that leads into the problem solving for the second part.

Additionally the episodes are chronologically out of order and I personally am a huge sucker for this kind of stuff because with this, you can notice some bits you didn’t at first when you rewatch the show.

In terms of creativity, „Humanity has declined“ is one of the best I have seen, and since I tend to watch a lot of niche stuff I’ve seen a lot of wacky shows. It almost feels very similar to FLCL yet even more fun. Probably because of its main character and the above mentioned weirdness

CHARACTERS(9/10):

The focus on characters for this show, outside of 2 episodes lies almost only on the main character, who has remained nameless, throughout the story. Outside of her you won’t find any fleshed out character with an elaborate backstory or anything like that, but fleshed out she definitely is.
She’s a rather introverted and reserved person but has a snarky and sarcastic personality because of which it is just a treat to watch her interactions with the fairies every episode.
She is quite honestly the most delightful and fun character I’ve seen in an anime in a loooong time, which is kind of impressive given this is just a 12-episode show.

ART/ANIMATION(9/10):

The animation itself is not that special and rather just relatively standard. What sets this apart from some other anime I’ve seen in this regard is the unique art style using vibrant colors and the use of the shot direction, lighting and shadows affecting the characters and scenery that just make this feel more alive I guess. It is very nice to look at and the character design is quite good too, especially their eyes are beautiful.

SOUND(9/10):

OP is good, but a little weird visually, fits for the show…

ED is a delight every time it plays (sometimes within a scene at the end of the episode)

The sound design doesn’t hold back either and it always brings out OSTs that never miss their marks and fit in perfectly with what happens in every scene. The only thing you probably need getting used to is the fairies rather high pitched and distorted voices, otherwise the voice acting is great as you'd expect from some big names like Sawashiro Miyuki.

ENDING(9/10):

Given the nature of this show it is very hard to judge „the end“ of the anime because technically the end is the beginning. The last two episodes are chronologically the first because they talk about the backstory of our main character at school before she started her job as a mediator. I for one feel like they did a good job tying everything that has happened in the anime together and found a perfect place to end it. Now I know that there’s still light novel content left that came out later than this and I've read about it a bit but if you aren't japanese I guess there's no chance you're ever gonna get to read them…

EMOTIONAL IMPACT / ENJOYMENT (10/10):

Quite honestly, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I had a ton of fun watching this and I still kinda want more of it.

I’ve never wanted to read a light novel as badly as this one but sadly, and I’m still upset by that, there is neither an official English translation nor are there any fan translations online that go past chapter 1. Guess it’s time to start learning Japanese now.

Overall this was a delightfully wacky slice of life fantasy adventure with a little bit of twisted humor in it that I can recommend anyone to watch who just wants to have a fun time

I especially had lots of fun with episodes 7 and 8 where our protagonist is trapped in a time loop and needs to find a way out of it. The entirety of these two episodes might’ve just as well been a set up for the final Punchline at the end of episode 8, and given the sheer ridiculousness of the joke I’m not even mad about that.

Even with my now a bit harsher newly established rating system, this one has easily earned its place among some of my personal favorites and I’ll grant it 9/10 points. Really good show that I can only recommend everyone to watch, I guess I found another hidden gem again.
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A few notes at the end here for this Anilist version:

• yes I know I said it's a 9/10 and the score I gave is an 8/10, it's just compared to the other ones with a 9/10 I've put on my list, this one doesn't hold up particularly well and I've revised my scores quite a number of times already, too.
• The joke at the end of episode 8 is STILL my favorite joke in tv (my personal favorite joke is one in the movie "Airplane", btw.)
• I haven't learned ANY japanese since I wrote this, and there is still no trace of a translation ever being done for the light novel (I know the ending twist and it's so. f'ing. awesome.)
• the main protagonist is still one of my absolute favorites.

I don't know why but I'm kind of in the mood for reviews at the moment, especially after seeing the positive reception I got for both my Sound Euphonium S2 and Bloom Into You's review recently, so I'll either bring some other MAL reviews I've done over to here in the next few days, or maybe even try and write a new one about something I wanted to highlight my love for... but no promises on that because I have very high standards for myself when it comes to this kind of stuff and I'm never really satisfied with the end products that much.... so we'll see.

Edit about a year after making the review:
I rewatched this show this week.
I got back to a 9/10.