Literature / Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town

He's Not Your Ordinary Hero

Lloyd Belladonna is a boy from the remote village of Kunlun who dreams of great things, such as being a soldier and fighting off demonic armies for the Kingdom of Azami. With the blessing of the village mayor, Alka, he heads for the royal capital to live with Marie, a young witch running an apothecary on the eastern side of the city and a former pupil of Alka.

This presents trouble for Marie for two major reasons: firstly, despite claiming to be a weakling, Lloyd is already extremely powerful by the standards of Azami... because his hometown just so happens to be located on the borderlands between the human and demonic realms, and he is descended from generations of heroes who settled there to serve as vanguards against demon invasions; and second, he has little in the way of common sense, doing such outlandish stuff as using advanced magic spells for housekeeping.

Suppose a Kid From the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town (たとえばラストダンジョン前の村の少年が序盤の街で暮らすような物語, Tatoeba Rasuto Danjon Mae no Mura no Shōnen ga Joban no Machi de Kurasu Yō na Monogatari) is a comedic fantasy light novel series written by Toshio Satō and illustrated by Nao Watanuki, which was published by SB Creative under its GA Bunko imprint from 2017 to 2022 for 15 volumes. It also has an ongoing 2017 manga adaptation illustrated by Hajime Fusemachi published by Square Enix at the Gangan Online magazine, as well as an anime adaptation of the first five volumes directed by migmi for Liden Films, which started airing on January 4, 2021.

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The Light Novel contains the following tropes:

• Affectionate Parody: In same vein as One-Punch Man, Lloyd is a hilariously overpowered protagonist who instantly solves most problems with his overwhelming strength and housekeeping skills. Rather than playing this up as part of a power fantasy, it's milked for comedy as the other members of the cast react to his obliviousness to his own strength, parodying the overpowered protagonist and cheat skill flavors of generic fantasy light novels.
• After the End: From some private conversations between Alka and Eug, it's hinted there was once a super-advanced civilization that the two lived in as researchers, and it's implied they played a large role (along with other researchers) in how it became so advanced. However, something went wrong and not only does virtually no one besides the two even know it existed, many of their former colleagues became the Demon Lords that the Kunlun villagers dispatch regularly. Part of Eug's Face–Heel Turn is her desire to restore the world to its previous level of technology in order to fix their previous mistakes, regardless of how many innocents living in the present would be wiped out. This is later revealed to be wrong, and that the immortals are all superpowered otherworlders, and the ultimate Big Bad wants to go back to her original world with all the powers she gained in this one.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Marie and several other officials of the army believe this has happened to the King of the Azami Kingdom, due to his suddenly desiring war after 5 years of pacifism. They're right: he's been possessed by a Demon King, who is also controlling Merthophan by taking advantage of his Dark and Troubled Past.
• Brick Joke:
  • In a fit of rage and exasperation from Alka's antics, Marie angrily tosses her crystal ball into a well, as this is what Alka uses to speak with Marie remotely. As it is also how Alka teleports into Azami, one day she shows up at Marie's house soaking-wet.
    • This later leads into another Brick Joke; Alka punishes Marie for the well incident by causing her to randomly add a cat's "nya"/"meow" at the end of her sentences. Much, much later, Marie tricks Lloyd into defeating Abaddon and Marie gives him a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech which has its impact ruined by the random "nya"/"meow" at the end of it. Even Abaddon questions what was up with that before fading away.
  • During Azami's consecutive holidays, Selen is dismayed that her father is using the time to force her into a marriage interview, skewering her plans to take Lloyd out on a hot spring date. She then gets the bright idea of burning down the hotel that the interview will take place in so she has an excuse to go home right away and mentions ordering fire bombs from a merchant. They don't arrive in time to burn down the hotel and prevent the interview, but they do come in handy during the fight with the highly flammable Treant Demon Lord, Elking.
• Chekhov's Gun: During the Hotel Arc, Selen is set up for a marriage interview by her father and reveals that she ordered a massive shipment of firebombs on express delivery in order to burn the entire hotel down, disappointed that they didn't arrive before the interview and forcing her to try and murder Allan to preserve the "purity" of her love for Lloyd. Later, those firebombs arrive, delivered by Shoma and they turn out to be extremely useful against the tree-like demon lord Elking. Furthermore, it also turns out that Shoma was up to some nasty schemes before he made the aforementioned delivery.
• Compressed Adaptation: The first episode compresses around 4 chapters into a single episode. Because of this, it leaves out all of the achievements he did when he was buying supplies and a majority of his interactions with Selen are cut to him just saving her from the grasshopper monster, and then wiping her cursed belt with his enchanted handkerchief, making her initial crush on him come out of nowhere.
• Connected All Along: Played for Laughs. The actions of the people and the objects from Kunlun spread far and wide from those boondocks at the edge of the world.
  • The cursed belt that Selen struggled with for most of her life is actually a cooking experiment by Alka that went horrifically wrong; that it feels like leather is because it's been nightmarishly overcooked, it's thin as a belt because she sliced it up with Excalibur, and she attached metal bits to it to pass it off as a "Cursed Belt" to a traveling merchant.
  • In Merthophan's backstory, his village was raided by an enemy country during a famine, leaving the villagers to starve. They were given bountiful wheat by helpful strangers who turn out to be the people of Kunlun who used ancient runes to enhance their wheat fields and ended up with a super-fast-growing crop that needs almost daily threshing.
  • Stretching from Kunlun to Azami: Alka is the Mayor of Kunlun and happens to be Marie's former mentor. In order to give Lloyd a place to stay in the city while he attends the officer's academy, Alka forces Marie to take in Lloyd as a boarder. Lloyd flunks the test and determined to stay in the city, decides to get a part-time job at a cafeteria near the school owned by Chrome, who was Marie's former bodyguard before she ran away from her duties and life as a princess.
• Contrived Coincidence: Lampshaded and Played for Laughs.
  • Thanks to being so insanely overpowered and unable to communicate that properly, Lloyd gets rejected from the military academy. Merthophan and Riho desperately go looking for him as they were planning to take advantage of his strength but since no one is going to keep track of or take note of a country bumpkin who flunked the exam, they have no choice but to wander around and hope he hasn't boarded a train back home. As they break for lunch at Chrome's cafeteria, they discover that Lloyd is now working there as part-time employee.
  • Riho and Selen plan to find the missing Princess of Azami and use the reward to get Lloyd enrolled into the officer's academy. Without any leads, they go to a witch on the east side of the city who's a known information broker, Marie. Marie is the missing princess they're looking for. They also happen to find Lloyd, who they've lost track of for him being so unremarkable.
  • Phyllo and Mena are on a job to investigate mysterious incidents at a fancy hotel, where staff and guests have been found peacefully asleep in the forest outside with no clue how they got there. As Azami has a series of back-to-back holidays, Lloyd decides to get another part-time job outside of Chrome's cafeteria, and it just so happens Chrome's old army buddy owns that hotel and could really use an extra pair of hands, Lloyd's particularly capable ones especially. Selen is depressed at being unable to invite Lloyd to a hot spring date instead, as she has a marriage interview arranged by her father and coincidentally, the meeting takes place at that fancy hotel. Meanwhile, after also failing to invite Lloyd on a date, Riho decides to spend her share of the prize money from the interschool league competition on a stay at a fancy hotel, which just happens to be the same one that Phyllo and Mena, Lloyd, and Selen are already at.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Despite the series' cheerful tone and comedic nature, some of these characters have had some dark histories. Specific examples can be seen in the Characters page.
• Did Not See That Coming: Every character (save for Lloyd himself) is utterly shocked to find out that he failed the Kingdom's military entrance exam. Colonel Merthophan is so shocked that he's unable to conduct the first day of class properly, Selen is so shocked that she can only repeat Lloyd's name as a Madness Mantra, and Alka is so angry that she threatens to destroy the whole kingdom (though she claims to be "20% joking") and right in front of Marie the missing Princess of the Kingdom of Azami.
• Dispel Magic: Lloyd carries a cloth inscribed with a rune that has the power to dispel any curse it touches (or to clean stuff really nice and pretty).
• Dungeon Bypass: This is the way of Kunlun, as demonstrated by Alka and Lloyd when invading the dungeon to find Vritra.
• Excalibur in the Stone: Lloyd casually pulls it out of the ground with sheer brute strength, and then tosses it in a garbage bag, because he thought it was a piece of trash like all the other debris littering the hill he was cleaning up.
• First Town: Parodied in the very premise of the work. The royal capital is the place where many rookie and below-average warriors and adventurers get their start. Lloyd, meanwhile, is an unimpressive kid from Kunlun — the "Last Dungeon" town which is located right on the edge of demon territory. Because of this, he has godlike power compared to everyone else there.
• The Force Is Strong with This One: Experienced fighters like Riho, Chrome, and Phyllo can sense that Lloyd's power is on a completely different level compared to anyone else, and in the case of the latter two they immediately try to attack him under the assumption that he is an extremely dangerous enemy. Lloyd being Lloyd, however, finds his absurd strength not only completely average but also entirely unremarkable when he compares himself to everyone else in his hometown of Kunlun, much to the shock of everyone else. Sure enough, when everyone goes to actually visit said hometown, the above-mentioned fighters feel as though they instantly walked into the lion's den.
• Foreshadowing: Surprisingly for such a light-hearted, comedic show, it shows a lot of attention to detail. Subtle statements, character names, or even seemingly-meaningless background events will often come back in the form of a Chekhov's Gun or a Brick Joke of some kind.
  • When Lloyd meets Marie, he wipes off her face with a cleaning cloth that is revealed to dispel any curse. When we meet Selen, we find out that she has a lifelong curse she's desperate to be rid of. When Lloyd rescues her right after, he wipes dirt off her face with the cleaning cloth. The next time we see her, she accidentally pulls the cursed belts off her face.
  • The story of Selen's cursed belt is revealed through lots of subtle clues and hints, such as the fact that it's an artifact from Kunlun, that Selen's father found it on sale by a merchant, and that it's made from the skin of Vritra, one of the guardian entities of Kunlun. We later learn that Alma took Vritra's skin to make into an apron to try cooking pasta, only for the cooking to somehow go wrong and for Alka to try to sell off the skin as a "belt" to a random merchant.
• Funny Background Event: In Episode 8, while the other characters are sitting in a hot spring exchanging exposition and information, Selen and Phyllo (who just declared her intent to be Lloyd's wife) merely glare and growl loudly at each other.
• Genre Deconstruction: Played for Laughs, as a lot of the humor relies on subverting or averting common tropes. Thus, for all its fantasy elements and ridiculousness, there is some hard realism in the show. For example, during the Azami military cadet's first dungeon exploration, both Alka and Lloyd take to punching through the stone walls or crashing through the roof and the ceilings to get around faster. After an intense battle with the boss that ends up destroying even more sections of the wall, the appearance of Sou, a villainous, shapeshifting dragon is the final straw that sets the whole thing to collapse.
• Hate at First Sight: After coming face-to-face for the first time, Alka and Selen take an immediate disliking to each other, before they even know who the other is. Alka repeatedly attempts to curse or hex Selen, only for Selen's belt to automatically repulse it each time.
  • Fridge Logic applies here, once you find out the belt is a semi-sentient piece of the guardian monster of Kunlun and intimately knows what kind of antics Alka gets up to.
• Impact Silhouette: After learning just how tremendously overpowered Lloyd is (and how insane the rest of his village is) compared to normal people, Marie ends up smashing her face into a wall so hard she goes straight through it. Look closely at the hole and you'll see a perfect outline of her witch's hat. Later shots in the manga show that the now-repaired hole still has a distinct outline of her.
• Impossibly Delicious Food: Anything cooked by Lloyd will be impossibly delicious, compelling the diner to keep on shoveling it into their mouth, it's just that good. Alongside Lloyd's magically-enhanced cleaning skills, his cooking turns Chrome's cafeteria from a greasy, hole-in-the-wall for poorer academy cadets into a constantly-busy establishment that customers gladly return to and line up outside the door for.
• Legend Fades to Myth: The residents of Kunlun were the original company of heroes that saved the world centuries ago, and then settled on the outskirts of the demon territory to remain the vanguards protecting the human world. By this time, the village itself has fallen into myth, with most people no longer believing it even exists.
• Lighter and Softer: The anime adaptation is significantly less raunchy, gross, and blackly hilarious than the original. Some things that have been cut out include: Marie accidentally getting stripped half-naked by Alka's revenge curse, most of Marie's alcoholism and day-drinking, and everyone discussing just how brutally and graphically Lidcain would have died in his first duel with Lloyd, had Marie not stepped in to stop it.
• MacGuffin: The town of Kunlun is full of these, ranging from legendary weapons that can slay Demon Kings and their armies, armor that renders the user Nigh-Invulnerable, and various other magical tools that are borderline miraculous. The townspeople themselves treat them with all the same respect you'd show usual tools, such as misnaming the legendary sword Excalibur and using it like you would a kitchen knife for especially stubborn (or disastrous) cooking ingredients or as an acceptable training sword to use against a young child.
• Meaningful Name: Played With. Rather than a person, it is the name of Lloyd's home village, Kunlun. In Chinese mythology Mount Kunlun is the home of sages, deities and immortals.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Lloyd uses one of the most powerful curse-dispelling runes in the world as a cleaning agent. Marie laments it took her three years to learn how to use it and Lloyd can just write it with his finger like it's nothing.
  • Alka uses the most powerful ancient magic for petty pranks on Marie when she insults her. She also frequently uses these potentially world-destroying magic to carry her coffee cup around without risking breaking it, talk with Marie over long distances via "recording", then just teleport there to speak to her in person when the mood strikes her.
  • The citizens of Kunlun regularly use Legendary weapons and magic for pretty mundane tasks, often without realizing it.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: After the Demon possessing the King announces he is a Demon King, Marie goes from being terrified to extremely happy, because now she can get the assistance of Alka to help her save her kingdom, as her village has a rule that they cannot get involved with political problems unless a Demon King is involved.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Lloyd is the smallest fish from a lagoon full of demonic piranha-shark hybrids that can skeletonize a sperm whale in minutes. Who still thinks that he's a weak little guppy after being transplanted to a backyard koi pond.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Marie has a lot when around Alka because she knows how insanely strong she is and any of her passive comments of destroying the town cannot be taken lightly.
  • Riho has several freak-outs in a row from sensing Lloyd's insane strength, and then accidentally gaining his attention, which she thinks means certain death for her. It ultimately turns out that Selen is the much more immediate threat.
  • Colonels Merthophan and Choline take advantage of Lloyd accidentally antagonizing Lord Aran Twein Lidcain in order to get Lloyd into the military academy. Their plan is to have the two duke it out with their blessing and show to the crowd that Lloyd is incredibly overpowered and his being rejected from the exams earlier were a huge mistake. When Riho points out that Lloyd could easily kill Lidcain with a single blow, Merthohan says he'll be fine, Choline knows healing magic so as long as Lloyd strikes Lidcain anywhere but the head, they can bring him back from the brink. Immediately at the start of the fight, in the spirit of fairness, Lidcain bends down and offers Lloyd a free full-power punch to his face. Cue them desperately trying to stop the fight.
• Old Master: The elderly in Kunlun, according to Lloyd one stated he could run to the starter town in two days.
• Once More, with Clarity: The first chapter has Lloyd described how weak he is: He can't cut down firewood, he can't fish, he takes a whole day to recover from sparring with his older brother, and it took him six days to get from his village to this town. He later unknowingly clarifies that the trees and fish are actually powerful monsters, his sparring match broke every bone in his body (the villagers stating he should recover from that in only a few hours), and he ran the whole six days, believing he should have been able to do it in only two, as his elderly grandfather could (while Marie holds that making the trip in two days should only be possible if you're lucky catching train connections).
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: As part of the series' focus on humor through miscommunication and people Comically Missing the Point, there are several examples of this.
  • One of the first is Lloyd talking about his trip from Kunlun to Marie. She assumes that he had trouble traveling all the way across the continent by train and horse-wagon, he clarifies that he ran all the way there for 6 days straight. (Though he doesn't find it impressive as the elderly in Kunlun could do it in 2.)
  • When Lloyd applies to Chrome Molybdenum's cafeteria, Chrome assumes that he's an assassin or a thug coming to beat information out of him (a former royal guard to the currently-missing Princess of Azami). Among other misunderstandings, Chrome thinks Lloyd's skills are "cooking" (assassinations) and "cleaning" (cleaning up crime scenes and murders) for his former "village" (criminal syndicate), while he's being completely literal. Chrome also prepares to fight for his life and think he's in a high-stakes duel of wits with an assassin trying to ambush him, while Lloyd is just trying his best to get hired as a chef/assistant.
  • Riho and Selen go to Marie's house in order to buy information on the missing Princess of Azami. Marie commits numerous mistakes like saying she doesn't know the person in the photo is the Princess when Riho had never explicitly mentioned it was her and as a fellow noble lady, Marie thinks that Selen is asking about Marie's abandoning her duties as a princess while Selen just wants to know how what their relationship is and if she needs to get Marie out of the way for interrupting her "fated romance" with Lloyd.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Characters like Riho, Phyllo and Marie would be perfectly valid protagonists in their own right if they didn't have to share screentime with superpowered monsters like Lloyd and Alka.
• Prophecy Twist: Selen was told that to lift her curse, she had to wait for "strength" to do so. When it is lifted, it's shortly after meeting the super strong Lloyd, but because he used a curse-breaking cloth, something that didn't have anything to do with actual strength.
• Psychotic Love Triangle: Alka and Selen are the primary competitors for Lloyd's affections, and both are dangerously-jealous yanderes that will attack or curse any girl they even think is a threat.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: The premise of the story is based on the very RPG-like idea of a First Town and Very Definitely Final Dungeon, with the protagonist being an unremarkable kid from the latter.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Alka explains to Marie that the people of Kunlun made a pact not to waste their incredible strength on petty squabbles between nations or other small issues. Only a threat from a demon king or "epic-level disaster" will make them put their power to use.
• Tempting Fate: The academy Colonels Merthohan and Choline force Lloyd to fight an officer cadet, Aran Twein Lidcain, in order to prove Lloyd's strength. When Riho rightfully points out to Merthohan that Lloyd has more than enough power to accidentally kill Lidcain, Merthohan replies it should be fine so long as Lloyd doesn't hit Lidcain in the head; anywhere else, and they're confident they can use healing magic to bring him back from the brink. Immediately at the start of the fight, Lidcain offers Lloyd a handicap: a single full-power punch to the face. He even bends down so the much shorter Lloyd can reach him just fine.
• Theme Naming: Occasionally on the borderline of Punny Name and/or Genius Bonus. Almost all of the cast are named after minerals, chemicals, and compounds, such as Riho Flavin ("Riboflavin"), Alka (after "Alkaline" metals), and Chrome Molybdenum (two metals that are either used to reinforce other materials or are extremely tough).
• Theory Tunnelvision: Frequently played for laughs, as much of the comedy involves various characters being Entertainingly Wrong about outlandish circumstances or contrived coincidences. For example, most people trained to sense Power Levels and meet Lloyd for the first time believe he's a Humanoid Abomination that wants to tear them apart and will misunderstand everything he says and does to support that fear.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: When Marie asks a question to the message from Alka that Lloyd brought her, Alka states this is a recorded message and she cannot reply. When Marie then insults her, Alka reveals that was a lie to her horror.
• Trash of the Titans: How Marie's house looked before Lloyd cleaned it.

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