Sasaki and Peeps Is More Than Another Isekai

I discovered Sasaki and Peeps through another anime that has almost nothing to do with it.

I was watching Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You, a laid-back romance series about an overworked salaryman named Sasaki who unwinds by smoking behind a supermarket with one of its employees. I was looking at something about the series on Reddit when someone commented that they liked to imagine its Sasaki and the protagonist of Sasaki and Peeps were the same person.

I had never heard of Sasaki and Peeps, so naturally I looked it up.

The characters obviously aren’t the same person. The two series weren’t even created by the same people. Still, both protagonists are middle-aged salarymen named Sasaki with similar appearances, reserved personalities, and lives that have become considerably more complicated because of an unusual younger companion. I can see where the comparison came from, even though one Sasaki spends his evenings smoking behind a supermarket while the other travels between dimensions with an incredibly powerful talking bird.

That’s a pretty substantial difference.

Sasaki and Peeps follows a lonely office worker whose boring life changes after he purchases a small Java sparrow from a pet shop. The bird, whom Sasaki names Peeps, reveals that he is actually a powerful mage known as Piercarlo who was reincarnated from another world. Peeps gives Sasaki magical abilities and teaches him how to travel between modern Japan and his original fantasy world. Sasaki initially plans to make money by bringing everyday Japanese products into the other world and selling them at an enormous profit. His peaceful little interdimensional business operation quickly falls apart when he becomes involved in the politics and military conflicts of that world. Back in Japan, Sasaki accidentally exposes his powers during an encounter with a psychic and gets recruited into a government agency that monitors people with supernatural abilities. Before long, he’s juggling otherworldly wars, psychic criminals, magical girls, government conspiracies, and several increasingly dangerous people who have taken an interest in him.

All poor Sasaki wanted to do was use magic to make money.

It wasn’t even a particularly unreasonable scheme. He had access to modern Japanese products that people in the other world couldn’t easily obtain, and he found merchants willing to pay good money for them. Sasaki could have quietly sold things like pens, binoculars, camping supplies, and chocolate while spending the rest of his time learning magic from Peeps. He wasn’t trying to become a legendary hero, defeat a demon king, or collect a harem of women with multicolored hair. The guy wanted to escape the miserable salaryman grind and establish a comfortable side business.

Instead, Sasaki finds himself dragged into nearly every conflict occurring across multiple realities.

The other world has nobles fighting for political control, rival kingdoms preparing for war, assassins, powerful magicians, and merchants trying to take advantage of whatever situation develops. Sasaki’s ability to move between worlds gives him an enormous advantage, but it also makes him valuable to people who would gladly manipulate or kill him. While he manages to make money from his trading operation, he can’t enjoy any of it because someone is always demanding his help or trying to drag him deeper into another political struggle.

Things aren’t any less complicated when he returns to Japan.

Sasaki encounters Hoshizaki, a government psychic who mistakes his magic for a psychic ability. His attempt to quietly talk his way out of the situation ends with him being recruited into her agency and assigned to dangerous field work. He now has a government job hunting rogue psychics on top of his regular office job, his interdimensional business, his magical training, and his involvement in another world’s political affairs.

Most people would have a nervous breakdown trying to keep track of their email accounts.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, a magical girl named Magical Pink appears and begins hunting psychics. Her powers seem to come from somewhere other than Sasaki’s fantasy world, which potentially introduces a third reality into the story. The upcoming second season is now preparing to add angels, demons, and lizard people into a series that already has psychics, mages, nobles, assassins, magical girls, and a reincarnated wizard living inside a bird.

There is so much going on in Sasaki and Peeps that the entire series should collapse under the weight of its own premise.

Somehow, it doesn’t.

The series gradually introduces each element instead of dumping everything into the first few episodes. Sasaki’s relationship with Peeps gives the story a foundation, and the ability to travel between worlds allows the series to move back and forth between its different conflicts without completely losing focus. Each side of the story has its own cast, rules, and problems, but Sasaki remains the constant connecting everything together.

It also helps that Sasaki himself is a relatively grounded protagonist.

He isn’t some loud teenage idiot who starts screaming every time a woman talks to him. He’s a tired middle-aged man who approaches supernatural problems like another annoying assignment from work. Sasaki tends to remain calm, assess the situation, and look for the most practical solution available. Even after gaining magic, he doesn’t suddenly become an arrogant power fantasy character looking for opportunities to show everyone how strong he is.

He’d usually rather avoid fighting altogether, make some money, and go home.

There’s obviously still some wish fulfillment here. Sasaki gains magical abilities, becomes highly valuable in two different worlds, impresses powerful people, and attracts the attention of multiple women. I’m not going to pretend that Sasaki and Peeps completely escapes the usual isekai formula. It just puts far more effort into building something around that formula than most series in the subgenre.

Isekai has become ridiculously oversaturated. Every season seems to bring another series about some bland loser getting transported to a fantasy world, receiving an absurdly powerful ability, and immediately assembling a group of women who worship him for reasons that rarely make sense. You can change the names and character designs, but half of these shows feel interchangeable.

I understand why some anime fans avoid isekai entirely. There’s a lot of generic wish fulfillment crap to sift through, and most of it looks nearly identical from the outside. The problem is that dismissing the entire subgenre means missing series like Sasaki and Peeps, which at least tries to do something different with the concept.

Instead of trapping Sasaki in one fantasy world, the series allows him to travel freely between two of them. Modern Japan isn’t simply the boring place he escaped from either, because it has its own supernatural population and conflicts. His ability to carry knowledge and goods between worlds matters just as much as his magic, while his involvement with the psychic agency ensures that returning home doesn’t automatically mean returning to safety.

The result feels less like a traditional isekai and more like several different supernatural series sharing the same protagonist.

You’ve got fantasy politics and commerce in one world, psychic espionage in another, magical girls possibly arriving from somewhere else, and whatever the hell the angels, demons, and lizard people are going to bring next. A less capable series would turn into an incoherent mess trying to balance all of this. Sasaki and Peeps handles it surprisingly gracefully, keeping the various plotlines separate enough to remain understandable while constantly allowing them to overlap in interesting ways.

The first season isn’t perfect. With so many characters and conflicts being introduced, some parts don’t receive as much attention as they deserve. A few storylines begin getting interesting right before the series shifts back to another world, and the final episodes feel more like preparation for future events than a satisfying conclusion to the season.

Still, I’d rather watch a series attempt too much than watch another isekai that does absolutely nothing.

Sasaki and Peeps has the potential to become something better than Dandadan. I like Dandadan, but a large part of its strength comes from the seemingly endless amount of paranormal, occult, and UFO lore that it can draw from for new threats. Sasaki and Peeps is building its own increasingly bizarre collection of supernatural worlds and factions, and it has barely started exploring how all of them connect.

Maybe the series eventually overextends itself and falls apart. Adding even more supernatural factions to an already crowded story is certainly a risk. For now, however, I’m impressed by how well it balances everything, and I genuinely want to see how much more ridiculous Sasaki’s life can become.

The man just wanted to sell Japanese products in another world and retire comfortably.

Now he has to deal with psychics, magical girls, angels, demons, lizard people, and probably another three supernatural factions that haven’t been introduced yet.

So much for escaping the office grind.

AJ’s rating: 8/10

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

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