The Strangest Anime Ever Made Is Streaming And Has To Be Seen To Be Believed
There are weird anime, and then there’s Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon. The anime revolves around a vending machine enthusiast—we never thought we’d be writing those words together—who is crushed to death by a vending machine and reincarnated in a fantasy world as…a vending machine. If the strange premise sounds interesting, Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon is streaming right now on Crunchyroll.
The very absurdity of the anime’s premise serves as not only a satire of the Isekai genre but a commentary on the out-of-left-field nature of most anime as a whole.
Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon features an unnamed protagonist who, after having their life cut short by a vending machine, is reborn as a sentient vending machine in a Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy world complete with dungeons to crawl through and treasure to seek.
The coin-operated appliance is soon discovered by a wandering adventurer named Lammis, who bestows upon him the name “Boxxo.” Lammis just happens to have a skill known as “the Blessing of Might,” which makes her crazy strong and able to pick up and carry a full-sized vending machine on her back with no strain whatsoever.
Boxxo’s Wacky Abilities
The two go on to have many adventures and meet many colorful characters. Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon’s main character, Boxxo, retains his regular human intelligence but can only speak in stock Japanese vending machine phrases such as “Hello there” and “Too bad.”
The anime gets weirder from there because Boxxo soon discovers he has the power to dispense any item that he bought when he was alive. On top of that, he also has certain magical abilities, including shapeshifting, invisibility, telekinesis, and even a force field because… anime.
Reborn as a Vending Machine is part of an anime genre known as Isekai. Isekai translates in English to “different world,” and the genre revolves around one or more characters who have been transported to another world—be it virtual, magical, or otherwise—and forced to survive in that world.
Isekai anime usually uses the fish out of water gimmick as a way to tie the main character with the audience, as it allows the protagonist and viewers to learn about the strange new land at the same time. Isekai has its origins in Japanese folk tales such as Urashima Taro.
Like many anime, Reborn as a Vending Machine started life as a written work before making the transition to animation. Creator Hirakuma began writing Reborn as a web novel following the death of his Father.
The story proved to be popular and was soon published physically as a series of light novels—the Japanese equivalent of YA fiction like The Hunger Games—in 2016 and later turned into a manga in 2018.
Lammis just happens to have a skill known as “the Blessing of Might,” which makes her crazy strong and able to pick up and carry a full-sized vending machine on her back with no strain whatsoever.
The anime version of Reborn as a Vending Machine was announced in August of 2022 coming from animation studios Studio Gokumi and AXsiZ. The series first aired on July 5, 2023, and finished its first season earlier this month. Reborn proved popular enough that a second season was announced following the season 1 finale.
The anime has received mixed reviews from both critics and audiences. Some viewers felt that Reborn as a Vending Machine had an engaging premise but lacked enough substance to keep viewers hooked after the initial novelty wears off. Meanwhile, others felt that Reborn was a fresh take on Isekais, and some have even gone as far as to call it a “brilliant parody” of the genre.
Robert Frazer of UK Anime Network described the unique way in which Boxxo is forced to engage his enemies as “fun and different to defeat the villain with Diet Coke and Mentos instead of just firing a Saiyan blast at a higher power level.”
The very absurdity of the anime’s premise serves as not only a satire of the Isekai genre but a commentary on the out-of-left-field nature of most anime as a whole.
Despite anime technically being a medium and not a genre unto itself, the fantastical ideas behind many series—an unkillable alien as a teacher, a guy with a triple-barreled gun that only uses his weapon peacefully, all the countries involved in World War II personified as high school students, etc.—has led many people unfamiliar with anime to consider it a specific type of animation.
Something like Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon pokes fun at the outlandish presentation of many anime while simultaneously managing to be a fairly solid anime series on its own.
If you’re curious to see how an anthropomorphized vending machine fights monsters and collects treasure, you can stream Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon right now on Crunchyroll.
