It's surprisingly good. It's predictable light novel fare about a nice guy hero, but also a lot less throwaway than it could have been. The characterisation, story and production values are all decent. The worldbuilding's a cut-and-paste of adventurer's guild RPG fantasy anime (down to the noticeboard where the day's jobs get posted), but for me here it felt a little more real.
The secret is the tone. I believed in it. It convinced me. The show's not a wank power fantasy, but instead is grounded and thoughtful. One of Rentt Faina's reasons for knowing all the local adventurers, for instance, is self-preservation because of bullying. When he helps people, it's not just generic Anime Hero virtue-signalling. He understands the cynical reasons for and against intervening in any situation and is capable of asking if it's rational to help some stranger. This gives his decisions more weight. One couple he assists, for instance, he'd previously passed without showing his face because they'd seemed to be handling things on their own.
He's undead because a dragon ate him. He'd been a Bronze-class adventurer for a decade, helping people when he could without much to show for it. Now he's a skeleton. Still walking and thinking, though. Then he discovers that Existential Evolution can help him evolve into other undead forms, so one day he might grow a face he can show in public! (That would be a vampire. Rentt wanting to become one of those creeped me out slightly, since even lesser undead forms are capable of bloodlust.) He might even be able to continue as an adventurer if he chooses his friends carefully and wears big robes. His best friend, Lorraine, doesn't even mind supplying blood. She likes him more than he realises, but romance would now have been out of the question even if he hadn't been as thick as two short planks about that kind of thing.
Rentt's polite, careful and intelligent. He learned to read and write, which is an unusual skill for adventurers. He takes a job for one bronze piece, which doesn't reflect the risk but is all that the client can afford. She's a child in an orphanage. I was impressed by the way she refuses to take free favours, or even long-term loans without interest.
The anime shows a bit of cleavage, but nothing that would stop you showing it to children and grandparents. Rentt befriends a number of women (as one expects in this genre), but not exclusively and he's just as likely to help men or children. One oddity, incidentally, is that likeable characters can appear in one episode and then never return (unless you count a cameo in the finale) even though I'd been expecting them to join the regular cast.
The only thing I disliked was that "puchi suri" mouse-monster. ("Puchi suri" isn't a reference to anything I could find, incidentally, so I presume the show made it up.) I like the idea of the character, but the cartoonish way it's been drawn doesn't fit this relatively realistic series.
A second season has been announced, which would be welcome. There are unresolved plot threads. Those kidnappings, for instance, or the reclusive Latour family. Then there's Exhibitionist Boobs Woman who lives in a dungeon... Rentt survives that meeting by being polite, basically, but she clearly has a story we haven't heard yet. This is a solid, respectable fantasy series (and not an isekai!) with a likeable cast and a little mystery underneath. I'd recommend it, although with your expectations set to "unflashy".
