“Reborn as a Vending Machine” is surprisingly good

Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon is a surprisingly good series.

If you’ve read this site in the last year, you’ll know that I’m no stranger to the isekai genre, I’ve already done an entire article on Gate. What can I say, I’ve always been a sucker for the “fish out of water” trope even in western media and books (The Time Machine and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court are two of my favorite books of all time), so I guess it’s only natural that I’d take to isekai, which usually involves the main character being transported to an unfamiliar environment and having to figure out how the new world works and how to survive it. Bonus points when the main character utilizes modern technology and knowledge to rise above the “primitive screwheads”.

For the longest time I’ve purposely tried to avoid animes with unnecessarily long titles, and after watching this series I’m beginning to question myself why. I guess it has to do with my opinion that a title should never be an entire sentence. If I’m trying to discuss a show with someone, I don’t feel like having to repeatedly say/type a shit ton of words. I’ve noticed that the long title thing has become a growing trend in anime for the last five to ten years, so I did a little research to find out why. As it turns out, a lot of anime is being adapted from light novels, which also utilize the same long title convention. The reason Japanese writers began using long titles apparently has to do with nobody bothering to read the descriptions of what their books were actually about (literally judging books by their cover). So Japanese writers simply decided to make the titles of their books double as summaries. This sounds kind of silly, but it actually seems to have worked for them and increased their sales.

Indeed, “Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon” is a very succinct summary of this series. The main character is literally a person who died and was reincarnated inside a vending machine in the middle of an RPG fantasy world.

That description was silly enough to turn me away at first, but after Crunchyroll kept ramming the series down my throat via suggestion (apparently persistence is my biggest weakness) I caved and gave it a shot. I’m glad I did, this series is surprisingly good. In fact, it’s way better than it has any right to be.

Reborn as a Vending Machine follows the story of an unnamed man who dies in a motorbike accident and is reincarnated inside a vending machine in a fantasy world full of magic and monsters. He’s given an RPG-style hit point and experience system which requires him to sell stuff in order to stay alive. After appearing in front of a random lake filled with frog monsters, the main character is eventually saved by a female hunter named Lammis. Lammis is initially confused by the vending machine, but eventually realizes that it’s sentient. The two manage to overcome the obvious communication barrier of the vending machine only being able to say basic canned phrases like “Hello there”, “Too bad”, and “Please insert coins”, and Lammis decides to take the main character, who she names “Boxxo”, back to her village, a quaint little town named Clearflow Lake. Boxxo is unable to move on his own, but luckily Lammis has the blessing of super strength and straps him on her back.

At Clearflow Lake the residents (who have no concept of technology) are amazed at Boxxo, who they deem to be an “intelligent magical item”. They piece together that Boxxo has a human soul inside of him and can understand them. Boxxo can’t say anything more than the preprogrammed phrases that are standard for most Japanese vending machines, so Lammis decides that “Hello there” will mean “Yes” and “Too bad” will mean “No”. The people also discover that Boxxo sells prepared food and drink and start buying stuff from him, preventing his points from depleting.

Boxxo can also shapeshift into other types of vending machines and switch up his inventory, and because the main character happened to have been a vending machine aficionado when he was still human he’s able to dig down deep and pull up some obscure yet helpful forms depending on the situation. Boxxo utilizes this ability to bring some modern conveniences to the primitive people of the fantasy world, like running hot water, ice cubes, and even condoms and Maxipads (I’m serious, this actually happens).

Throughout the series, Boxxo uses the advanced capabilities of his vending machine form in conjunction with good ol’ fashioned ingenuity to help the people of Clearflow Lake in various situations and take down all kinds of monsters. During a battle with a giant frog monster, Boxxo gets the hunters to use the Mentos/Diet Coke trick and fire streams of foamy soda into the monster’s eyes, blinding it so the others can finish it off. In another fight, Boxxo is swallowed by a giant crocodile monster and gets himself out by turning into a gas dispenser and creating a giant bomb in the monster’s stomach.

Accompanying Boxxo is a world of interesting characters. There’s Lammis, the super-strong girl that found Boxxo. Then there’s Lammis’s best friend, a “magic engineer” named Hulemy who specializes in building and enchanting stuff. Boxxo, Lammis, and Hulemy often find themselves being asked by Director Bear (a literal fucking bear wearing an overcoat and fedora) to accompany the Menagerie of Fools, a group of talented money-hungry (but still good-hearted) hunters led by a man named Kerioyl. They’re also sometimes joined by the Band of Gluttons, a group of talking tasmanian devils named for their voracious appetites (in one episode they enter an eating contest and we actually get to see this firsthand).

This all sounds cringy as fuck, I know. But it’s honestly not. I can’t think of anything bad to say about any of the characters, none of them are annoying or obnoxious. Even the Band of Gluttons are decent characters, and I dread when this series finally catches on because I know the furries are going to bastardize the shit out of those poor little fellows. The only issue a viewer might have is Boxxo’s ability to shapeshift into the most obscure of vending machines ends up being a deus ex machina at times (a cardboard vending machine? Seriously?) But that’s trivial, and most people will find themselves not only overlooking this, but rushing to Google to see if some of these vending machines are actually real things (they are).

Overall, this is a fun lighthearted adventure series that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but still has the capacity for serious moments. The first season just wrapped up recently on Crunchyroll, and it appears a second season has been confirmed, most likely for 2024. I’ll definitely be watching it when it drops.

I give this series a 7/10. If you like isekai anime, you’ll enjoy Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon. Go give this underrated anime a watch, you won’t regret it.