In this fantasy world, there are dungeons and monsters...and everything revolves around the drops the monsters leave after being defeated. It can be anything, from veggies to minerals to almost everything that can be found in your classic dungeons. Everyone that enters those dungeons has a set of standard RPG mechanic statistics, including a set drop rate upon defeating monsters for the various drop categories. The higher rank these drop statistics are, the larger and better are the rewards. Emily Brown, a little girl with a giant hammer for weapon, then kills a Slime and it drops... a human!?
The human in question is Ryouta Satou, who was an ordinary Japanese salaryman that collapsed from overworking, only to find himself in the middle of a dungeon. After meeting Emily, she instructs him on the ropes. But it's not all good for Ryouta, because he has a Level Cap... of Level 1! At first disappointed with his mediocre stats, he soon discovered that his drop stats are the highest rank ever! He then became Emily's partner to start a new life, free of all the burdens of the overworked salaryman life!
The North American subsidiary of Kodansha (Kodansha USA) has licensed both Manga and Light Novel on January 26, 2021 and January 17, 2023, respectively. The anime is currently licensed by Crunchyroll worldwide, with a same-day English (and other languages) simuldub starting on July 8, 2023.
My Unique Skill Makes Me OP Even at Level 1 has added the following tropes:
- Absurdly Low Level Cap: As the title suggests, Ryouta has a level cap of only 1. However, due to how stat ranks work, Ryota's level cap only indicates that he can't improve by increasing it. Once he increases his stat ranks to S with Nihonium's seed drops, his level cap becomes negligible and he's able to overpower other adventurers with higher levels but lower stat ranks.
- All Amazons Want Hercules: Eves' attraction to Ryouta basically stems from how he's able to No-Sell her Tap on the Head despite being a Level 1 after he had upgraded his HP to S-Rank, the fact he's able to find high-quality Carrots for her to eat is just a bonus.
- Ambiguous Situation: How exactly Ryota ended up getting transported to this new world is never explicitly explained. There is evidence that he had passed away due to overworking himself but the series never confirms this. It is however implied that death isn’t a prerequisite for being transported as a young Ryota was spawned as a drop from a monster a young Eve had slain and eventually returned home soon after.
- Berserk Button: For Emily, cockroach slimes. If she spots a single one, she will crush, squash, and destroy every single corner until she kills every single one, complete with Slasher Smile and Dissonant Laughter. No wonder why Ryouta gets scared of her.
- Also, leaving young kids distressed is a big no-no for Emily. The owner of the magical carts learned this the hard way upon leaving his daughter alone.
- Empty Levels: Stat ranks are everything and levels would ultimately be pointless if they didn't cause stat ranks to gradually improve. Because of how few different ranks there are, the limits to an individual's improvement curve, and how many levels a person can have at the most, many people with higher caps consider them filler and some still don't amount to much after reaching their caps. Princess Margaret would have it the worst if not for being a princess with servants; her level cap is 99 and her maximum potential is A-Rank in her character stats, but her improvement curve is so sharp that all of her ranks only start going up after she reaches Level 95. Ryota's cap of Level 1 is more of a formality once he figures out how he can improve his stats. After achieving Rank S in a few, he's more than capable of fighting higher-leveled foes by himself, like Eve and Nihonium's Dungeon Master. To that end, a Level 1 person with S-Rank stats can easily fight off a Level 99 enemy with F-Rank stats; the only enemies who can give the likes of Ryota trouble are the ones who close the rank gap instead of the ones that widen the level gap.
- Forgotten First Meeting: In episode 9, it’s shown that a very young Ryouta had been transported to this world in the very same method he would be as an adult via a monster slain by an equally young Eve. They ended up shortly forming an adventuring party, slaying another monster together and Ryota even changed Eve’s view on vegetables before he was whisked back home. Ryouta had forgotten this encounter as an adult and Eve has yet to connect the dots that she met him before.
- The Gunslinger: After his first encounter with a monster outside a dungeon, Ryouta is granted a gun that he uses as his weapon of his choice. He later asks Emily to spawn the monster again and kills to gain a second gun for combo moves with his bullets.
- Lighter and Softer: In the anime adaptation, some events were reduced and/or changed to make them less violent:
- In the manga, when Ryouta witnessed firsthand Emily's violent reaction to the cockroach slimes, she was not only crushing them with her hammer, she was grinding them against the floor.
- Later, when Ryouta and Emily were searching for the magic cart owner and found him sleeping on the floor of the dungeon, Emily smashed her hammer next to him to wake him up. In the manga, she stomped on his head instead.
- Magikarp Power: The Princess is afflicted with this. She has a Level Cap of 99, in a setting where 20 is considered territory for The Hero. However, her character stats are abysmal, being Fs across the board until Ryota intervenes. When Ryouta helps the Princess Level Grind to near her cap, her stats begin to rise. This causes Ryouta to realize that her growths are all concentrated near the top of her progression. She will become a Pretty Princess Powerhouse when she tops out.
- Money Spider: Well, money bird. Some monsters can drop money directly (and can also form strays).
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Emily is the size of a child, but has a Strength of C (4th highest, where S is the highest). She might be a dwarf or halfling.
- Random Drops: The main mechanic that determines life in this world. Every monster has a particular drop, and it's affected by the dungeon, its floors, the type of monster, and the drop rate stat of the adventurer who defeats the monster. For example, the first floor of the Telulu dungeon, that only drops veggies, has standard slimes that drop bean sprouts. Emily only gathered a few after squashing a single slime, but Ryouta gathered plenty of bean sprouts when he defeated the same slime with Emily's borrowed bamboo spear. However, leaving drops uncollected and without supervision for a long time will cause the drop to transform back into a monster, called "stray". These "strays" are more powerful and dangerous when spawned outside of dungeons, but some people use these strays to farm more drops inside dungeons. This is quickly exploited by Ryota to replenish ammo and to get more rare drops.
- Random Drop Booster: Ryouta manages to finds a ring for Emily that allows her to boost item drop level.
- Stat Grinding: To get around his Absurdly Low Level Cap, Ryouta farms Nihonium, a so called "useless dungeon", for seeds that increase one of his stats a point when he touches them. What stat they affect depends on the floor, with one floor for each stat.
- Theme Naming: Each dungeon is named after a chemical element, with Tellurium, Nihonium, Arsenic, Silicon, and Selenium being shown in the anime.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Eve, the resident rabbit girl, adores carrots. She's also a famous carrot "sommelier", and every carrot that she loves gets a huge selling price boost as a symbol of its quality. And it has been rumored that those who dare to give her carrots of lower quality get killed by her.
- Trick Bullet: Ryouta discovers that killing any monsters from Nihonium outside of it grants him special bullets, such as ice bullets, fire bullets, homing bullets, restraint bullets, and even healing bullets.
