Mitsuha Yamano lost her parents and older brother in an accident, and she wasn't sure how she would survive the next month. After contemplating her uncertain future on a cliff, some bullies started harassing her. Mitsuha was pushed off the cliff in the scuffle, and she fell, screaming that she didn't want to die, before hitting the rocks below. But Mitsuha then awakened in a place that definitively wasn't her world. After remembering what her brother said about "another world," she started wandering around until she fainted from exhaustion and hunger. Mitsuha was rescued in a forest by a little girl. Mitsuha couldn't understand her language but decided to stay in her village. After an encounter with a pack of wolves, Mitsuha lured them away from the little girl. Again, not wanting to die, she screamed just before the wolves got her...
But then Mitsuha returned to her house! After discovering that she can jump between the two worlds just by thinking about it, she quickly gathered supplies and her brother's knife and returned to save the little girl. After saving her and collapsing again, she was met by a mysterious entity. It explains that Mitsuha grabbed a part of the entity while she was falling off the cliff. This caused Mitsuha to get the ability to travel between her world and the other (and giving her self-healing abilities too). Mitsuha then asked the entity to give her the ability to understand any language, so it was granted. Now with those abilities, Mitsuha now has a new goal: gather 80000 gold coins so she can retire leisurely in her world!
Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for my Retirement includes examples of:
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: The mysterious entity takes the form of Mitsuha's Maneki Neko (originally her brother's) to talk to her during the time he meets with her.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Alder Empire has wyvern riders in their ranks, which enables them to attack their enemies from above, who have no means to defend against them. However, actually creating said army is extremely expensive and costly, since wyverns cannot be bred like horses. Their eggs have to be captured in the wild, then hatched, and then the wyverns are raised and trained to actually be used as a riding animal. As you might guess, doing so is extremely dangerous since wyverns are natural predators, so each step results in casualties among the human trainers. And as it’s pointed out, losing the wyvern riders, even a few, means all that money and effort is gone-to-waste; made worse by the fact that Mitsuha and the mercenaries use guns on them that wipe them all out in minutes.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Mitsuha seems to share many traits with Misato/Adele/Mile here. She's pretty friendly and cordial, but if you threaten or hurt innocent people, she will not show any mercy. Like, bringing an entire mercenary squad with modern weapons to a medieval world.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Episode 11 has Wolf Fang bring in their trump card to deal with the invading Wyvern Calvary: An M13 Half-Track with a loaded 20mm Auto-Cannon: used primarily by the U.S. Army during WWII that has been a part of their company back when they were just a nameless mercenary group, a vehicle they reverently call God.
- Creator In-Joke: In Episode 6 of the anime, when Beatrice is asking Mitsuha if she goes out with boys, a book in her Imagine Spot is I Shall Survive Using Potions! another Light Novel by FUNA, which had not yet received an anime adaptation at this time.
- Chuunibyou: Mitsuha indulges in a bit of melodrama from her 'cringe-worthy past', referring to herself as the Messenger of Lightning. This becomes a running joke as she is unable to shake off the nickname/title.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: The adventurers that Mitsuha hired treat her walking out in a swimsuit like she was nude.
- Didn't Think This Through: Mitsuha's plan to sell modern goods in a medieval fantasy land is actually pretty solid. However, she doesn't consider what goods would actually be useful or feasible for people in the land to purchase/use.
- To get seed money for her general store, Mitsuha tries to sell a cultured pearl necklace to the local Count, not realizing such a necklace is impossible without modern techniques and that even a king would have trouble getting the gold together to pay its value, or the trouble it would bring her.
- Mitsuha sets up her general store without doing any research into what the people of the city might need. She sells fish scalers thinking they would be handy for house wives, not realizing that the closest source of fresh fish is 10 days away, made worse by preparing a dish with fresh fish for some locals like it's no big deal. She gets wise to this and goes on a hunt with some mercenaries to find out what sort of products they would need on missions...
- But even that has problems; when she tries to bathe in a river, she opts to wear a bikini to be relatively covered. However, since such a revealing outfit wouldn't exist in a medieval era, when the adventurers see her they assume she is practically nude.
- Dimensional Traveler: After grabbing the mysterious entity as she was falling, Mitsuha received this ability to travel between the fantasy world and the real world. She can even use it as a fast travel between places in the fantasy world (by jumping once to the real world and then jumping to the other place in the fantasy world from there).
- Dragon Rider: Deconstructed. The Alder Empire has an entire army of Wyvern Riders, which gives them a massive advantage over their enemies. However, creating said army is shown via flashback to be incredibly difficult and costly. Firstly, soldiers would need to steal the eggs from a wild wyvern nest with some casualties along the way. The next step was to get the egg to hatch, which was also rather difficult and sometimes the hatchlings died prematurely, forcing the Empire to repeat step one. If the hatchlings grow up just fine, they might even eat the soldiers raising them. Finally, the wyvern will throw their raiders to death during practice. It took the Empire twenty years, hundreds of soldiers, and a lot of money to achieve this. And finally, losing the wyvern riders, even a small portion of them, means that all that money and effort has now gone-to-waste.
- Dramatic Ammo Depletion: In Chapter 69, Mitsuha defeats an invading force by using her Dimensional Traveler abilities to warp the bullets out of their primitive muskets. And the blades off their swords. And their warships.
- Giving Radio to the Romans:
- A core element of the plot involves Mitsuha using her Dimensional Traveler abilities to sell modern-day utility items and goods in the fantasy world. In Episode 3, she introduced the Count and Countess to the practice of Crop Rotation in order to produce healthier soil for growing food in their territory.
- Later on, she offers up her own worlds' culinary knowledge of "Yamano Cuisine".
- Healing Factor: The second ability that Mitsuha won after grabbing the mysterious entity. It notes that even if Mitsuha loses an arm, it will grow in a month or so.
- I Gave My Word: Slightly subverted when it involves shady individuals/groups such as corrupt snobs, Mitsuha always keeps her promises to trustworthy individuals/groups as she fulfills the promised forty thousand gold with interest that she promised the captain of Wolf Fang without question, something that earns a greater deal of trust with him and his unit after they fulfill their contract with Mitsuha of repelling the enemy medieval army along with their monsters.
- Master-Apprentice Chain: Mitsuha has trained Marcel in how to cook "Yamano Cuisine" which became widely popular throughout the other world. Later on, while helping out an ailing Paradise Restaurant, Mitsuha teaches the Apprentice Chef Anel about making single-portion Yamano Cuisine for their restaurant which attracts the attention of Marcel asking why exactly his "Coach" would do this; resulting in Marcel taking on Anel as his disciple in learning the more elaborate Yamano dishes after Mitsuha explained to Marcel the nature of Yamano single-portions.
- More Dakka: Mitsuha's primary pistol is a Beretta 93R, a burst-fire version of the Beretta 92.
- Older Than They Look: Due to her slim figure, people assume that Mitsuha is a child as opposed to her actual age of 18.
- Parental Substitute: Count Bozes and his wife Iris treat Mitsuha like a surrogate daughter. The sentiment is at least somewhat reciprocated by Mitsuha.
- Rags to Royalty: After enlisting the help of Earth mercenaries to head off an invasion by the neighboring kingdom, the King names Mitsuha a Viscountess and gives her her own territory to rule over.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: Mitsuha carries a revolver as a backup to her self-loading handguns in case they jam. Interestingly, it's a different revolver depending on the medium:
- In the manga, it's an unnamed full-size .38-calibre revolver, likely .38 Special.
- In the anime, it's specified to be a Smith & Wesson M940, a subcompact 5-shot revolver chambered in 9mm Parabellum, the same as her Walther and Beretta.note
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Mitsuha's first customers, seeing her products, think she may be a witch. She's not; but does have special powers, and did use one to bring said products.
- Shout-Out: When a brigand threatens her in her store, Mitsuha deals with him by spraying his face with an aerosol can while chanting a certain word, leading him to stagger away while groaning "My eyes! My eyes!"
- Mitsuha is shown watching a DVD with Sabine of the original Futari wa Pretty Cure series. And in episode 11 Mitsuha wears a variation of Cure White's dress while informing Wolf Fang about the war.
- Space Master: In time, Mitsuha hones her Dimensional Travel to this degree. E.g. - phasing exact shapes from rock, transporting all of Wolf Fang, and warping away a whole enemy fleet.
- Touched by Vorlons: Mitsuha, twice. First time makes her a Dimensional Traveler with a Healing Factor; second time gives her Translator Microbes.
- Translator Microbes: Mitsuha couldn't understand the language of the other world, so she requested this ability when she had the chance to the mysterious entity. It turns out that this ability also works in the languages of our Earth too, something Mitsuha quickly exploits in her schemes.
- The Unfettered: After having Alexis take most of the arrows from a surprise-attack from an enemy dressed in their country's armor during a meeting in regards to a growing enemy assault, Mitsuha is forced to take desperate action in order to save her foster-brother's life as the medieval world they're in lacks the necessary methods to treat the critically-wounded Alexis and has to reveal her world-transitioning power to save him. Afterwards, she properly hires the modern-day mercenary PMC she was training under to thwart a sizeable enemy force that was on the verge of invading the capital in which Mitsuha had her store settled at.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Mitsuha's ideas for Adelaide von Reyer's ball Go Horribly Right: the guests are so pleased, they outlast the dinner. Her solution? Go ahead and serve them the desserts for the now-unneeded after-party, and use the kitchen's potatoes to introduce French Fries to them.
