Title: Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru / Cautious Hero: The Hero is Overpowered But Overly Cautious
Length: ? x 24 minute episodes
Genre: Comedy, adventure
Year of release: 2019
In my review of Hagaate! Kemeno Michi, I talked about the isekai genre. You take a basic Japanese teen, transport them to another world and let them use their otherworldly knowledge to run rampant. That’s the gist of the genre, and it’s been dominating every season of anime for north of 5 years now. Today I’m touching yet another one, but this one shakes up the formula – even more than its gimmick suggests.
Ristarte is a healing goddess who has been tasked with taking a strapping young lad to save an ’S Tier’ world from a demon lord, which we’re quickly told means that it’s no easy task. A good chunk of the episode features Ristarte, on her own, haphazardly fumbling through papers trying to find the best option, before deciding on a human with surprisingly high ‘stats’ called Seiya. But it’s in this sequence that the show really finds its footing.
Now, the animatedness is no doubt lovely when rising above its standard adequacy, but the thing I want to draw attention to is the facial expressions and Aki Toyasaki’s excellent performance as Ristarte. Put simply, with this top notch character animation and brilliant voice acting, this is a gut-busting one-woman-show. Ristarte is utterly hilarious, with so many facets to her character. As Seiya, the uselessly pragmatic hero, is introduced, she continues to be the main character and supplies fantastic reactionary humour as she acts the straight-man and the goofball in one. You get in her head to share the exact same feelings on Seiya’s idiocy, but there’s so much work from the crew here that spins this into something thoroughly, thoroughly entertaining.
That Ristarte continues to be the protagonist is, in itself, a big switchup for the isekai genre. Most are the story of the otherworldly character adapting, or watching a useless guy fail to achieve his own power/sexual fantasy – here we are watching an excellent comic protagonist attempt to micromanage the protagonist into the right situation. It’s the little things that count, and Shinchou Yuusha excels both in its gimmick, and far, far beyond.
Rating: 5/5
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