There is a popular saying: "you can never be too careful." It is very important to prepare for every situation you may face, even if it seems like an unnecessary waste of time. Also, in games like RPGs, it is good to exceed the level of your enemies to achieve total victory.
These words describe Seiya Ryuuguuin a little too perfectly. After being summoned by the goddess Ristarte to save the world of Gaeabrande from destruction, the hero prepares himself for his noble journey. While this might be normal, he spends a very long time training himself, despite having overpowered stats. He fights weak enemies using his strongest skills and buys excessive amounts of supplies and potions—all to stay safe.
While his attitude may be a bit annoying, it might just be the saving grace of Gaeabrande, especially considering that it is a world where the forces of evil dominate each and every expectation.
This is going to be the best isekai in this year, I have ever watched. After I have seen the final episode of this anime, It was.. VERY IMPRESSIVE. So this is a second time I have ever review anime, I hope you guys will get anything from anything I had written here so first of all;
Story: (6/10) It's just an unoriginal isekai with a goddess who just summon a Hero from our or ANOTHER world to help ANOTHER(of ANOTHER) world. Konosuba was made it before, An Isekai, comedy, Sitcom But now instead of Kazuma, we have Seiya. A Cautious Hero... Very Cautious Hero. Summoned
by useless goddess named Aq- ahem! Rista who is just a goddess of support, She can heal and just that. They were going to save ANOTHER WORLD from "4 demon lord". What a classic MMORPG game! (ahem! Anime). but that just a big plot for this anime. but what is in between is.... A F*CKING SITCOM COMEDY. If you were going to watch this show for a SUPER SERIOUS ACTION FANTASY SHOW like "The Raising Of The Sheild Hero" then I were going to be disappointed because you can guess from the title "The Hero Is "OVERPOWERED"". Yes from the title the MC was actually OP but not that much from the middle point (I am not going to spoiled). Summery this is an unoriginal but actually very great at try to be an original Isekai, Comedy, Sitcom show like Konosuba but It's actually great as you're worth watching it.
Art&Animation: (7/10) The art is ok and the animation's overall doesn't look bad and the CGI....at least this show have less CGI than arifureta in the last season but the CGI in this anime is not pretty bad it's just...uhhh....that but it's doesn't appear quickly in this show I think the first CGI (except for Rista figure in the first episode) I ever seen in this show is in middle to final phase of this anime. But you know a comedy show still has it's own unique way to an art style (Unique because I didn't watch that much comedy anime so I didn't is this unique but it just unique for me) especially for Rista. This show had a few bunch of jokes, so what will they(White fox) going to do with that. Do a funny face on Rista; she will do a lots of face reaction in this series and it's always funny to see the art stylev change while she doing a reaction faces because thats the funniest thing.
Sound: (8/10) The Opening Theme "TIT FOR TAT" by MYTH & ROID, the sound of the Isekai anime. so honestly the op is very amazing and the best thing in this op is, It has 2 version of it; The first one is have more still frame than the second one and The Second One, you will have a goddess dance in the middle of the OP and it's F*CKING GORGEOUS! and now it's time for The Ending;
The Ending Theme "be perfect, plz!" by Riko Azuna is ok... pretty ok, because in the ED we'll have CGI Rista dances for 1:29 seconds but it's ok to understand because the Rista that dances in ED is a figures that Rista give to Seiya and if you see carefully, You will see the background is usually looks like a Figure's Plate on a table like in the anime and the end of ED.
The Soundtracks, uhh pretty ok not that much expect but pretty ok.
Sound effects, if you compared to Fire force in some episode that changes the hit sound effects into earape farts meme sound effects sh*t.
This anime has a great sound effects.
The Voice actings, especially for Rista's VA("Toyosaki, Aki") this is have a lot's of fun on listening anime charactor speaking to each other with this quality and it's remind me Konosuba for an Aqua Voice acting too. It's funny to listening tho.
Charactors: (8/10) The anime has it's own unique charactor design and development as well.
Seiya at the started, he's very Cautious but from that from the middle point, he's personality changes a little bit as I see. Ok let;s talk about his ability; He is very OP. yes he is from the beginning very OP because he is just training and training and keep training but it's has a back story a very dark back story, what he actually faces before Rista (I won't spoiled more than that, Go watched it by yourself!!!!)
Rista... she is just a comedian that waiting Seiya to makes a funny jokes then she will makes a meme reaction faces and the rest of the seies as well as episode 10-12, her development begins to shine.
Two additional charactor; Eruru and Mash, they have a development too but it's ok to see their development by training and training and... not using thier ailities in the fight because Seiya can just handle by him self tho. so not much to see but I love how I was expect to see their ability when they were training but was destroy by the MC but still exciting to see.
Enjoyment: (9/10) Summery, this is an unoriginal but actually very great at try to be an original Isekai, Comedy, Sitcom show like Konosuba but It's actually great as you're worth watching it. I would like to watched Isekai anime but not all I like such as Isekai cheat magician-
"Isekai cheat magician made me wants to sleep. This is the feel of you are on your bed" - NZ 2019
But this is a comdey isekai show, If it's boring it couldn't be this enjoyable. So remember my words-*
Overall: (8/10) *"If you have a free time, go and watch it, It's worth to watch" thats it. Thank you for reading my review.
**This is edited version (4/12/20): I turn score down a bit (Story 8 > 6 | Overall 9 > 8) [The raw score is 7.6]
All it takes is one glance at Cautious Hero’s title to know everything you need to know about it. It summarizes the story, the main character, and the anime’s one and only joke.
The titular cautious hero is the worst part of the show. Seiya is the hero, but he has no personality. He's everything you'd expect from an edgy isekai protagonist—an overpowered asshole. He's accompanied by the much more colorful goddess of healing, Ristarte. She summons Seiya to help her defeat the demon king. Compared to the potential heroes, Seiya has significantly higher stats, but there's a catch. He's impossibly cautious. Ristarte thought there's no
way his flaw would outweigh his skills, and she needed a hero desperately. She fucked up.
I don’t know what I expected, Seiya sucks as a protagonist because you can never tell what he’s thinking unless he says it aloud. The few times he does say something, it’s some bitchy comments about Rista being a dumbass. No matter how many kind things she does for him, he treats her like crap. She's nice, really, yet the show never allows her to gain confidence. He keeps her around to heal him and cook—but eventually, he just uses healing potions. Seiya could be replaced with an angry plank of wood and there’d be no difference. He's motivated to protect himself first, then save the world, no one else matters. He almost qualifies as a villain because of how he chooses to use his overpowered stats. Needless to say, he’s not a hero. Which is the point of this Satirical Comedy: It tries to imitate Konosuba in many ways, maybe a little too much.
There was a fight early on where Seiya burnt down an entire village of innocent people. What was his reason? Caution. It was never mentioned later on. After that incident, any chance of he would become a ‘good guy’ was off the table. No nuance, no clever writing, he is just a humorless asshole. The jokes never evolve because Seiya never changes. This wouldn’t be a big problem if the story progressed. So does it? Well, kind of... Like most isekai fantasies, the goal is for the hero to save the world from a demonic threat. Seiya levels up so fast that no enemy could stand in his way. Forget power scaling, they only use MMO terms for the target audience. For humor's sake, this is fine. For the story, it is detrimental. A threadbare story is expected from a gag comedy. However, there’s nothing to the show other than the stale jokes, it gets tedious to watch very fast
I enjoyed the first episode, but after that, I realized there would be nothing to it but that one joke—and it didn’t take long for me to get sick of it. I started to wonder why. Why is this guy so cautious? Why was he the one summoned? Why does he have the personality of a potato? I waited for an explanation, I waited for character development. It did not come until the final episodes.
(Spoilers Below)
In the eleventh hour, there's a twist that reveals Seiya wasn't always a shitty person. He was summoned to fight in the same world once before, but this time he was overly ambitious and kind. Every fight left him with 1 HP. He would run into impossible fights and always win—until he and his party got killed by a boss with two lives. When he is reincarnated, he gets told to always be cautious, even though people will hate him. In some way, this twist is supposed to excuse how he treats everyone. He made his companions, Mash and Elulu, mules to carry equipment, not because they're useless but because he was trying to protect them! He shit talked Ristarte and treated her like his maid because he wanted to protect her! So all along, Seiya treated everyone like objects because objects are easy to keep safe. Uh, huh.
The twist adds nothing to him. He’s still a cowardly asshole, yet his caution isn't a flaw because it always works out in the end.
In my opinion, all good twists should be surprising, but upon reflection, you should see where it was hinted. Cautious Hero misses this. The twist comes out of buttfucking nowhere and it adds nothing but transparent emotional manipulation. This anime breaks the basic rule of film, Chekov’s Gun. In other words, set up and pay off. This rule gives a story exceptional rewatch value. In Cautious Hero’s case, I found the majority of the show repetitive and underwhelming. Even after the twist, I felt like I wasted my time. All pay off, no setup. Although I wouldn’t call the twist satisfying in any respect, it at least led to a heartfelt ending. Or maybe not quite. Without the build-up, the tear-jerker ending rang hollow. Ending aside, there are still many more problems with this show that I need to address—and the commendable ways it stands out from other isekai.
(Spoilers End)
The jokes are derived from Rista’s reactions to Seiya being a jackass. He annoys her with his cowardliness. What riles her up the most is his lack of care for anyone. She’s so relatable because of how frustrated she gets. Who wouldn’t be annoyed by this guy? Also, it was pretty funny how horny she was for him. Even with all the stupid stuff she does, she still tries to maintain her nobility as a Goddess. Rista is a clone of Aqua from Konosuba with slight differences. Her over-the-top personality is the highpoint of Cautious Hero. She made it worth watching the boring parts. We see the narrative from her first-person point of view, almost like she is the protagonist. Completing Rista and Seiya’s party is Mash and Elulu, two kids tagging along out of respect for Seiya. I don’t have much to say about them. One is a girl who was there to be cute. The boy acts like a standard shounen character, he is determined to Do His Best. Seiya is so overpowered that he doesn’t need a party. The other members are useless compared to him.
As for the animation, Cautious Hero adopts the loose animation style of Konosuba. With this art style, the animators can get away with making the designs can look a little off-model for the sake of humor. They draw faces to look stupid a lot. When the art looks a little unintentionally bad, it’s still goofy because it rarely takes itself seriously. This style doesn’t extend to the background art or storyboards, which are both mediocre. I loved how colorful this show tried to be, but there were times colors clashed hideously. Thankfully the character designs are pretty good.
Ristarte and her fellow Goddesses wear beautifully decadent outfits. Per isekai standard, they have pieces of cloth instead of bras. I liked that Seiya made fun of how impractical Rista’s outfit was rather than just letting it fly (hey DanMachi). The one design that stood out to me the most was the Goddess of war and her bikini made of chains; it suits her hostile demeanor so well. Conversely, Seiya’s character design is quite generic—it adds nothing to his personality. Where the humor shines is Ristarte’s many ridiculous faces. She is a folder of reaction gifs in the form of a character. The music is fine; I think the OP is one of Myth & Roid’s weakest songs, above Isekai Shit Magician, of course. The ED is alright if you shield your eyes from the ugly CGI dance.
Cautious Hero would have been another Konosuba clone, but the ending made it slightly different. They're both self-aware isekai comedies with asshole protagonists and useless female characters. If only this show wasn’t shackled Seiya, it could have been more enjoyable. He prevents any other character from developing—yet he has even less personality than Kirito. There are one, maybe two jokes, and they're repeated over and over. If you want a watchable isekai gag comedy, this won't do.
So remember KonoSuba where Aqua was a Goddess and she was running this whole "hey reincarnate in another world and defeat a demon lord", well Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru does that but makes it an industry!, that is to say Great Aqua stand Ristarte voiced by Aki Toyosaki has now been commanded to bring in a hero to save a S rank world in danger, she after many digging and jabs at other isekai animes, she picks Seiya Ryuuguuinn voiced by Yuuichirou Umehara, however he's not like most heroes, that is...he is extremely,
almost like a sickness, cautious. So starts one wacky yet extremely cautious adventure to defeat the demon lord. In a ways it's like KonoSuba but with Aqua's and Kazuma's roles reversed or KonoSuba but on HARD MODE or you know like Dark So-
So elephant in the room and that is Seiya himself, as due to his extremely OCD cautious nature you will think he'll be overpowered to keep himself from dying in an S rank world no less AND he'll trounce any villain out there and yeah he WILL he isn't cautious for nothing but much like KonoSuba but in failure or No Game NO Life and Kakegurui in gaming, it's the journey not the destination as to HOW he trounces the villains, hell at least Seiya IS well prepared and he bloody yet monotonously WORKS FOR IT unlike many isekai heroes who just gets the power and never uses it let alone, Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru has one good comedy mainly revolving around Seiya's cautiousness and two Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru has good world building so even if characters are an issue, Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru has it's good strengths.
To this end, the villains of Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru holds to the same regard that Seiya's obsession with being cautious is, well considering the world he's trying to save is S Rank, this is somewhat justified. Whether it be that a villain appears at the STARTING village, to the villain thought ahead and destroyed the legendary armour. Yeah this is a nice similarity to Seiya's mentality just for the side of evil instead...BUUUUUT Seiya's cautiousness outright dominates the villains cautiousness by a country mile and half and guess what, his cautiousness gets plot depth latter down the line as to how his cautiousness came to be as well as WHY he's been always soo distant to Mash, Elulu and especially Ristarte, what else can LA say but Shinchou Yuusha Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru was ready perfectly for this to come into play, like Seiya!
Comedy is subjective. So LA will say this in LA's eyes to Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru comedy and that is that the comedy comes from the well-animated almost KonoSuba-like animation especially in the facial expressions of Ristarte. Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru does have repetitive running gags mainly in Ristarte being the butt monkey to Seiya's cautious antics EVERY TIME and Seiya's cautiousness in itself a running gag (but yeah, it's kinda the draw to the show). BUt Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru comedy does almost come from the great one liners from many of the characters, mainly Seiya's stoicism and Ristarte's crazy reactions. Also Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru comedy does lure us into a false sense of repetitiveness as it does subvert itself to great effect making itself not repetitive with one little twist, LA won't spoil as that would ruin the joke of the anime itself so LA will leave it at that. Nonetheless Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru greatest hidden strength is in it's comedy as "repetitive as it might looks".
Another strength, seeing that Seiya is the "gimmick" of the anime, well the "main character" as it were is by the by Ristarte, of course it doesn't show it but near the tail end of the anime when the BIG twist of the name is revealed, we see Ristarte as her own, essentially she becomes Aqua with some MAJOR plot relevance and man with ALL the subtle hints it aligns quite ell making for not only good character depth from the butt monkey of the anime but great plot twists and direction of the anime where it does get rather serious and dramatic for a "comedy isekai". Ristarte if anything IS the main character of this anime, through and through.
Ehhhh Mash and Elulu has their Deathmagla and Dragonkin Village arc so it checks out for them and they "level up a bit" while partying with Seiya soooo yeah, again Ristarte IS the main character so LA can give this a pass if anything.
Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru also dabbles with it's fanservice sometimes fanservicey from Ristarte and the Goddesses but also fan-disservice at times for comedy sakes. Nonetheless the fanservice and disservice is used to great effect to go along with the maniac comedy it has with Ristarte being the intentional victim in most of it, which isn't a bad thing, like a refined Aqua from KonoSuba.
The animation done by White Fox was GREAT, from the absurdly cautious but wacked out battles, the decent character designs but even greater facial expressions from Ristarte to the decent to good background. White Fox did actually a pretty good job with Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru and yeah sure Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru had ONE delay due to production issues but it was just Seiya preparing a bit more to be ready perfectly.
The voice cast was great and especially from Aki Toyosaki as Ristarte, she just had such range and played it with such colorful ham, she sounded like she had plenty of fun voicing her and it shows akin to Jun Fukushima role as Kazuma from KonoSuba. Yeah Aki Toyosaki definitely got LA's MVP of the anime, but even Yuuichirou Umehara as Seiya was great with his ever stoicism, Hibiku Yamamura as Ariadoa, Aoi Koga as Eruru and Rie Takaha- *ahem* Kengo Kawanishi as Mash. The voice cast was GREAT, what else can LA say but the voice cast was brilliantly ready perfectly.
Hell with the production side of things, this anime had some delays but oddly enough it having delays got itself into a bit of meme as it's just "Seiya is prepping" when delays or recaps happened. Which for LA's review on this, LA predraft this just in case especially after New Years but also just in case finished the predraft if a surprise "Finished Airing" occurs outside of the actual finished date and with Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru having a solid concept through and through, made the predrafting (yes LA does this) of this review fairly easy, thus LA was ready perfectly, just like Seiya.
Sometimes anime falls and dies by it's loose premises, Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru is not one of them and more to the point, it's one of those simple concept animes that takes itself up to an eleven and goes in strides with it's simple premise of what is essentially what happened when you get a min-maxed main protagonist and thus becomes crazy prepared to deal with everything and with an anime's setting that is S Rank and is ALSO crazy prepared, solidifies this anime's premise and core concept making it rather enjoyable watch and for an isekai at that, from Seiya centralizing on the core concept to the characters surrounding him being perfect foils and reactionary surrogates to us ESPECIALLY Ristarte, making the core cast funny characters for a comedy isekai to it's maniac'd paced plot and tangents and in the more serious moments, makes us invested in them even IF we know how the result is (and sometimes don't).
Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru is just one of those simple concept isekai animes that goes ALL the way through with it's premise and delivers it in spades, backed up with it's production value from White Foxes ALSO manaic'd almost Konosuba-eque animations, BRILLIANT and almost ad-libbed voice cast especially from Aki Toyosaki, this is definitely an isekai that should be watched and for seasonal matters, yeah it's one of LA's favourite animes of Fall 2019 if all it's pros with small flaws that has some solid defences almost eliminating those flaws are anything to go by.
[Spoiler Warning. The part I actually spoil is labeled later on, so you'll know when it happens. But I was forced to put a full spoiler warning at the top. I guess you can't be too... cautious... eh?? ...I hate this.]
“I get it. It ain’t making me laugh, but I get it.” --Meatwad (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Although I didn’t enjoy it all that much, I respect how Tueeeeeeeeeeeeeee repeats its own themes of caution within the writing by explaining every single joke and detail of the story. Even the title itself is an act of caution: ‘Cautious Hero: The
Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious’, the subtitle of which is literally just a much longer and more inconvenent way of saying “CAUTIOUS FUCKING HERO”. White Fox themselves delayed the broadcast of a couple episodes to make sure they would be of watchable quality before pulling an Arifureta in back-to-back seasons, and there was even a recap episode JUST in case you really didn’t get the plot.
But what this cautious anime overlooked is that the isekai genre has been more saturated than Guitar Hero games in the late 2000’s, leaving even the bottom of the deepest barrel empty of any scraps for more uncreative literature geniuses to feast off of.
Not that I think isekai is a bad trend or anything--at the risk of handing over my e1337ist anime reviewer card, I think there is a genuine amount of potential in the story concept of an “ordinary” character summoned to a fictional world where his real-world skills and logistics are tested in another dimension. It’s not the Goddess of Isekai’s (probably some big-titted bimbo sitting up in some other-worldly realm watching me from a glass ball or some shit) fault that like 1% of people actually gave a shit about trying.
And it’s not even that I crave a particularly unique or creative story to enjoy something--catch me celebrating the arrival of the Slime 300 adaptation. But… at some point, I have to wonder “When is this going to end? When will enough be enough?” I’d like to think that the diarrhetic bombardment that we got from isekai last season would have dropped its stock a fair bit, but I guess now that we got one that is “acceptably not shit” immediately after, everything is hunky-dory again.
Let me get to the point. Cautious Hero is an extremely typical RPG-like story, but the twist is that the main character is ridiculously over-cautious to the point where he has to kill a minimum-level monster with a much more high-level spell--dozens of times. He spends incessant amounts of time grinding before taking on boss fights and his outlandish actions spread to NPCs. As a result, his actions are often questioned by the world around him, including a goddess from the Divine Realm who accompanies him.
Given the relationship between this goddess and the main character, the #1 comparison to this anime is KonoSuba, but I would actually say this is more similar to How To Not Summon A Demon Lord. The reason why is because of a shared flaw: In its attempt to parody typical RPG stories, this anime becomes mind-numbingly boring to watch. Cautious Hero features a completely recycled, by-the-numbers JRPG plot about finding a legendary sword and armor and killing the Demon Lord and its four generals. Late into the story, the author tries throwing some high-stakes plot twists, but they’re lateral moves. They changed things up to be slightly less generic than before, but they don’t actually make the story better--in fact, they feel more like time-wasters. More on that later.
I’m trying to think of more to say about how boring the story is, but that’s just it. There’s nothing to say. All I can think of is how the anime spent several episodes on this quest to a dragon village with these two slapdick NPC kids. I get it, Cautious Hero, the joke is that these kids are traditional RPG protags and Cautious-sama is much stronger than them so they’re actually useless great job everyone. It doesn’t change the fact that these characters are not even slightly amusing to watch. Look, if you want to have a guy take down this big colossal threat in an unconventional way, go for it. But pretty much all of the side characters could’ve been replaced with mannequins modeled after Mads Mikkelsen and nothing of value would have been lost.
The other problem with this anime is the incredible amount of repetition, how it even repeats itself beat for beat sometimes. Seiya goes to a new town → Seiya uses facts & logic to piss off the locals → Locals/Ristarte question his status as a hero → Seiya goes into the god realm to get trained by a god or goddess → said god or goddess is completely mind-broken by Seiya’s OP-ness (say that out loud for maximum comedy!!!!) → Seiya ultimately defeats the big ultimate omega god threat and kind of sort of wins the locals over. This exact process happens more than once.
Aside from parodying typical JRPG elements, the other main source of comedy is from the goddess, Ristarte. Or, rather, her having extreme overreactions to every single thing that happens on screen. This is actually one point in favor of Cautious Hero, the handling of Ristarte as a character. She herself claims and believes herself to be this perfect, heavenly being who graces those around her with her mere presence, but her true personality is a very short-tempered, unlikable brat who throws a tantrum when things don’t go her way. This is where most of the KonoSuba comparisons come in as she’s almost identical in personality and role to Aqua; I can’t really deny this myself, but Ristarte is still enjoyable. Or, at least, enjoyable with how the animators deliver her reactions. She distorts, stretches, changes colors, her character design gets outright abused in animation with her expressions. And even though I stopped finding her general personality enjoyable after a while, White Fox never stops the crazy train with her faces, always willing to deliver a new, bizarre expression.
For some other notes on this character, Ristarte thinks she can seduce Seiya, but instead Seiya is so magnificently handsome and brooding that she’s the one mega horny for him instead, and of course Seiya gives zero fucks about her. It’s a pretty funny joke, but it also gets done to death by the halfway point. Also, this might be a reach, but I like to believe that the ED is a shitty CGI dance to exacerbate her hypocrisy as this cute, endearing godess. Because the ED itself is meant to be cute and endearing, but with such tacky animation it is anything but.
The other role of Ristarte and most other characters is to loudly repeat everything that happens on screen, just in case some deaf people had it in them to watch some colorful Chinese cartoons. I don’t necessarily mind this sort of thing all the time--characters reacting and explaining things and all that. But CH has to do it every. single. fucking. time. Seiya does something weird, and then someone has to loudly exclaim “SEIYA DID THIS FUCKING WEIRD THING! WHAT!!!!”
I specifically remember a fight where Seiya devoured a plump bag of stat-boosting seeds in one gulp. This is a funny joke because Seiya is always a very serious, straight-faced man, and now he’s drawn in a much more comical way, with the mouthful of seeds making his cheeks puff out like a chipmunk. Then Ristarte says out loud, “LOL he kinda looks like a chipmunk!!” Once again, thank you to the real Cautious Heroes, the writers, for being cautious enough to make sure that I understood this 200 IQ joke.
Speaking of 200 IQ, the writer(s) realized at some point that this anime isn’t actually doing anything special, so the last few episodes dish out a few plot twists. But as I said, these are lateral moves that don’t really improve the anime. Do they make it more surprising? Sure, I guess. But was the anime better because these things happened? Would it matter if these twists were taken out in favor of a more straightforward plot? It’s not like these twists did anything to change my perspective on the series or anything.
Let me explain, and SPOILERS by the way.
I’m sure the mods want me to be a little more CAUTIOUS with the spoiler warning so here you go.
This section is where spoilers start.
This section is where spoilers start. (x2)
These spoilers spoil things that happen.
Do not read the spoilers if you do not want to be spoiled on things that happen.
Go to the point that says the spoilers are over if you do not want to read spoilers.
Ready perfectly. I am completely what the fuck ever.
So one of the main goals of the isekai story is to find a legendary armor, because apparently all other armor is useless against the Demon King or Demon Lord or Demon God or Demon Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself or whatever. Instead, the armor is destroyed by a boss, who sacrifices himself and a literal entire village to summon some transcendent phantom thing. The phantom has glitched stats and all attacks cause it to multiply instead of dealing damage, and when Seiya and company retreat into the Divine Realm with all of the other goddesses, it actually follows them, because that makes a lot of fucking sense. Ultimately, a goddess uses a big fuck-off instant kill move on it, which makes me wonder what the actual point of all this was because I’m here to watch Cautious Hero, not this bitchlord.
Weeeelll, it turns out the point is to have Seiya learn the move instead, because the penultimate episode reveals the big, mind-blowing plot twist that it’s had saved all along. Seiya was already isekai’d before and had a pregnant gf in his party; he ultimately failed at the final boss because he wasn’t cautious enough and this girl died and reincarnated into a goddess as Ristarte. And so Seiya has this instant-kill move that also kills him because, underneath his hard, cold demeanor, he’s a selfless and deeply caring person who is cautious at every turn because he doesn’t want to lose anyone else.
Except all of this was not really that surprising, and some of it was already established from the get-go. I’m not gonna say I had this entire backstory in my head from episode one or anything, but--wow, Seiya is really cautious because there was a time when he WASN’T cautious and he suffered from it? Genius! Ristarte got a restart on her life and that’s why her name is Restart, wow! Okay, cynical comments aside, I really don’t get why Seiya is such a shit to Ristarte if this girl is supposed to be actually meaningful to him. Even if it’s like the show implies, where he’s cold to others because he wants them to be pushed away so he doesn’t have to risk losing them, he can be a little brutal to her sometimes.
And more importantly, this big reveal that deep down Seiya is actually very compassionate was already explained in one of the earliest episodes. Seiya trains in the Divine Realm for a while instead of fighting a dangerous threat head-on, and when Ristarte berates him for it, Seiya explains that he must be as careful as he can, acknowledging that if he dies then the world is fucked. Boom, done.
Did this backstory really need to happen? Cautious Hero is an absurd comedy. Did there really need to be an emotional reason for everything? And more importantly, did I care that they bothered to add it? Ultimately, this didn’t change my perspective on the characters or the story, and with these characters being so one-note, I didn’t have the investment in them to be hooked on this story beat. I wouldn’t say this was necessarily a bad thing, because I would imagine someone being really into this episode if they were really into the show already, but coming from a neutral-or-worse opinion, it was a flop.
End of spoilers.
The spoilers have ended.
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The rest of the review does not have any spoilers.
At the end of the day, what draws me into Cautious Hero is the potential for an absurd story. An extremely overpowered main character who fights bigger and badder threats each time, with a bizarre personality quirk to boot. The early episodes did pretty well to deliver this. But as time went on, the lack of creativity really showed. It became too invested in telling a “real” story, and that story just wasn’t very good to begin with.
And to add insult to injury, it’s another light novel series that absolutely loves to overstay its welcome. Although a second season hasn’t been announced as of this writing, the novels themselves continue. There are more arcs to this story, more worlds to explore. Seriously? What the actual hell are they going to do from this point? This series had literally one job: Cautious Hero kills Demon King. Boom, done. End of story. Why do we need to explore more excess bullshit?
One thing that slightly props up this anime is the production--the visuals are often loose, but colorful and expressive where they need to be. Funny enough I thought Mash and Elulu, the two most pointless characters, were actually very well-designed and maybe deserved to have a real show together. Seiya is good as far as generic, edgy-looking LN protags go, and I’m overall neutral on the designs of the gods and goddesses, although I did really like Adenela for her crazy Hex Maniac-like design.
Sound-wise, the two frontline characters are well casted. Yuuichiro Umehara, known for his role as Goblin Slayer, slips into the place of Seiya seamlessly. Aki Toyosaki hams up her performance as Ristarte effectively--even though I got tired of her screaming after a handful of episodes, I wouldn’t blame the actress for the script.
The OP is fine, but I wouldn’t listen to this song outside of this anime. The so-called metal instrumentation is so cheaply produced that it’s like eating reheated pizza after a week. I can fuck with it, but I’ll take the real thing instead any day. I mentioned the ED as being fun if the intent was to be bad, so I guess you can take that as you will. The soundtrack exists.
To glaze over everything I’ve said to this point, there wasn’t a lot about Cautious Hero that was outright bad--at worst the show is tiring and repetitive and uncreative, but all of that would just be a bit disappointing instead of disastrous. It has some highlights, especially early on. It overall balances out to being mediocre. Which, I guess is worth something nowadays.