Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious

Episodes 1-3

The isekai genre, or at least this most modern permutation we're so familiar with, has always traded on being referential, on some level. Familiarity with the game-and-anime-style worlds the stories are transporting their heroes to is part of the appeal, of course. But as the isekai field has continued to become more crowded, it's necessitated a need to stand out, in some cases by being more knowing and taking things less seriously. Such as it is, there are several new isekai anime this season a bit more out-there than the usual fare, from Ascendance of a Bookworm's story of a girl questing for reading material to Kemono Michi's animal-wrestling outlandishness. And early on, Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious, came out swinging with a silly, irreverent first episode that seemed specifically targeted at those who were a bit sick of isekai, and eager to see the piss taken out of it. There were well-timed outrageous jokes, unexpected character turns, and lots and lots of funny faces. It was a good time that seemed to be setting up for a whole season's worth of a ridiculous romp.

So it is a bit weird when the majority of the second episode seems to be isekai action played comparatively straight. To be sure, there's still plenty more time spent on nominal hero Seiya dutifully training to raise his level in the simplest way possible. And after the big central battle's denouement the show's right back to jokes about fantasy-fighting overkill in the name of overt cautiousness. But in between that it's a whole lot of power-level comparisons, over-explained villain plots, and awesome-looking spells and transformations. Most of this second episode looks cool enough doing all this, to be sure, but it does seem a lot of effort to go through for an anticlimax joke that the show's already well familiar with. To say nothing of how those artistic choices may have impacted the production of the show, which we'll have to touch on later.

Isekai series' main characters, ciphers that they often are, generally aren't the ones central to the endearing success of these kinds of shows. But Seiya's even further away from the expected self-inserts; He isn't really a character so much as a vehicle for jokes. Well, just the one joke, really. With a combination of the Goblin Slayer's over-preparedness and One-Punch Man's Saitama's ridiculous super-strength, Seiya could take on any threat so long as he works up the nerve to face it without taking forever to make absolutely certain he's ready to do so. If you've known the sort of person in a video game or tabletop RPG who wouldn't move forward on a quest without amassing the very best equipment and min/maxing their available skills, you know this guy. That's another part of the joke, of course, that Seiya isn't actually at all familiar with the various game-world tropes he's interacting with, looking to his guiding goddess Ristarte for explanations and blowing up enemies with aplomb regardless of their visible threat level. It's a nice, knowing gag in the introductory first episode, but quickly wears out its welcome as the show goes on. Sure, Seiya blowing up half a village to eradicate a boss-monster's remains is kind of funny in concept, but less so when it seems like they're stretching the bit out to fill out the rest of the episode's run-time. Then they pretty much repeat this same bit at the end of the third episode, showing that the writing may not be as continuously clever as it initially seemed.

As well, there's also the question of where Cautious Hero is going and how long it can sustain itself in doing so. As stated, the first and second episodes look pretty good, though not so exceptional that you'd expect production troubles after just two episodes. But that's exactly what happened, as only the third episode slipped to a week-later release, not looking quite as nice as the previous two. They apparently didn't even have the ending animation, a frankly-awkward CGI Ristarte dance number, completed until that airing four weeks later. It should be stated that Cautious Hero doesn't necessarily look ‘bad’ right now, but there's a sense it could give out at any moment, which isn't great when the design and action of everything in that first episode feel like they're treading water out of necessity.

But if you're sticking with Cautious Hero, chances are you aren't doing so for the hero, the story, or even most of the art and animation itself. No, it's the divine female lead and true main character of the story, Ristarte, who is unquestionably carrying this thing at this point. There is obviously much to be made of her hilarious presentation on her own, with lovingly-drawn crazy-face reactions every few seconds and Aki Toyosaki's outlandish vocal performance (the noises she makes when thirsting over Seiya's carefully-toned body must be heard to be believed), but she's just a generally valuable inclusion as a character in general. Her dialogue and antics lend an even more ‘inside baseball’ element both to the mechanics of the world-saving dimension of the gods and how that relates to the broader, more predictable tropes of isekai itself. Her reactions sell Seiya's antics better than merely presenting the audience with them, as the contrast makes everything seem even more ridiculous. Ristarte can make even the most typical turnaround into a laugh-out-loud event: Seiya's hidden power-level shock in the second episode is some pretty standard stuff, but Ristarte's eye-popping voice-straining delivery of the declaration turns it into true comedy instead of a simple genre subversion.

The question as Cautious Hero tiptoes through the minefield that is its own existence is, at this point, is Ristarte herself enough to keep this show going? She's an extremely funny, well-crafted character on her own, but can she keep this otherwise-baseline content consistently funny throughout this cour? It makes you wonder if the series can produce other characters and elements that compliment its antics as well as Ristarte does, or if it's content to maintain things at this otherwise merely competent level without breaking its production for another week. I, personally, do not know. But I do personally think that Cautious Hero has been just worth tuning into so far for funny faces and silly noises.

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Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious is currently streaming on FUNimation.