How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom

Episode 11

This had to be one of my favorite episodes if for no other reason than it was unintentionally hilarious.

For the good parts, I can say the duel with Vargas was pretty engaging. It made sense for him to fight to the end, given his pride and opposition to Souma from the get-go (and the natural assumptions one would make about a duke suddenly stripped of power by a newcomer). I also liked that Vargas ended up dueling with Aisha. The show's limited animation did not make for much spectacle in terms of the combat, but at least having Aisha duel and win made sense given her role in the group while also showing Souma does have areas where he is lacking/deficient.

In terms of the high fantasy elements, I do find the silly little world-building details engaging. The instant transmission projection system being a kind of national media outlet is a neat idea. I dig the visual of the royal carriage being held aloft by a flight of wyverns/dragons too. In practice it still ends up being the same thing as a normal carriage - it sets up a discussion during a travel scene the same as if it were being pulled by horses - but it is a cool visual nonetheless. Juna's stealth group using magically enhanced arrows was a nice touch too.

That being said, I largely felt like this episode only magnified the problems this series has with pacing. Tone… everything really. Last episode, out of nowhere, to borrow a Futuramaism: war were declared. Roughly ten minutes into this episode, war were undeclared. But also a new war were declared against the Amidonians, who have been itching to fight this entire time… but immediately flee and have their forces cut in half. Wow, that's… rapid to say the least.

The sudden surprise revelations about Georg Carmine's loyalty were… a thing, I guess? It sure seems like an absurd level of selflessness to my mind, but hey I guess Souma is just that good at governing. Which, I suppose, is where my other main gripe with the series is: the root of Souma's good governance. On the one hand, the series makes it out that he has a lot of in-built knowledge from being an astute modern person. I have discussed in prior episodes that this seems to make the most sense, even if I personally find it a bit reductive about the intelligence of past groups - but given that we are talking about fantasyland, I think that's fine.

But the other half is supposed to come from his knowledge of Machiavelli's The Prince and that's where this keeps falling flat. Even if we pretend for a moment that The Prince was a super significant political treatise that served as a terrific guidebook to rulership, one of the core principles of machiavellianism is an almost clinical ruthlessness. Machiavelli was quite adamant about detaching the political from the ethical, and being pragmatic about the base nature of humankind. Souma just seems way too nice and soft a guy to be described as machiavellian, he is seldom ruthless and is either quite caring or repeatedly benefits from other people bending over backwards to help him out. Carmine is a great example: he seems to be flabbergasted that Carmine is being so gracious and genuinely moved by it, which means he…intended to battle him head on with what limited resources he had? While also starting a war with Amidonia? After just the country's finances and basic food shortages in order maybe two weeks ago, and starting a large scale public works project in the form of founding a new city built on modern urban design principles?

Also there's a diesel-era land battleship that the country is maintaining now too? This is starting to add up pretty quickly if you ask me.

I guess my main issue is that for a supposed brilliant manipulator of the school of cold pragmatism, Souma does not seem all that manipulative, brilliant, cold, or pragmatic.

But hey, we'll see how many dragon wars start or stop next episode.

Rating:

Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom is currently streaming on Funimation.