English Dub Review: How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom “The Forest in Labour”

Overview:

Souma is using the Forbidden Army to help build roads and improve the infrastructure. He taught them how to make concrete. There was a landslide in Aisha’s forest, and Souma mobilizes everyone he can to help. Souma really comes through with the disaster relief but still felt like he could do more.

Our Take:

Have I mentioned how cool the world-building in this show is? It’s really well done and I think that is part of the reason Isekai is such a popular genre. It gives you a way to experience unique worlds from the eyes of someone like you who isn’t used to this type of place. Plus I really like the comparisons to how things advance differently here as opposed to our world. Like of course they have iron ships sooner than we did because they have giant sea dragons to pull them.

With Souma’s modern sensibilities he puts a lot of things into motion that can really help the country. He shows them how to make concrete and is using his private army to build roads. It’s really cool to see a leader that understands what things should really come first for a country to succeed. It’s not all about battles and war, it’s about what the people need most. But Souma also needs to not beat himself up so much, he’s doing a great job.

Speaking of battles I think it’s only a matter of time before we get to some wartime stuff. I mean, while I love administration stuff there needs to be some action or people will get bored. Even that will be interesting because Souma is definitely not a warrior so seeing how he navigates battles and wartime strategy could be pretty cool.

The landslide that affected Aisha’s home is really unfortunate because it could have been avoided. Aisha’s uncle was against the changes that Souma suggested and that was a big reason why that landslide happened. He felt that they had to protect nature which led to a pretty awesome quote from Souma. He said, “Nature is not weak and in need of our protection” which is fairly accurate but I think we could do a little better on that front. To be fair the country of Elfrieden is not nearly as developed as we are so they can’t really hurt nature as much as we can. Good on Souma for advocating that early though.