English Dub Season Review: How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Season One

Overview:

After the death of his grandfather, 19-year-old Kazuya Souma—an aspiring civil servant—is left all alone with no one to call family. Out of the blue, he is transported to the Elfrieden Kingdom, a small ailing country in another world, to be a “hero.” An ongoing war with the demon army has put the entire world in peril, and Kazuya was summoned to aid in the conflict as an offering from Elfrieden to its allies.

Our Take:

This show was a heavy strong starter but did kind of fizzle out at the end but the final episode promised a few good things. If we get another season I think it will be pretty awesome. This was a pretty good show for the most part but for some reason, as I was reviewing the show Genius Prince’s Guide I couldn’t help thinking “This is what Realist Hero was like at first”. Let’s get into what it does right and what needs work.

The voice work in this was good. Alejandro Saab is a top-tier voice actor but I haven’t really experienced much of his stuff till recently. He does great as Souma and puts in a good performance. Anairis Quinones has been a rising star lately and I can see why. I really liked how well she brought Liscia to life. There were a lot of really talented voice actors in this but no one really blew me away with their performance. It was a very by the numbers dub and there were a couple of episodes where some of the voices felt off but luckily they were few and far between. The animation wasn’t bad but for the most part, this was a slice of life so there wasn’t much going on. When there was action it was pretty good but there were definitely some corners cut.

From a narrative perspective, it was a bit of a mixed bag. It was a refreshing change of pace from a lot of other isekai. For starters it has a protagonist who is in college, sure he is technically still a teenager but he’s more adult than your typical isekai hero. It is also kind of cool how he isn’t an action hero and more relies on his brain and wits to get him through. Even when it comes to battles he understands that he isn’t very good at fighting and relies on people who are better than him.

The biggest problem I have with the story is all of the harem elements. It’s nothing new for an isekai but still, by the end of this first season, I am pretty sure he has like four fiancees. There are other men and Souma isn’t all that great but here we are I guess. At least they make a story reason for it in the fact that royalty does have multiple wives but the king before him didn’t so it’s a bit wishy-washy to me. It probably shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did but it just hampered my enjoyment.

In the end, this anime was solid and you could do a whole lot worse. If you want tons of action you might want to look elsewhere but what is there is done well. There is actually some romantic progression which was nice and refreshing as well. You got good characters and a fun and unique premise but that’s about it. Still a good time to be had.