English Dub Review: Cautious Hero: The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious “The Great Dragon Mother Is Too Sneaky”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Leviae tells Elulu that she should embrace her destiny of sacrificing herself to become Igzasion. She reluctantly accepts, trying to convince herself that it’s a good thing because she would be saving the world. However, while spending her last hours with the group, she runs off in tears.

Later, Seiya, Rista, and Mash are all invited to the celebration where Elulu is to sacrifice herself by jumping into the pit of the Dragon Abyss. While tearfully saying goodbye to the gang, Mash attempts to go up and stop the ceremony. He is stopped by two dragon-born guards. Elulu hesitates, so Leviae commands the guards to throw her off. Seiya jumps up to protect her, while Mash and Rista are paralyzed from the food they were served. Since Seiya didn’t actually eat the food, he is able to fight. Leviae takes matters into her own hands — transforming into her gigantic dragon form. Luckily, Seiya thought ahead and crafted two Dragon Killer swords before going into their lair.

Leviae then activates the cursed necklace she gave Elulu, which only gives her three minutes to live unless Seiya surrenders. Leviae shifts into her impenetrable, armored golden form, which Seiya slashes nonstop. While it seems like a fruitless effort, Seiya was actually pushing her off the edge with every hit, and since he cut up her wings beforehand, Leviae falls into the pit below.

Elulu is saved, and Seiya tricks the dragon-borns into thinking his sword became Igzasion.

Our Take

This show would be a lot better if it is fully committed to its tone. If it wants to be too heavy, it doesn’t have to be, but the current way it executes things takes away some merit from certain serious, in-show circumstances. For instance, Seiya, Rista, and Mash especially seemed to be sad at the prospect of Elulu dying, but there wasn’t any initial outrage (until the ceremony where Mash tried to put a stop to it.) Mash’s reaction, in particular, seemed lackluster because, at the end of the episode, they imply that Elulu and Mash have an unspoken romance all of the sudden. While this feels forced because there were no allusions to it whatsoever before, it comes off as extra odd because Mash didn’t intensely reject the idea of Elulu sacrificing herself.

The premise of this episode was genuinely cool, and it was nerve-wracking to see if Elulu would actually go through with it or not. However, Cautious Hero’s trend of villains explaining themselves every five seconds is getting really old. Every single villain has this predictable habit of explaining their every weakness and strength to Seiya, for some reason. Of course, this is done so that the audience can understand it, but it would make more sense if an outside character narrated these traits instead. Why would a villain willingly reveal their strengths and weaknesses? It makes no sense, and even Leviae did this.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see what Seiya will do with his fake version of Igzasion. Hopefully, his motives and character traits can start being revealed on their own, instead of Rista having to give exposition on them 24/7. In any case, her English VA is super entertaining to listen to.