English Dub Review: ENDRO! “My Yusha-sama!”

Yusha is heroic, but not just because she’s the hero.

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Princess Rona has a problem: her hero isn’t heroic enough. Make no mistake, she likes hanging out with Yusha as a pal, but she longs to see her hero defeating major villains and overcoming big obstacles. After talking with (and bribing) Mao, the tiny teacher agrees to create some serious drama to put them to the test.

They create a fake kidnapping, and the hero squad sets out to rescue the Princess from a fortress of enemies. The farther they get, the more bloodthirsty the Princess becomes, until she realizes that she’s been viewing Yusha in the wrong light – as a hero instead of a person.

Our Take:

“I mean, on one hand, it’s true. Yusha is hardly heroic.” This quote from Mei sets up the eighth episode of ENDRO! pretty perfectly. From the start of the show, Yusha has been shown as a person first and a hero second. Princess Rona, however, sees her the other way around, which provides the main plot for My Yusha-sama!.

The episode begins innocently enough, with class in session and our main characters trying to make it to the final bell. Princess Rona relies on whispered assistance from Seira in order to get by. (“You do realize I heard every word of that,” Mao tells them.) In a funny gag, Mei takes over the telling of cartado’s history from Mao, despite her objections. After school is out, Princess Rona visits Mao to inform her that she thinks Yusha needs to be challenged with more heroic duties.

Rona’s moral dilemma that she deals with throughout the episode is kind of interesting, and a good way to showcase how much she’s learned already by becoming friends with Yusha and her party. At the beginning of the episode, I was a little taken aback by the Princess’s desire to put Yusha in danger. As the challenges before the heroes kept growing, I began to get suspicious of Rona and her true motives. Maybe she’s the new demon lord? But then the ending where Rona realizes she’s been thinking about Yusha in the wrong way happened, and I was satisfied with this explanation. Yusha is a hero, but she’s Rona’s friend first of all. (Speaking of friendship moments, Rona’s royal guards/generals from hell were really sweet and I thought the moment of them acknowledging the friendship between the girls was really funny and sweet.)

The dub this episode had some fun moments, such as Princess Rona’s shameless need to see Yusha fighting to her death: “It ended right when it was getting good.” When questioned about Yusha’s more heroic side, Mao brings up her summer break activities:  “She did say something about defeating an evil god over summer break.” I had almost forgotten about that, too! When Rona hears this tale, she comments: “Give me more of that, thank you.” One of my favorite lines was from Mao, when she sees the knock-off magical history book that Rona based the quest on: “The artist of that book may have taken some creative license.” Imagine Mao becoming a best-selling author, publishing her own books based in fact that set the record straight on what life as a former demon lord is like.

My Yusha-sama! isn’t the cleverest episode of ENDRO!, nor is it the most fun or comedic story the series has done. Still, it was an entertaining watch, and I did enjoy getting to see a more raw, animalistic side of Rona. The payoff where she recognized the disservice she was doing to Yusha was much appreciated, too. Will this dynamic change because of this in next week’s episode? Who knows with ENDRO!, but one thing’s for sure… pretty much anything can happen when a hero, a demon lord, and a princess attend the same classroom.