'Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki' is an isekai anime that has seen some success in the midst of a fairly unremarkable season. Despite garnering decent attention there's little being said by the larger names in the community and here on Mal the scores seem bizarrely split between bemusingly high grades of 9's and 10's, contrasted by those scoring exceedingly harshly in the 1 to 3's. Today I'd like to take after the show's namesake and take a slightly more balanced vantage point. First lets cover the spoiler free items-
Music, Animation and Direction - With this being a new show the OsT has yet to be realised to my knowledge meaning I couldn't listen to it independent of the show as per my usual routine. With that said the Ost should by rights be this show's strongest selling point, studio JC staff have some great in-house artists and no doubt both the intro and outro are wonderful, further there's some simple but nice insert pieces and many of the backing tracks are grandiosely packed with percussion instruments, fitting solidly the medieval aesthetic of the story. With all this said I'd be loath to give the score top marks as the actual usage of the tracks is a bit clumsy. This could be attributed to the direction segment but some of the less creative tracks are the ones that get the most use and by the end of the show it was monotonous to hear the same 'every day' and 'tense contemplation' pieces used multiple times in an episode, there's also really nothing here to get you pumped up during the triumphant moments of victory which also feels like a missed opportunity. So while on paper the score is fitting and well made, it's execution could certainly be improved.
The animation was something of a disappointment for me. While stills can look quite beautiful and the shots of each major city are nicely composed, generally speaking the show looks bland. Not bad, just bland which is strange coming from JC who generally have a track-record for making a show recognisably modern and 'light novel' based but with enough vibrancy to still stand out(Ala Toradora, Pet-Girl, Aria, Danmachi, Railgun, etc). As for the backgrounds their mixed, some are more then adequately detailed but the location by far the most time is spent in, the throne room, has been designed by someone who I can only imagine was actively out to ruin this show. The large room is all shades of grey, epically behind the actual throne where there is a monotonous slab of flat grey that can't help but draw the eye. It's as though they'd never heard of the negative space principal.
As for the movements, the fights are down-right awful with shaky transitions and a complete lack of weight or impact. The general movement of the characters is as you'd expect, much like the artsyle it's fine but unmemorable and a bit of a let down.
Speaking of poor choreography we have the direction which is maybe the show's biggest pit fall. The story is very exposition heavy so how does the director chose to compensate this and keep the visuals interesting? With the use of dynamic 360 degree camera shots and characters walking superfluously to and fro across rooms. Again it could be worse and the first time I saw it I was actually a little impressed by the extravagant camera work but overall it's exceedingly boring to look at more often then not. When Souma explains some basic functions of nature in baby terms to the other characters, the best you can hope for is cut aways to completely still images which really isn't much. As for battles and such like, the director is clearly cutting as many corners as possible, generally showing a commander talking, while something more interesting is implied to be happening off-screen. Finally you have the structuring which is straight-up abhorrent - We spend an entire episode's worth of time on a cooking programme, half an ep on histories' least interesting adventure ever, a whole half on a shopping trip and another episodes worth on a minor domestic quarrel between two side characters. Now don't mis-understand, all these things have their places and can greatly help with the worldbuilding of any good fantasy story, but not only does much of it feel like padding but this poor management of time forces the 'War' arc of the show to be barely 2-4 eps long, making it feel ham-fisted and almost giving the impression that the production is just un-interested in that part of the show. They don't even cut the OP and ED (A JC staple across many of their shows) of the final episode to try and desperately scrap back some much needed time.
I especially find all this strange as the director is by no means an amateur, Takashi Watanabe is down-right prolific and has done work I've absolutely loved for many works by the studio in the likes of 'Shakugan no Shana' and 'The Slayers' to name his most famous credits. As such I'm left to question weather they simply had a remarkably small budget for this show or if Covid and time-constraints were the cause of all this egregious corner-cutting and laziness.
Story and Characters - In terms of story alot is hampered by the aforementioned structuring and visual elements. The goal of the story is to fix the dire financial straits the Kingdom finds itself in and for Souma to find himself a family and it sort of accomplishes these things, however it's not exactly mind-blowing television. Now to be fair I've said on occasion that drama is highly subjective and you may indeed find this a griping tale, however generally speaking the show lacks any real driving force - while fiscal idea's are mentioned we're never actually told how much money the kingdom has or needs, further it's impossible to tell how much time pass's between episodes and because we don't have any characters with the perspective of the average citizen it's hard to tell if anything that we're told about has actually worked. By the end of the show you'd be forgiven for thinking barely a month has passed, something which if anything the characters seem to reinforce.
Said characters are fairly standard fare. They fill out regular isekai troops, with the only attractive males of the group(aside from the protagonist) being conveniently off-screen for almost the entire run of the show. Even calling them characters seems a little much, The Princess Liscia at first seems intriguing as someone who migth oppose Souma becoming acting King and then gradually fall in love with him over the course of this first series, creating a classic arc and pay-off to follow, as well as giving a great excuse for Souma to show off his knowledge, but before the first 2 episodes are even done she has already swooned and proceeds to do nothing of note other then get a haircut for the rest of the show. This strikes me as a great shame as what small, tiny hints we get that she and Souma migth actually be a supportive team are never really given any limelight and by the properties close they act the same as they did when they first met with no progress friendly or romantic what so ever bar one single conversation and a few blushes on Liscia's part. Now mind you I don't hold it against anyone who found her endearing, she is no question cute, I just wish they did a little more with her characterisation as the female lead.
The bureaucrat Marks whom actually seems somewhat interesting gets conveniently side-lined for being old or something(?), similarly the Queen and King are irrelevant past ep 1, not even being used for episodic comedy relief or such like - and the others aren't of any note except maybe Aisha and Souma himself. These two share an interesting trait, where-by something traumatic will occur and then they it just sort of has no impact on them what-so-ever. Aisha suffers most here as after a terrible incident her reaction is pretty much just to ask if her uncle could of been less of a fool and then she never brings it up again. It doesn't seem to weight on her mind or spark any change in her out-look on life, despite the dark-elves seemingly being a very family and tribal orientated people(something they could of easily tied back into Souma's Grandfather's words or wisdom....but just didn't). Same with Souma who seems to be nearing a revelation that he has the power to affect the lives of thousands in strategic warfare but then in the next episode seems to of forgotten this temporary moral dilemma and returned to sending off armies to brutally murder one another, before sort of remembering it maybe in episode 12(?). Put lightly I'm not really sure you could say anyone has a character arc in this show, however with that said none of this is quite as big a problem as it migth sound. Indeed considering the type of story this is and it's purpose as light-hearted entertainment, it certainly does function with this type-cast of static characters, however it would of been nice to of seen some sort of development implemented for the main duo at the very least, in order to give the show a much needed emotional core (which one would imagine would be obvious consider the 'find and protect a family' mantra).
A Realistic Solution;
As I see it, it wouldn't actually take much to vastly improve the story of '"How the Realist Hero Saved the Kingdom"'. Some small changes like making the throne room more interesting and breaking up the exposition with actual animated cutaways to farmers working in fields and so on, along with a re-organisation of the already quite good OsT could easily push this show up to a 7.5 out of 10. However the sad fact to me is that really I think this one has some potential beneath the surface to be a truly heart-warming and wholesome little tale about found family, unfortunately it seems like JC or the financers behind it just didn't care all that much as if they did I don't think we'd have this bland art-style, shockingly bad action, atrocious structure and ultimately cheap feeling product. To me it feels like realist hero is a bad adaptation in-spite of my not even having read the books. It's the sort of half-as*ed cash grab that have become all too frequent which I think is a real da*n shame.
With just small changes this could improve and with a bit of care I think this could of been a really good watch. For an example of what I mean take a look at the original 'Zero no Tsukaima', an isekai by JC staff from 15 years ago with an original set of 13 episodes. It's action is by no means brilliant, nor is it anything mind boggling narratively and yet despite it's age it's backgrounds are still gorgeous, its character have far more depth then is required for the story being told, the Ost is an absolute delight and always used sparingly with one off tracks for speical occasions and character themes for the leads - but most of all it exudes passion and heart. You can't help but smile at how much the creators clearly cared about every aspect of their funny little light novel adaption (Rest in peace Noboru Yamaguchi). It's for that sort of love and attention to detail and caring sense of fun put into what migth otherwise be fairly mundane or forgettable stories, that I loved JC Staff for, it's why I'd of once called my favourite studio.
But here it feels like we get none of that, there is no heart in most of these visuals, no passion in the editing room or the producers office. The voice-actors do a good job at the least and again its not bad it's just...meh, bland, unimpressive. Hopefully with the advent of a second half we migth see it gain an increase in it's somewhat shaky production and with the establishment of the world out of the way we may even get some better structured arcs to come, we can atleast hope so anyway. So to conclude, while you may enjoy this show for what it is, you also won't be missing out on much if you decide to give it a pass and as such I'd advise most readers to go and try other classic isekai like the prior mentioned "Familiar of Zero" or alternately "Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash" (which takes a different sort of realistic approach to the isekai genre) - and only to watch the realist hero if your board and simply looking for an easily digestible and relatively pleasant way to pass the time.
I hope you enjoyed. If you liked this short essay please press the 'helpful' button below (turn phone browsers to 'desktop mode') and if at all interested feel free to check out some of my other mostly longer reviews her on Mal or via YouTube. With that said,
Thanks for reading.
