How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom bounces viewers back to the war in Amidonia (or the fall-out from the war) after rapidly wrapping up the whole mad-scientist plot. I mean, we start still in the lab and dealing with the whole dragon bone theft issue but after seeing a weird curiosity, that mostly just made me think of mecha godzilla, Realist Hero more or less dumps that line of plot progress and instead we see the mess Julius has wrought since claiming back Amidonia.
You wouldn’t think one incompetent leader could get into so much trouble so quickly but between destroying infrastructure improvements built by Elfrieden, cracking down on individuality on things such as the colour of houses, and then brutally putting down a rebellion after people had starved to death, Julius couldn’t really have done a worse job. It’s unfortunate that his father had alienated or fired anyone competent in his government leaving Julius with opportunists and morons to advise him.
Not like he would have listened to good advice anyway.
Realist Hero has already clearly established that Julius, much like his father, as a strong belief that he is in the right and that he can bully or beat down anyone who disagrees with his view of how the world should be and how he should rule. Unlike his father, Julius has neither the force of personality or the standing army to pull this one off.
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom seems to be expanding Kingdom into Empire.
Seeing Julius brought down might have been amusing if Realist Hero didn’t actually have real consequences in place. While seeing someone do a poor job and pay the price for it, having to flee his own country, could be satisfying, in the meantime the people of Amidonia are starving and in fear for their lives. Not only is their own army putting down those who dare complain, the country was being invaded from the south.
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What I did wonder was why Julius didn’t get the Empire to help him again? Or why didn’t Souma ask the Empire whether they supported Elfrieden annexing the neighbouring kingdom (at their request, of course)? As much as it seems a logical conclusion, if the Empire doesn’t support it then they’ll just end up where they were before.
Then again, all these invasions and talks of refugees flooding across the border struck a little too close to home this week and events in the real world are significantly more dramatic than anything this anime is managing to coble together in a fictional setting.
Though, throughout all of this, Souma and Hakuya both note that while Julius’ failure was within predictions, the speed and coordination of all the failings seemed a little contrived. It was nice to see at the end that clearly there was a helping hand within Amidonia pushing events in this direction. Otherwise it really would have felt like things just too easily fell Souma’s way in Realist Hero.
And of course that brings us to the end of the episode where Souma inadvertently acquires yet another candidate for his harem. Politically it makes sense. That said, if Souma agrees to that proposal before tidying things up with Juna I suspect there’s going to be a fall out somewhere along the lines.
Anyway, I could continue to point out Julius’ failings but I think that point has been well and truly established already in Realist Hero. It was interesting that when deciding what to do, Souma went through the advantages and disadvantages of expanding and taking control of Amidonia. I loved that he mentioned they would lose the reparation payments they had just secured. It actually does make it feel more realistic when that kind of materialism is definitely considered as a factor even in the midst of a humanitarian crisis.
I guess we’ll see in the next episode how all of this plays out.
Images from: How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom 2nd Season. Dir. T. Watanabe. J. C. Staff. 2022
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Karandi James
I am finding myself mixing up plot elements between Realist Hero and Genius Prince. Seriously. The protags look and feel almost identical to me. They’re both good anime but it is the same underlying story.
Pretty much which is why I fell behind on both this season.