The Realist Hero might be tired, but he’s making some progress.
I almost feel a little cheated this week, though not really because I quite enjoyed this episode of Realist Hero.
But from my episode 6 review, I had quite a discussion in the comments with one of my readers around Souma’s actions and motivations. The conclusion I drew after that was there’s a few different ways to read Souma’s character and I was kind of keen to see the treason and war story continue so that we could see which way Souma was actually going to lean.
Instead How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom more or less just avoided the conversation about the dukes and any potential rumblings of treason amongst the nobility (though there was one throwaway comment about the duke who currently controlled the kingdom’s main port). For something lighter, we instead had Souma’s mascot character going on an adventure which was actually kind of fun and then some light economic discussions around the importance of infrastructure and long term planning.
So let’s start with the adventure.
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One thing Realist Hero has done to really distinguish itself from almost every other isekai, is the main character really isn’t going on adventures or fighting monsters. Even in isekai where that isn’t the focus, the characters inevitably end up in a situation where they need to retrieve something or go somewhere and we go on a pretty standard adventure. However, this week Souma does go on an adventure (admittedly, by proxy).
Yes, he sends his spear wielding mascot thing that he is controlling with his magic power with a troop of adventurers into the underground tunnel where after some basic fights they are accosted by a salamander with acid saliva and forced to run for their lives. It’s all a bit of fun and light hearted and honestly while this sort of adventure is a dime-a-dozen the reason so many stories do them is because they are still fun.
While it might have been nice to get to know some of these characters a bit more, Realist Hero had other plans and so we cut to Souma giving all his exhausted money crunchers a much needed holiday as they had finally secured the funds he needed for a major project.
Given a lot of the draw of this anime for me was it seemed to want to take a more economic view on kingdom saving which I’ve kind of enjoyed in anime such as Maoyu Maou Yusha, I was kind of happy to see Realist Hero getting back to basics and the plan to build a port and improve the road network seemed like a logical enough way to go about it (even if the whole thing was very simplified down).
Naturally there is a problem with the plan that comes in the form of a local village warning the construction workers not to build on the land they’ve chosen. And this naturally comes on the back of Souma wondering just why no one had build on such a prime spot.
Fortunately, Souma isn’t short sighted enough not to inquire and on finding out more details determines that clearly the land is at risk from tsunamis and begins the process of choosing a new location.
And that’s really it for Realist Hero this week.
Except for one disappointing scene where the male characters are gathered around the map talking seriously about the risks to their plan and potential for how to salvage the project and Liscia and Aisha are sitting on the couch off to the side basically talking about who likes Souma more. Eye roll.
I was pretty sure that Souma said at some point he was going to hand over the kingdom to Liscia so why isn’t she involved in this conversation? Okay, I get medieval style kingdom and given there are only five characters in the scene it would be making a huge generalisation to think this was standard and yet it just seemed so needless. It would have made a lot more sense for Liscia to at least be asking for explanations even if she wasn’t contributing. As it is, it just feels like she’s been completely sidelined as anything other than Souma’s love interest.
Images from: How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom. Dir. T Watanabe. J.C.Staff. 2021
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Karandi James
Maybe in her mind, Liscia does not want the throne, so even when Souma gives it to her, she will make him stay somehow.
Maybe, but her being sidelined makes her less interesting as a character.
yes, she gets sidelined a lot in the beginning books.
Liscia needs to be more than just delicious. She’s not acting like the heir to a throne and that bugs me too.
I suppose we will get to the purposes of the rest of the members of the “best” club. I was completely disenchanted with the frugal gourmet episode.
It would be nice if this anime would do something with all the ingredients.
Good points.