The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses – Episode 1

Content Warning: Blood, Fan service

What’s it about? Hero Toto is strong, but shy, finding himself often at odds with making a party. But one day, when three beautiful women—Cuiel, Anemone, and Goa—approach him and want to form an adventure party, he’s ecstatic. Too bad they all want to kill him.

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I love the tropes of tabletop games and RPGs. There’s something familiar to, something intensely comforting, about the trappings that shape a world where adventure is everything and everything can be an adventure. When I roll the dice, whether physical or digital, I’m transported to another world where the things that I’m aware of—my inner thoughts, my constant anxiety, the background static of the world—fades as I become a member of a party, human, tiefling, elf, or otherwise.

That’s what I’ve taken into the premiere of The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses: a passion for stories with characters that feel lived in, that feel real and engaging and pull at my heart. Question is will these assassin princesses take me out, or am I as strong as the hero they seek to defeat?

Episode 1, “The Shy Hero and the Three Princesses,” starts off with Toto, a discount looking Kenshiro-type that is shy, but pretty unassuming. Life for him is pretty rote.

That is, until Ciel Zebul, heir to the Demon Clan, Anemone, an assassin, and Goa, a professional Dominatrix, seek him out to assassinate him.

What kicks off is an oddball comedy with a man who’s famous as a hero but unwitting as a person. Shy, yet eager, strong, yet isolated, Toto finds himself at odds with his desires to be around others but the intense isolation he experiences until these incredibly dangerous beauties seek him out and fulfill his dreams. What ensues is the start of two missions: one of a man and his newfound party and the three women with their own reasons for wanting his life in their hands.

Okay, okay, I’ll full admit that I was sure I wouldn’t like this premiere and yet here I am, kind of into this story of a genuinely good guy and the three comely maidens come to murder him. It’s enjoyably simple and simply enjoyable, walking that fine line of being almost too much to actually want to engage with. That’s not a strong want though, mind you: it’s more of a 5.75 out of 10 want, which enough for me to sigh and say, “This isn’t the worst by any means.”

That said, no series is without its flaws, and that includes The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses—of which only one is a princess, who also looks like a child despite being called a beautiful woman. That one’s strange, but that’s not my actual issue with this.

You’ll either like this premiere or you’ll kind of find it boring: I suspect there won’t really be an in-between. And because comedy is subjective, my question is: where will this show go from here? Right now, the comedy is kind of just…there. We know it’s going to be an episode a week of the overpowered Toto (geez, what a name) one-shotting baddies while his party members constantly give him a hard-on so fierce, he blacks out for chunks of time.

Oh yeah, and the whole killing bit: that gets derailed pretty quickly in this premiere, but it’s a core part of the series. It just remains to be seen whether these four idiots will have enough brain cells between them to actually function as a party and not get killed by accident in their pursuit of assassinating a tall man.

I found this enjoyable, largely because it’s nice to have something that’s finally a bit different from the usual garbage I cartoonishly devour of my own free will. In a sea of generic fantasy anime, this has two gimmicks going for it: Toto and his debilitating shyness and the trio of assassins who want to murder him (and serve as our comedic leads rather than being the villains of an incel fantasy about evil scheming women). But hey, at least this seems like a show that’s got ethics as well: the sadly routine entry of child trafficking is cut short by Anemone, the assassin for hire, cutting down the would-be slavers and freeing the girl with a coin pouch.

That said, it remains to be seen how long this joke can support this show. I don’t know that it can actually function as the backbone of an entire series without even the slightest bit of development plot-wise. I suppose for right now, this series is going to be a bit of a Konosuba-lite with more breasts and GUNS. Whether that’ll pay off into something more…who knows? I think I’ll at least kick this show around a bit more to find out where it’s heading.