'Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious' Is Wonderfully 'KonoSuba'-esque

In a season where an anime from the maker of KonoSuba was actually airing, the most KonoSuba-esque anime turned out to be Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious.  Now, it’s not as brilliant as KonoSuba, but it’s funny and meta in a way that’s reminiscent of KonoSuba.  It’s even likely that it has surpassed Isekai Quartet as the runner-up to KonoSuba as the best comedy isekai.

The 12-episode anime sees a novice goddess named Ristarte being assigned an S-class mission, i.e. oversee that saving of a world that’s on the brink of being taken over by a fearsome, powerful Demon Lord – an assignment that makes even veteran gods and goddesses flinch.  Thus, with the task being remarkably tough as it is, she must find and pick the right hero for it.  While sifting through the list of hero candidates, she stumbles upon the CV of Seiya Ryuguin, and her eyes pop.  She can’t believe her luck.  His specs are off the charts, and he’s very attractive to boot.  She feels she has hit the jackpot.

However, she neglects to read the fine print before summoning him.  As it turns out, Seiya is awfully cautious.

Prudent and suspicious to the point of extreme absurdity, Seiya refuses to make a move unless he has completely ascertained a positive outcome, and unless he has a backup plan for it and a backup plan for that backup plan AND a backup plan for that backup plan for that backup plan.  If a task requires one sword, he’ll make sure he has ten on hand.  Prior to jumping into a mission or battle, he’ll squeeze out all the time that can be spared for exhaustive, thorough training.  Batman has nothing on him when it comes to obsessed, excessive preparing.

Moreover, this attitude also reflects on how he fights.  Even if he’s only going against the weakest of monsters, he will nevertheless use his most powerful magical spell on it, and then, for good measure, he will repeatedly attack the place where it used to stand to make sure it’s truly dead!

Cautious Hero is utterly hilarious.  It has superb comedic timing, and the jokes rarely miss the target.  Much of its humor comes from the various ways Seiya would be display his aloofness, over-competence, and over-wariness, and the comical dynamics that he develops with the characters around him – especially with Ristarte – as a result.  And despite its somewhat repetitive nature, this never becomes ineffective and tired.  Moreover, there are also chuckles to be had from the show’s moments of self-awareness, in which pokes fun at the clichéd tropes of isekai.

However, this anime is not all comedy.  It surprisingly has drama as well, most especially at its end part.  At that point, it’s revealed that there’s actually a poignant reason why Seiya has such personality.  It really comes as a surprise, and thus, it makes an emotional impact and brings depth to the story.

In the end, Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious is not KonoSuba.  But while waiting for that third season, Cautious Hero may serve as a decent stand-in for a KonoSuba fix.