Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious is a 12 episode isekai anime based on the light novel series. You may think it is yet another generic isekai anime but it has a strong premise and manages to execute it well. The goddess Ristarte first shows up and quickly sets the scene. She is only one of many gods and goddesses, who frequently summon heroes into another world to save those worlds from impending doom. Ristarte had already saved five worlds thus far and she gets tasked with saving Gaeabrande, apparently classified as an S-class world, the most difficult that there is.
Ristarte, and by extension the anime, is acutely aware of all the isekai tropes. She picks a good promising candidate with astounding stats, even at level 1: Ryuguin Seiya. Seiya is summoned and this is when Ristarte realizes her error. Seiya is overly cautious, to the point of it being paranoia. Instead of being excited at the prospect of adventure, Seiya suspects and distrusts everything. Is the goddess telling the truth? Is the food poisoned? He even takes a week to train in the goddess’s house before venturing into Gaeabrande.
The anime has some comedy gold. Ristarte is not your typical benevolent goddess; she can be somewhat rough at times. She is actually very similar to Aqua from KonoSuba, only that she isn’t useless. She helps Seiya start off in the world, and throughout it all, we get to see Seiya as a person. He buys three sets of armor (one to use, a spare, and then a spare for the spare), tens of potions and smoke bombs, and use multiple overpowered moves just to make sure the slime is properly dead. The overkill is very funny. However, there is a difference between being overly cautious and extreme exaggerated or delusional. Seiya often crosses the line.
A lot of the humor also comes from the highly exaggerated reactions from Ristarte and this makes her likable and funny. She is as much a part of the core cast as Seiya without taking the spotlight away. The animation is bright and colorful. Strategic and frequent uses of art shift helps highlight the ridiculous of the situations, and the voice acting is perfect too. Seiya and Ristarte have different sets of focus, which allows their personalities and actions to contrast each other well.
Despite all the flack that Seiya gets from Ristarte, his cautiousness and being over-prepared does pay off. What also helps him is that he has unbelievably overpowered stats and abilities. He is your typical overpowered protagonist but his personality isn’t, and this is what differentiates Cautious Hero from other isekai anime. Seiya not only has access to incredible stats but he levels up quicker, has amazing abilities and can easily learn new ones.
Pretty much every character that Seiya meets will result in him scaring them off with his personality. His potential allies, trainers, shopkeepers, everyone. It’s pretty much a trademark of him and he doesn’t care what other people think of him. Seiya can be too frank and uncaring of others, his social skills are lacking. Cautious Hero likes to play around with the typical tropes of isekai, with Ristarte trying to adhere to them. Then Seiya goes ahead and breaks every one of those tropes, and this is what makes the anime enjoyable.
Seiya makes fast and easy progress in his quest to defeat the demon lord of the world, despite the high difficulty. Any other hero would have already succumbed but not him. Ristarte, at this point, it only being taken for the ride. Seiya may act like a big jerk at times, being rude and skeptical, but he has the power behind it, such that easily one-shotting the bosses doesn’t feel cheap or cheesy. The other trademark feature of Seiya is that he is quite the goddess-killer, often due to his good looks. Even though his personality is so hard to get along with, goddesses fall in love with him at first sight. What makes this somewhat more bearable is that he’s uninterested and so his replies are frequently funny with how clueless and unrelated they are. His stoic personality transfers over to it being difficult to discern whether he cares for his party or not.
A note is that looking up the stats of your opponent is common in this world. Naturally, Seiya has absurd stats (and it is always funny whenever Ristarte tries to check them for herself) but enemies have crazy stats as well. These numbers easily shoot up from hundreds to tens of thousands, to the point that it’s fairly meaningless… The other major difference in this anime is that Seiya and Ristarte can freely travel between the Divine Realm and Gaeabrande. Often, Seiya will return to the Divine Realm, where time runs more slowly, to train up in order to defeat a threat in Gaeabrande.
Despite the fast pacing, and seemingly weak story, there is quite a bit of foreshadowing throughout the season that builds up to a nice revelation towards the end. We find out why Seiya is so unhealthily cautious, and why Ristarte was so drawn to him despite his cold demeanor. It’s surprisingly an emotional moment, one that you wouldn’t expect from the tone of the anime. This leads to a solid ending that puts forwards a lot more closure than one would expect. It manages to pull off something that is a bit predictable, although considering the circumstances and the tone of the anime, it’s acceptable.
Overall, Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious is funny and interesting. Its take on the isekai anime is different enough that it doesn’t feel generic and helps make it stand out. Seiya may not be the most likable protagonist, but Ristarte more than makes up for him, and the pair actually works together quite well. Cautious Hero is a lot more engaging than it has reason for, and that makes it a great lighthearted watch.
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