If a civil servant fares this way in a different world with different rules, would an engineer fare any better? How about an animal control officer or a disaster management worker? Well, find out in this review of How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8.
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8 Overview
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom is being adapted to anime by the studio J.C.Staff, also known for bringing popular anime like Food Wars and One Punch Man Season 2 to our screens. The anime is being directed by Takashi Watanabe, who has previously been involved with the productions of Death Note and Slayers. The series is adapted from a famous light novel written by Dozuemaru.
If you would like to catch up to our reviews of Realist Hero, check out our review of How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 7 here!
– How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8 review does not contain spoilers –
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8- The Review
Subtlety is not one of Realist Hero’s strong suits. Everything is laid out so thick in front of the viewer that it is not very pleasant at times. Every little detail is either talked about or shown in a manner that of a children’s TV show like Dora The Explorer. I appreciate the thought and what the show is trying to accomplish, but there are better ways to achieve the same result.
One of them is not leaving all the worldbuilding to dialogue. J.C.Staff could show us some features about the kingdom, but they don’t do that. Instead, all the information is delivered through heavy-handed dialogue, which gets criminally boring at times. That leads us to another issue with How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8.
The show suffers from horrible pacing issues, where nothing will happen in the first half, and then the show will overfeed the viewers with information in the second half of the episode. Moments that are supposed to be a challenge barely last for 5 minutes, like the one plot point you will see in How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8. On the other hand, sometimes, plot points that don’t have a good basis in storytelling or the show’s theme make it in for more than one episode.
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I can’t think of why they can’t improve the pacing either, since they don’t rigorously follow the light novel in their adaptation anyway. If you were to believe one reader’s comment about How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8, they left out one of the key parts of the light novel and one character moment that was supposed to build to something in the future. If you’re not as faithful of an adaptation as, say, Made in Abyss, at least fix the parts that aren’t working in the anime. Like the horrible pacing.
The plot of How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8 was nothing special, but not bad. A tragedy occurs to one of Souma’s comrades, and he meets heaven and Earth to help out. In the end, he takes an important lesson away from it all, and it seems like he will grow as a protagonist because of this. All good stuff.
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Kazuya is very interesting because he is far and away one of the better Isekai protagonists you will see, but he is hampered by how the show uses him. He is constantly used as just an exposition dump by the showrunners, making all scenes very boring. He also wins a lot, apart from one thing (which I won’t spoil) that wasn’t his fault. He is a man of science and values but has almost no personality.
The animation in How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8 isn’t very good, which is fine if the showrunners just want to keep this as a slice of life series, but that wouldn’t work for the direction the show is headed. It’s a medieval anime with multiple kingdoms, so there is obviously going to be a war. P.A.Works do not look like they are equipped to animate an entire war while giving justice to the source material.
Verdict
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8 had pacing issues and might have hurt you if you are a fan of the light novels. Other than that, there were no other major issues with the episode. There wasn’t much good to say about it either. Don’t expect a Season 2, though, at least not a good one.
If you liked this review of How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom Episode 8, you’ll also enjoy our review of the next episode in this series.