After reading the first 15 Volumes of the Light Novel, I made the decision to drop Realist Hero. Below, is my Review of the Series in the form of “The Good, The Bad and The Trigger Warning (The Ugly)”. The Trigger Warning section is especially important to read through since you may regret ever starting the series otherwise. The review also contains a few spoilers but none outside of what’s been covered in the anime. All other spoilers have been spoiler tagged.

The Good

If you’re a fan of expansive worlds, Realist Hero checks that box. It provides a large map with numerous countries and cultures to explore. There is a Sea-Faring Nation where the people live on an Archipelago, a Mercenary Kingdom where the King is determined by battle prowess and a federation of nations that have banded together for stability among others. If you’re a fan of Kingdom Building, Realist Hero also checks that box. Realist Hero is an Isekai, but rather than being gifted strong offensive magic and becoming a demon-lord battling hero, the Main Character, Kazuya Souma, is given a support ability that aids him in bureaucratic work and uses it to reform his Kingdom, Elfrieden. But what he uses the most is his large breadth of knowledge of modern techniques, politics and tactics to run the Kingdom. It’s a lot of fun seeing the Kingdom progress over the course of the story.

Another good aspect of the series is how it uses both the magic found in the world as well as scientific techniques to create new possibilities. I won’t go into too much detail because that will ruin the fun if you’re wanting to start the series, but the chapters focusing on the science/magic innovations and discoveries were some of my favorites. The final good aspect of the series that I’d like to highlight is the Mystery Aspect. When Souma first arrives, he hears about the threat of the Demon Lord’s Domain which has taken over a large section of the continent. What caused them to show up, what is their goal and is there a connection between them and our current world? These are all questions that slowly unravel over the course of the story.

The Bad Realist Hero has a strong premise, but it’s held back a lot by its weak character writing. Starting off with Souma, he has some fun quirks that separate him from other main characters such as his near obsession with finding and utilizing talented individuals to add value to his Kingdom. Because he didn’t have much of a family prior to being Isekai’d, his greatest desire is to have a large family which in most cases translates to having a lot of good friends he can trust. But in this case, the author is as literal as possible and goes the Polygamy Approach which brings us to our next character, Liscia. She’s a fan favorite as she’s the former princess of Elfrieden with a tomboyish attitude who Souma first falls in love with. And she has a lot of potential at first, but after the first few volumes, her role devolves primarily into becoming the Harem Manager which is another decidedly weak portion of the series due to all of the girls getting along perfectly and never causing any trouble whatsoever to Souma.

Moving along to more of the girls, we have Aisha, the dark elf and strongest warrior in the kingdom who joins Souma’s side early. But because she’s the strongest warrior, the author makes her the muscle brained, loyal dog like character. Next, we have Juna, the quintessential Mary Sue character, who is not only super mature for her age but is also beautiful, smart, kind, strong in battles and is the number 1 Idol in the country. So of course, the author has her fall in love with Souma. There are other girls introduced as well including the economic prodigy Roroa Amidonia who is probably my favorite in the series as well as a Dragon-Newt Warrior girl named Carla Vargas who had a ton of potential to be a great character. I’ll be touching more on her later.

Moving along to the guys, if the defining feature of the girls is that they fall in love with Souma, the defining feature of the guys is that they are dumbed down to make Souma look smart with only a few exceptions such as Souma’s wise Prime Minister Hakuya. You have Albert, the former King, who was so bad at making decisions that the Kingdom fell to ruin. You have Halbert, one of Souma’s good friends, who required Souma’s keen insight to understand that being on the other side of a rebellion from the girl he loves would be a bad idea. You have Duke Castor Vargas who participated in the rebellion while leaving information gathering completely up to someone else and is easily tricked in battle. And you have Julius Amidonia who is also easily tricked in battle and is later dominated in post-war negotiations with Souma. And these are just male and female characters from the first 3 volumes.

The other big issue with the story is that things always go as conveniently as possible for Souma. One example is that the Gran Chaos Empire who was initially seen as this scary entity that controlled all the other countries and demanded Elfrieden turn over Souma in the first chapter turns out to be a benevolent country and Souma’s biggest ally. Another example from the most recent volume is that

Spoiler, click to view

a scary disease is threatening to wipe out the entire continent, but Souma solves this crisis by relying on extremely specific information he learned about the same exact type of disease while doing a Middle School Research Project.

There are many other examples.

So at this point, you may ask why my score is so low. Well, if I was just to judge Realist Hero on the above strengths and weaknesses, I’d probably give it a 70/100. There are better executed Isekai’s but there are also plenty of less creative and well thought out Isekai’s. I probably also would have continued reading the series as well but…

The Trigger Warning Earlier, I mentioned a girl named Carla Vargas who I thought had a lot of potential as a character. Unfortunately, she never comes even close to reaching her potential and is treated so badly by the main cast that the only explanation I can think of is that there’s a Woman in the author’s life that he hates named Carla.

To give a summary of what led her there, her father, Castor Vargas, is a Duke and along with Duke Georg Carmine and Duke Excel Walter makes up the 3 Dukes faction with standing armies meant to be both the Military Force of the Country and a check against the King. One of these Dukes, Duke Carmine, who Castor greatly respects decides to rebel almost immediately upon Souma becoming King. Castor trusts him implicitly and decides to join his rebellion. As the 2nd strongest Warrior of the Vargas Air Force behind only her father, Carla chooses to aide him. Additionally, due to Souma’s unnaturally quick ascension to the throne and betrothal to Liscia, who is Carla’s best friend, Carla is concerned that her friend was coerced into marriage. While Castor and Carla are preparing to rebel, Duke Carmine reveals to Souma that his rebellion is in actuality a fake rebellion meant to draw out the corrupt nobles, but despite it being a fake rebellion, he decides not to inform Castor about this due to Carmine’s concern that his friend would try to stop him if he found out.

The fake rebellion proceeds, and Castor and Carla are defeated and slave collared (In this world, the slave collar functions to start choking the wearer if they act against their master’s wishes or show them any type of disrespect). The rebellion battle is just the first part of a multi-battle war against their neighboring country Amidonia, and Carla is taken as a hostage by Souma to get the Vargas Army to cooperate. Once she hears about Carmine’s betrayal of their trust, Carla is devastated and even more devastated once she sees that her friend Liscia wasn’t coerced into marrying Souma after all and that she’d made her sad. In the later stages of the battle, Souma is put into a certain death situation where he gives up on life telling Carla to leave him and transfer her ownership to Liscia. But at the pain of disagreeing with his orders, Carla heroically begs him to allow her to save him instead. He relents, and Souma and Carla emerge victorious. Redemption Arc Complete, right?

Wrong. For their treasonous actions, Souma sentences Carmine to a fake death so that he can work in the shadows for him while he sentences Castor to serve as a unit soldier under Excel, the new military leader and his mother-in-law. But for Carla, the girl who just redeemed herself by saving his life, he sentences her to be his slave and serve as a maid under a known sadist, Serina while never once mentioning how she saved his life. Souma’s flawed reasoning for this is that unlike Castor and Carmine, she didn’t have a long service record.

Serina starts things off with many bangs by whipping Carla over an 8 day period to the point that she’s completely terrified of her. Neither Souma nor Liscia speak out at all, and it only gets worse from there. Serina learns that Carla hates being publicly embarrassed more than anything else so she forces her to wear a very revealing maid outfit at all times. Later on (this is the trigger warning),

Spoiler, click to view

Serina and Souma force her to appear in a super skimpy costume in a daily show that is broadcasted to everyone in the country causing Carla to become suicidal. She expresses this to Souma, and he laughs it off saying it’s not his fault. The daily show is well, a daily show, so Carla is put through her own personal version of hell every day, and not a single person tries to stop it or even comfort her, not Souma, not her mother or father, not her Grandmother Excel and not even her best friend Liscia. She likely has a daily desire to commit suicide but can’t because the Slave Collar won’t allow her to. And whenever, by some miracle, she does manage to get a reprieve and has something to look forwards to like a mock battle, Serina makes sure to shatter her dreams completely by forcing her to wear a skimpy outfit for it. Serina thinks of Carla as a toy to bully to her heart’s content, and Souma stays strongly resolute in his desire to not do anything about it even using the Slave Collar to force her to take part in the Daily Show on a few occasions.

And that’s not even the worst part. The worst part comes in Volume 12 which focuses on Carmine, the one who betrayed Carla’s trust.

Spoiler, click to view

It is revealed that Carmine had a daughter that like Carla wanted to rebel with her father but because he knew the truth, Carmine forced her into exile to stop her. If that wasn’t enough of a slap in the face to Carla already, Carmine gets a touching reunion with her, and she becomes lord of the Duchy where she is happily married just like Halbert the other almost rebel who has 2 wives at this point. Furthermore, Souma finally decides after 3 years of enabling Serina to thoroughly abuse Carla, that it’s time to make known the true circumstances of her rebellion. Souma tells Carla that he can remove her slave collar if she wants, to which the author has the infuriating audacity to have Carla respond with something along the lines of “No, I enjoy my current life as your slave and want to pay you back for all the kindness you have shown me.” When you're the author of a series, you get to play God with peoples' thoughts and actions. But the way the author plays God here to first have so many people in the know choose not to stop Carla from rebelling, next have her continually traumatized to an extent that should have completely broken her a long time ago and finally have her act as if she was done a huge favor by the source of it all is downright malicious and triggering as hell.

Yeah, there’s no redeeming the series from there.

To conclude things, I’ve probably focused too much on Carla’s suffering here, and to be fair, Carla gets less and less focus as time goes on in the series. She also does find some small form of happiness

Spoiler, click to view

in the form of Souma and Liscia’s kids, but her kind and pure nature towards these kids is very inconsistent with how you’d expect her to act considering the amount of suffering that Souma caused her. Characters like Carla in other series would use those kids to exact some form of revenge.

But I still do strongly believe it’s worth focusing on instead of merely dismissing it as a common gag because the other outcome of her suffering is that the entire main cast that enables it to happen and refuses to feel even the slightest bit of remorse takes a huge hit to their likability, Souma and Liscia in particular. Whenever, they speak of morality and giving people a second chance, it feels very hypocritical. And having a dislikable main cast is the death knell to any series.

If you disagree and find that the good aspects outweigh the bad aspects plus my trigger warning, then go ahead and enjoy the series. If not, then I'm glad to have saved you the time and anger that I wasted on this series.