I Couldn't Become a Hero..

Summary: >

Raul was on track for a career in becoming a Hero, a warrior dedicated to protecting the weak. Then the unthinkable happened: the demon lord was defeated. Times are tough for those who spent their life training to become Heros, but Raul was able to adjust well enough in his new job working at an electronics shop. Things were going fine until the new employee arrived.

Fino is rambunctious, inept and naive, so it falls on Raul to help her in training. She's also the daughter of the former demon lord he trained to defeat. Raul has a lot to teach her, but she might also help him realize life selling electronics isn't so far removed from the dream he once had.

Thoughts: >

I Couldn't Become a Hero, so I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job again shows the correlation between title length and lack of depth. Somehow that gets truncated to Yu-Shibu in Japanese. It's apparent this one will be fan service heavy, with stupidity abounding. Strangely enough, it has some unique features which are kind of cool. But for all this one has to work with, hardly any of it is utilized well.

The animation is only adequate, but most attention is paid to the boob jiggles. It becomes the biggest detractor, as Yu-Shibu goes in deliberately bad directions for the sake of showing off the girls, and the girl collection is very weak. Even by the end I still couldn't tell three of them apart. The others have no personalities, and even the males lack flavor. One character pulls this anime out of the gutter, and into a (somewhat) watchable state: Fino.

Fino is the oddly childish daughter of the demon lord, seeking a new beginning after the defeat of her father. She's energetic enough that I couldn't help liking her, and especially her evil-crazy laugh - one of those times a voice actress captures the essence of a character so well. Much of the comedy revolves around her unusual descriptions of things relating to the carnage of the demon world, yet Yu-Shibu gets little out of this content.

The fantasy world is an unusual fusion between fantasy RPG and Japan. It's strange, but cool too. The most conspicuous product placements in anime since the Pizza Hut / Code Geass merger, is the nearby Lawson convenience store. Yu-Shibu touches on topics like slave-labor, corporate take-overs, occupation displacement, and increasing reliance on technology. But just as it touches the topic, it drops it. Which is odd, because it seems pointless to introduce such things if it won't address them.

This anime becomes a victim of it's lack of focus. Hardly anything is accomplished in any given episode. It gets to the point of slice-of-life, but who in the hell wants to watch a slice of electronic store sales life? The comedy isn't good enough to carry it, and the romance is mostly the harem level of shallow. When the plot forms, it follows the standard half ass drama formula, including the "date" before the girl is threatened to be taken away.

Production is hard to describe for Yu-Shibu. In some parts the animation is good, but aside from occasional action sequences and boob jiggles it's nothing special. The designs look good, but off. There's something strange about the shading, making everything look flat and washed out. The music isn't too bad either, but the way it's used (and volume) is overpowering.

If you're into harem anime, I Couldn't Become a Hero.. might be worth checking out. For everyone else, probably not. It doesn't do the harem stuff well, and even though it has some unconventional cool fantasy stuff, nothing comes of it. Even so I didn't hate it, and liked enough parts to say it's watchable.

Screen Caps: >