Finding work when you can’t be a hero anymore is hell, but it may lead to heaven.
This series, better known as Yu-Sibu in short, was one of those properties that arrived in the fall of 2013 and was a welcome surprise to me. It’s based on the light novel series written by Jun Sakyou and illustrated by Masaki Inuzumi, It’s one that has a really strong look to it while playing in a few different realms. It exists within a quasi-fantasy world, it plays to a modern-day retail environment within it and it skews into some really serious fanservice moments. And it has some big magic action sequences as well. With a beautiful design in the animation and characters, it’s a series that draws you in quickly and easily to try and see how the weirdness of the different aspects plays out. The original novels began in 2012 so it was a quick adaptation of the concept and it was a quick run of books, wrapping up in the middle of 2014 with ten volumes and a couple of manga. Sakyou didn’t go onto much more as a new novel series after this hit two volumes and then that was it for them.
The premise behind this is certainly fun enough as we get a fantasy world that has a good bit of technology – technology that’s powered by magic. A familiar enough concept to be sure and they do run with some cute ideas with it at times. The world is one where we get the League of Heroes that deals with fighting the Demons that reside there, deep underneath a volcano where there are innumerable traps, dungeons, and other things to keep heroes from defeating them. We get to meet a few of the heroes at the start, but unfortunately for them, the demon kingdom has collapsed under its own weight and doesn’t exist properly anymore. Because of that, there are no more demon incursions or problems and the League of Heroes disbands. That, in turn, has put a lot of people out of work. Not just the heroes, but weapons manufacturers, armorers, and a whole host of other smaller businesses that now have to figure out how to survive in this brave new world.
One such person is Raul Chaser, a young man who was working through his testing in the League of Heroes to become a hero but now finds himself working at Reon, an electronics and appliance shop in a busy town in the human world. He’s good at his job, applying the same intensity at learning it as he did with wanting to be a hero, and he’s a solid employee. We get the usual quirks of employees here with a manager within the chain that’s kind of lightheaded but is actually fairly sharp, an assistant manager that’s in love with her but unable to close the deal, and a ditzy girl who is the object of certain customers sexual advances. There’s also a Lawson convenience store next door that has a young woman named Elsa that works there that’s really in love with Raul and her usual coworker Lam, who is a dark young woman with her own issues that eventually come to light. It’s standard setup stuff, but it’s made welcome by the trappings of technology and magic that are used and the environment in general since there are so many quirks. Add in some of the supporting characters, including Reon’s installer and ace repair woman Loa, and you get a solid cast to work with.
What’s missing is a catalyst. That comes in the form of a new employee named Fino, a kind of grungy young man that brusquely gets employed there when Raul doesn’t think he has a chance in hell with his attitude. Naturally, there’s a twist that comes into play over the first couple of episodes as we see that Fino is actually a young woman and that she’s actually the demon king’s daughter. She’s come to the human side of the world to try and find a new path rather than being like her father and all that he was caught up in and is looking to find a way to bring something better to her own people, which she discovers along the way in the series. She’s not the swiftest of employees at first, or for the most part, because she has no real concept of what the real human world is like. So Raul has to teach her a lot while being conflicted a bit over who she is. But that’s a very minor point of it because she is so innocent and naive in a way that it’s hard to think of her as a demon. He becomes more protective of her than anything else, trying to keep who she really is a secret from a lot of people.
A lot of the series really is about Raul and Fino as he does his best to show her how the world works, often not remembering that she is as naturally clueless as she is. The pair have some really great scenes together overall while educating the viewer on how this magic-fueled technology works and some of its quirks and dangers of it, such as how homes are powered and the kind of creatures that can gum up the works and drain a house of its power levels. Repairs are given their due as well, which is nice to see as the Reon crew is more about local customer service and care. That plays into the mild storyline that comes from the arrival of a big chain called Amada that’s looking to dominate the market. You can see how that will play out, but over a couple of episodes in different ways, it largely ends up showing us some different ways that the world works, with a bit more of a crueler form used by Amada. It also serves as a bit of a bonding arc for the Reon employees who see their jobs and livelihoods threatened a bit by the arrival of Amada.
The series also brings us to a larger storyline in the final episodes that involves who Fino really is and the kinds of deeper secrets of the world. That’s not much of a surprise to have happened, and they do seed it a little bit earlier in the game, but once you know who she really is you know they have to tackle it in some way. But because of the way we see the slow and mostly natural build of a friendship that could be something more between Fino and Raul, it works very well to see how he ends up coming to her defense, even against friends of his from his hero training days, in order to do what’s really the right thing. Though that’s at the core of the story, there’s also the element of how things in the world can be disrupted in a big way, and adapting to it is the hardest thing ever. Raul adapts, unwillingly. Others from the past look for ways to bring back the past and end up causing more trouble in the end. It’s a familiar concept to work with, especially for those of us living in a world where new technologies and the Internet, in general, have disrupted so many industries, but they pull it off well enough here as a background theme.
What works the most for me with this show though is that the overall trappings make for a lot of fun in watching the characters. Fino has a reason for being clueless and Raul takes a lot of time before he realizes he really does like her and cares about her more than just a fellow employee. In between all of that, we get a lot of really fun silly bits with tons of fanservice, panty shots, bouncing breasts, and all the other awkward things that can be done either horribly wrong or wonderfully awesome. Luckily, this series falls into the latter category, and with the really great animation and designs, it’s just incredibly fun to watch it all unfold. There’s a good bit of attention paid to the fanservice and while some shows live or die by it, here it’s just another piece of the puzzle. A good piece of it, and something that injects a different kind of fun to things. It could work without it to be sure, but I suspect it would lose some of the silly factor that had me grinning throughout the majority of the episodes.
I’ve hated shows with stupidly long titles like this for a long time but this show was something I watched reluctantly and ended up absolutely loving. I expected some pretty cliched stuff from the title but what I got was a workplace comedy set in a magic/tech world that introduces a lot of really fun characters. It has a lot of silly situations, serious moments, and a look at how life can be disrupted in so many ways. While Raul is the main character and our window into the world, the real heavy lifting is done by Fino. If the catalyst character is annoying, overdone, or flat-out doesn’t work, it’s hard to be invested in it. But over the first few episodes, I found myself really enjoying her character and seeing the way she immersed herself in everything and how Raul had to deal with her, and what happens because of it. I’ve watched this a few times over the years and each time I wrap it up I love it but hate that it never saw an English dub produced for it. This should be something that was a lot more popular and accessible. Regardless, it’s held up well so far in the past decade for me and is something I’m already eagerly looking to revisit in the future..
(Stripes. Get your minds out of the gutter).
