Goddess Listarte has been tasked with saving the world of Gaeabrande. Sure, the S-rank difficulty would frighten even the veteran gods who’ve saved hundreds of worlds, but this is the perfect chance for her to show the other gods and goddesses what she can do. So she decides to do the same thing she did the last five times: summon some guy from Japan because isekai stories are so popular there. While looking over the list of potential summoning candidates, she locks onto one Seiya Ryuuguuin, whose starting stats are absurdly high, and immediately summons him. Unfortunately, she didn’t quite catch the memo about how Seiya’s personality is “overly cautious”, and as a result she’s stuck with a “hero” who is so paranoid that, among other things, he uses multiple high-level offensive skills just to make sure a slime he kills stays dead. But when a powerful demon general arrives to intercept the new summon, perhaps Seiya’s cautious approach might not be the worst thing in the world in a summoned hero…
Cautious Hero is obviously a parody of the current isekai trend, with some similarities to Konosuba given that this show also features a goddess who is as selfish as she is useless. And while personality-wise Seiya is very different from Kazuma, his constant paranoia and dedication to making sure he has no chance of failure provides for plenty of amusement, especially with his interactions with Listarte. The visuals add to the comedy nicely with plenty of wacky faces and exaggerated reactions (as well as the standard fanservice quota), and Listarte’s voice acting courtesy of Aki Toyosaki is spot-on. I also appreciate how, as “overpowered” as Seiya is, he’s not in a position to be immediately steamrolling all enemies in his way, and the presence of the demon general that is way stronger than him is good for both keeping the story progression interesting and also for the comedy of Seiya’s reaction. The result is an entertaining isekai parody, which is great for those who can only watch isekai anime when they don’t take themselves seriously.
Cautious Hero: The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious is streaming on FunimationNow. The original light novel is available from Yen Press.
Totally agree with your First Impression, I would have written almost exactly what you did. It’s a funny one. I read a few of the manga chapters before I watched it. This one I will be watching this season 🙂