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“Be mine, Hero!” This show has a lot of talking to be sure, and that’s alright. It’s great, even! The action will come–for now, they’re giving us the intellectual background to fully appreciate the conflicts to come, and the Maou and Yuusha’s place in them. Did I say intellectual? Yes, dear reader, this is an anime that will make you think! It’s not abstract philosophy, which is to say it’s nothing that any of us can’t wrap our minds around, but it’s rife with thoughts you may not have considered before, and therein lies the benefit. What’s more, they focus on hefty matters that have piqued my interest quite thoroughly.

What are these matters of which I speak? Economics, human nature, and the profit in war. I hope you paid attention to what Maou said, because those are truths she uttered. To me, fiction is at its greatest when it’s used as a magnifying glass, to focus on aspects of our own reality that would never be thought of, or otherwise ignored. Fiction can speak truth about reality, even when it’s full of demon kings and sword-wielding heroes. That’s what happened here. Maou says that war is profitable, and she is right. I am a businessman in my non-blogging time, so let me repeat that, with little detail, but absolute conviction – this is true. Certain parties will say that a war is done for great reasons, because it is right and moral and just, and yet in the back of their mind they’re thinking “Well yes, maybe…but also, I’ll make a killing on selling weapons. Send in the troops!” Likewise with the Central Nations giving money to the Southern Nations. It might be that they do think it’s right to give them assistance…but the calculus of having a shield from Maou’s armies is there as well. All that is as true in our world as it is in theirs. Sadly enough.