The Legendary Hero is Dead!

Episode 9

If you've watched even a handful of anime, you have almost certainly seen an episode akin to this one. Some supernatural force overtakes the hero's mind and traps them in a dream world, they're tempted by the comforting fantasy of peace it offers, yet ultimately break out by resolving to face the dangers of the real world. It's such a well-trodden path that I typically roll my eyes when it happens. Sure, sometimes you get all-time classics like SSSS.Dynazenon episode 10, where the concept provides powerful resolution for the already well-realized characters and delivers stunning artistry to make those dreamworlds visually arresting. Most of the time, though, you get episodes like this one, where we plod along through the hero's memories and come out the other side having mostly run in place for 20 minutes, all while pretending we learned something pivotal.

I'll be upfront: I kind of hated this episode, and it's solely for the shamelessly hollow attempt at reforming Touka and Yuna's relationship. I said before that the show would have to work a miracle to make this demonstrably toxic, charmless pairing even remotely appealing, and if this is their big attempt, it fails hard. The simple fact is that Touka and Yuna's rapport has been garbage from day one, defined by sexual harassment and retaliatory violence, and that's never changed. I don't care how many retcons they throw in about how Touka was secretly being a good friend just offscreen, or how much the show insists he really cares about her because every interaction between the two is gross and degrading. Hell, just in this episode, when Touka thinks he's been sent back to the past, one of his first ideas is to groom Yuna from childhood to cater to his thigh fetish. That's goddamn awful! You can't make that touching or romantic!

For the sake of discussion, let's say you're inclined to ignore or excuse Touka contemplating sex crimes, though. There's still no heat or charm to this romance. It's nice that Yuna sought him out when they were kids because she thought he needed a friend, but I frankly don't understand why she would want to stick with him when every single time they talk he tries to violate her privacy or objectify her. The show doesn't have a reason either, seemingly because it doesn't think the way Touka acts is all that bad, so it treats the whole thing like a simple clash of personalities while ensuring us that Touka really does care about her – just look how he wants to protect her! Which, frankly, is the most boring and boilerplate basis for romance in all of shonen storytelling.

So even if you're somebody who finds Touka's scummy misogyny hilarious or relatable, there's still nothing appealing about these two. They don't have any chemistry. They're not funny together. They aren't even compelling in a trashy or problematic way. They're just a tired pervert gimmick and the inexplicably tolerant woman who loves him because the plot says so.

Yet that's what this episode, and seemingly the whole back half of this show, is trying to sell us on. So we get a bunch of cheap attempts to make Touka more sympathetic by focusing on all the tragedies he faced in his life. His father was abusive and publicly beat him. His loving mother died in his arms during the war. Alone and wounded, he nearly gave up hope, until a letter from Yuna gave him the courage to move on. It's all pretty standard stuff, and even divorced from the noxious relationship it's trying to sell, none of it lands. Even if it was more layered or actually fed into Touka's personality in the present timeline, the production and rushed pacing ensure that it all thuds to the ground and leaves little last impact.

The bottom line is that The Legendary Hero is Dead! just isn't equipped to tell a dramatic or romantic story. Be it the writing or the animation, the show has just enough going for it to be a mediocre comedy, but anything outside of that narrow lane is beyond its grasp. I hope that it won't try to venture outside that wheelhouse again because this try did nothing but shine a light on its worst aspects.

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The Legendary Hero is Dead! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.