Autumn 2025 anime packs some stuffs that are interesting to explore. The most anticipated “advertisement as an anime” anime (Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi), the furry anime, some slice of life anime, and then the drama anime. Among them, there is this one title that is supposed to be a generic shounen anime where a bunch of highschool students got isekai’d and then doing their stuff as the “summoned heroes”.

Of course, that is just more than generic. It’s a trope at this moment, where the only bargaining point is whether the author is skilled enough to make the story stay engaging. And I think that’s the turning point whether it gets an anime or not. Often you’ll just get the most boring and generic anime, but rarely you’ll get something that is… interesting.

And this particular title caught my interest.

Ansatsusha de Aru Ore no Status ga Yuusha yori mo Akiraka ni Tsuyoi no da ga

Wow, that a title. “My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero’s” is one of the title that caught my attention because some clips about the demon girl character in episode 8 and above. Truly, I was pulled by the exoticism of non-pure-human characters, because hell yeah, human is boring. And then there is Amelia, an elf, which is the main heroine, and the canon “wife” of the protagonist. All in all, we got a bunch of cast and fairly interesting world building.

From the title alone, you might think that this is some sort of story where the protagonist, which IS NOT the hero, got racist treatment and somehow got expelled, banished, yada yada yada. Some anime already milked this concept to the bone, so at first I thought it would be something similar. But no! Turns out, everyone is having a brain! I mean, EVERYONE! Like, damn! You need to know how surprised I am when the guy who got the title “hero” is actually acting like a leader, and everyone else doesn’t act like complete menace just because “I have isekai skills now, haha, kneel over me” type shi. It’s really a breath of fresh air!

But, what’s the catch? There should be, right?

Yes, Uhh… Lets start from 2… or maybe 3 things where I can say is the turning point of the story, as shown in the anime.

SPOILER AHEAD! Just warning you

Commander Saran is Gay AF

I’m writing this because as you followed through the first 2 episodes, you can tell that this Saran guy is just… weird. Like, his justification on sticking closer to Akira (the protagonist) is just over two points: he deemed Akira as unique/different and he wanted to know more about the other world. For the latter, it’s understandable, but for the former, it really came into the plot armor of the story, which is somehow Akira got like 10x or 100x better starting up stats compared to his peers. Even to the “hero”. And hey! That’s about the entire premise of the story where the title got it’s inspiration from!

*mic drops*

Ahem… But okay, that’s maybe simple too anticlimactic. For Saran, he deemed Akira as different because Akira doesn’t follow the standard development. Like, realizing that he (Akira) is abnormally strong, he instead tried to hide it, which goes counterproductive as Commander Saran noticed him so hard.

But why is it that… Saran really put his eyes to Akira. At some point it event escalated to some weird BL development where I thought that there will be a coup de etat special event happening next, where Akira and Saran go full bromance in-between.

But then the writer decided to say “fuck you” and then killed Saran on the spot. And then, Akira ran from the kingdom with pure hatred and revenge in his heart.

Not gonna lie, that’s a pretty gay way to start the story.

So there we have it, a story of developing, training, and preparing thyself to carry revenge on your senpai.

BUT NO, WE’RE GOING TO MAKE AKIRA STRAIGHT AF NOW.

Amelia, the elven “princess”

She’s… beautiful. She’s what you would consider as “MyBini”. And it’s the exact kind of development that’s going after Akira saved Amelia in a dungeon. And then, they together made a “party” where they managed to beat the dungeon boss and have a shapeshifting talking deep blue cat that is really fluffy when you told him…her(?) to. And I don’t hate this development. It’s the most “MyKisah” kind of development that this puny self can self insert to.

The next few episodes is just some drama and plot device to further deepen the MC and Amelia’s relationship, until the most bullshit dilemma came in.

To “Return” or To Not “Return”

Akira is in the constant state of questioning himself on what can he do to return to his original world along with his friends. After all, he got a family back there and it’s completely natural and acceptable to worry about them. But what in his mind is not on the practicality, but more on the philosophical side. And it’s… ugh…

“Can I just be an assassin that doesn’t assassinate people?” type shi

Lets be real, you’re in a different world that the Japanese law doesn’t apply. It’s a world where people can just be easily killed because its filled with some nasty people. Bandits, corrupt politicians, thieves, ultra-perverted people, freaks… wait why does it sound like this real world even…

But you know, it’s a matter of survival over there now. Like the only way to defend yourself is through your strength and skills and cheat skills, and throughout the story, Akira is just using them to either impress Amelia, or to disarm and immobilize his enemies.

I can’t blame him, you got a super rare elf that is now in love with you and willing to follow you for whatever shit you’ll go through, you gotta show some good moves and impress her. Like hell, it should have been me, not him. But later, it grew within him that “oh nooo, killing people is bad, nooooo”. Which throw me off guard several times.

I think bringing the topic of ethics and morality is interesting IF it’s well cooked. The problem is, the story, the anime, has turned its genre into “drama” after Akira being asked many times to kill a specific bad guy in the story. And then he went into contemplating REAL HARD whether its ethical or still morally good idea. And this got dragged for several episodes… like 4 episodes! LIKE IT’S AN ARC OF ITS OWN WHERE AKIRA IS JUST HAVING INTERNAL DRAMA WITH HIMSELF.

But here is the thing, I don’t reject drama. Moreover, I love them, WHEN IT’S EXECUTED PROPERLY. The way that the author wrote the entire self-contemplating and internal conflict felt really dragged as he kept looking for a single reason to NOT make him kill people.

But you know the best part? When Akira finally made up his mind, which to kill the bad guy, SUDDENLY A MAGIC CRYSTAL IN WHICH THE RECORDING OF COMMANDER SARAN GIVING HIM ADVICE TO “not avenge me” SHOWED AND ALMOST CHANGED AKIRA’S MIND.

Dang, I wrote that in full caps. But that’s like the extend of my anger. I was in the brink of rating this 1/10, and will go for it if the author really decide that “no, nu uh, Akira lets have another season of you having mental breakdance”. Thank god, it didn’t go that way.

So, in the end, he did the thing. He is finally living to his title, and until the very end, we don’t even manage to see any shit being done by the hero, despite the hero is there in the title.

Takeouts

I think that this anime is trying to become a dramatic anime with some slice of actions. The overall tone of the anime is borderline gloomy, with very minimal usage of BGM even. There is no silly moments, as if this anime is really targeting to become the “serious” anime in this season. And I don’t dislike that. Sometimes I feel that something with this atmosphere is a breath of fresh air, as one of the good potential it has is the suspense playing. Gotta love it when the chill anime got some thrill and suspense in it, ay.

But what I think that this anime managed to shoo away its viewers is the prolonged and dragged conflict which can be executed better. The current way is way too slow in pacing and there are instances of repeated moments that’s caused by Akira’s uncertainty towards which path to take. It could be executed better by introducing more dire conflicts or add some “tragedy” to further test him to his limits. The story tries to incorporate rational thinking too much that it doesn’t feel like Akira has some real character in him. I cannot empathize to the setting where even the character doesn’t have anything to empathize for. Akira felt too shallow at times, and in the end I can see that he got like 3 main issues: Commander Saran, his moral, and his former world. I am sad that even in the end he doesn’t factor Amelia in, even after the kissing and ring engraving “ritual” they did. No wonder he didn’t get laid by Amelia, forcefully. Such a wasted opportunity.

In the end, what “saved” this anime for me is the existence of non-human characters. I prefer them (Amelia, Yoru, that catgirl princess, and Latticenail). Heck, I want a story, an OVA, where we follow Latticenail instead. Looks more fun that way.