The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses

The hero Toto is strong but very shy and has trouble forming a party. One day, three beautiful women - Ciel, Anemone, and Gore - approach Toto to form a party. However, their secret goal is to assassinate him.

The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses is based on the manga series by writer Norishiro-chan and artist Yukiji Setsuda. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

I have to hand it to the creature designer for this show: those slimes are like almost no other I've seen in RPG-style anime. (Or JRPGs, for that matter.) Rather than being adorable and blobby, these slimes are stretchy, gummy splashes of goo with horror-coded eyeballs. They're actual monsters, not a cute merchandising effort, and I like that. I also welcome the fact that no one gets their clothes melted off by slime splatter; I don't feel like that was a given with this series. Is this a low bar for praise? Probably. But I still enjoyed this second episode more than the first.

In large part, that's because Goa is toned down. She's still very present, but her role has shifted away from “dominatrix with a tenuous grasp of consent” to “person with half a clue,” and that helps both move the story forward and make it less uncomfortable. For whatever reason, Goa's the only person who knows how this whole adventuring thing works, which makes a certain degree of sense when compared to the other two ladies; neither Anemone nor Ciel is likely to have been in a position to learn from adventurers, while Goa likely had some as clients. Toto…has no excuse, but that's meant to be part of the humor, so I'll let it slide. It's also looking like Goa is enjoying this aspect of the job, which is interesting. Yes, it's part of the plan to let one of them kill Toto, but where Anemone always seems peeved and Ciel is a little lost, Goa's enthused about just about everything. For the character who put me off the most in the first episode, this is an interesting change.

It also looks like Toto is going to slowly dole out information about himself as the story unfolds. In part, this seems to be because the women have to be interested in him as a person rather than a target, something that's beginning to show through. Ciel finds that she relates to him on some level, and that's how we learn about his difficulties finding a party and becoming an adventurer in the first place. The way he kills the slimes indicates that he's got a lot of skill as a fighter, which is probably why three separate groups want him taken out, but now Ciel is questioning why that is, at least a little bit. After all, if he spends all his time fainting and getting flustered, he's not a threat to anyone, is he?

This still doesn't look great from an animation standpoint, and Goa and Anemone's figures make my back hurt. But it feels less offensive in this second outing, and while I doubt I'll watch anymore, it may turn out to be a decently fun fantasy adventure.

While most of this episode left me cold, one moment did precisely the opposite: when Anemone, the assassin disguised as a priest, stopped when she noticed a girl being sold into slavery and kicked the slave trader's ass. And she even waited until she'd rescued the little girl and handed her a purse full of money before dismembering the guy, because a child that young shouldn't have to see something as scary as a dismemberment right in front of her. Not only did that cement Anemone as my favorite of the dubious trio of assassin princesses, it felt like a well-deserved slap in the face to one of the most unpleasant tropes in recent fantasy anime. Good job, Anemone. Keep kicking slaver ass.

Anemone's actions may be a sign that this is going to be a better series than the first episode sets up. Nominally a comedy, the plot involves three dangerous ladies separately being hired or assigned to murder the hero Toto, and they all infiltrate his party to do so. Well, not so much “infiltrate” as “offer to be the only ones willing to work with him,” because Toto has crippling social anxiety that, when coupled with his large form, makes him seem scary rather than scared. He's also remarkably easy to render unconscious so that the ladies can discuss their plans: all they have to do is act sweet or sexy (or just look like what they are: sexy ladies) and he drops like a stone. It's a gag that I found funnier as the episode went on, mostly because seeing the women drop their acts is more entertaining than their sugary personas.

That said, Goa is a problem for the narrative. Masquerading as a dancer, she's a dominatrix, but she's not a healthy portrayal of one. Not that I'm expecting nuance from this sort of comedy, but having her throw consent out the window doesn't work for me. It's meant to be funny, that's clear – her fondness for making men “her pets” and her over-the-top character design show that. But she rubs me the wrong way, and unlike loli demon Ciel and Anemone, she doesn't have anything to balance that out. Ciel's drive to consume all the sweets isn't as good as Anemone's vendetta against slavers, but it's also inoffensive.

The character designs for this are another stumbling block for me, although that won't be true for everyone. Poor Goa must have constant back and neck pain, although she does have a handy shelf in exchange, and neither she nor Anemone can have any internal organs, although Anemone does mention that she hates her priest cosplay, so maybe she's just tightly cinched? Animation-wise, there are a lot of off-model shots and shortcuts taken, so I can't say this looks great even if you do like the character art.

This isn't totally without potential. Toto's an afterthought thus far, but the ladies are more than capable of carrying the show. I hope we find out why everyone wants Toto dead soon, because that's a glaring plot hole that isn't helping.

If episode one sets up the premise, episode two sets up the status quo. Our three assassins each want to kill Toto and get credit for it. However, with his powerful constitution, it's clear to all three of them that it'll be nearly impossible if they keep getting in each other's way. Thus, they decide to set some ground rules: each would-be murderer will get one day uninterrupted to try and kill Toto. And in this episode, Ciel gets to go first.

The assassination attempt she goes for is a good one. Seeing that Toto exclusively uses his fists, she uses the remains of simple slime monsters to create a super slime that is resistant to blunt damage and is sticky to boot. It's a smart plan, but in the end, Toto's physical strength is just too overwhelming (once a little centrifugal force is applied, anyway).

Now, to be clear, the core joke is already wearing thin for me. The pattern of trying to kill him and failing due to his dumb luck and overwhelming power each week is not enough to keep me engaged.

However, I will say that I at least enjoy the fact that none of these characters hate each other. Not only do the girls like each other more than they'd like to admit, but none of them dislikes Toto as well. Killing him is either a job or a hobby (depending on which girl you ask). Either way, he is a challenge to be overcome, not someone to be despised. This allows for personal connections to be formed between each of them. They can like Toto and empathize with him, and still try to kill him whenever they get the chance.

But that alone is not enough to keep me watching this one. I suppose if the various iterations on the core joke never stop being funny for you, you could very well enjoy this series. But if not, there's little else to keep you around.

What we have here is another one of these anime with a comedic pattern, and I'm not sure that it can successfully support a full season of 12 episodes. The plot here is simple: three women want the hero dead for various reasons. They join his party and try to kill him, but he overcomes their attempts by accident. So sure is he that they are his virtuous companions who would never try to harm him that it never even occurs to him they might.

For this first episode, the three women are the main characters. (Toto the hero spends most of the episode unconscious as god granted man two heads and only enough blood to supply one at a time, apparently.) Ciel is the daughter of the Demon King and is tasked with killing Toto to prove herself. Meanwhile, Anemone's an assassin—and someone has put a hit out on Toto. It's the third woman, Goa, who derails the whole premise.

While Ciel and Anemone want Toto dead, Goa wants to enslave him. She enjoys breaking men and turning them into her puppets through drugs and magic. Toto seems to be the one man who might prove to be a challenge for her. The issue is that her goal seems to be in direct opposition to Ciel and Anemone's. She wants him alive, or how else is she to break his spirit and make him hers?

Yet, the story and dialogue act like she does want him dead. Ciel and Anemone see nothing wrong with what she wants and treat it as if she has the same goal. Honestly, it's baffling, and I feel like the anime is trying to gaslight me.

That weirdness aside, one thing that helps the anime is the fact that the three would-be killers are deeper than you'd expect. Ciel is excited to finally be out from under her father's overprotective thumb and able to explore the world. Anemone is killing people to gain enough money to abolish the slave trade. And as for Goa, she's lonely (they all are, actually). She has tons of slaves but no actual peers. Finding people who can at least somewhat resist her and treat her like a normal person despite her powers and reputation is something precious to her.

In the end, I wouldn't call this first episode good, but I would call it watchable. The core joke holds up for at least this first episode, and the friendship forming between these four lonely idiots manages to be more than a little heartwarming at times. If not for the discordance with Goa's goals, I might have even rated this higher. But as it stands, this is the score it gets.

The first episode of Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses won me over with its simple but effective little gimmick: What if the gaggle of heroines who all end up in our Hero Guy's party were all secretly out to kill him? It also helped that the killer coquettes all had personalities strong enough to make them interesting foils for one another, since their competition to kill Toto is the crux of the series' comedy stylings. I don't think anyone was ever going to mistake this show for one of the summer's standout hits, but like I said in my previews for Detectives These Days Are Crazy!, comedies have a much simpler job to do when it comes to keeping their audiences on board: Make 'em laugh.

Which it does! At least, I laughed, which is all I can account for. I wasn't busting a gut like this was a classic episode of Asobi Asobase or anything, but Shy Hero kept me chuckling enough to get me through to the end credits without checking my watch. That makes for a decent comedy, so far as I'm concerned. I liked it when Toto got so nervous that he started grunting out monosyllables like Frankenstein's monster. It also makes for a nice payoff when we find out that the guy has a voice like Marvel's Black Bolt when it comes to evaporating monsters.

Speaking of which, I also enjoy that Shy Hero stands as an example of the right way to do the “Sky, unconfident protagonist secretly has the powers of a living god” trope. He's not some slab of meat meant to serve as a glorified self-insert avatar, nor is he so legitimately pathetic that the show becomes unbearable to watch (I'm looking at you, Scooped Up by an S-Rank Adventurer!). Toto is an actual character with a personality, goals, flaws, and chemistry with the other members of the cast. It's funny that those qualities are all more or less the bare minimum prerequisites that any decent and functional story should have, but you'd be surprised at how many anime can barely be bothered to try at even one of them.

For that matter, I like Ciel, Anemone, and Goa, too. I know I said that a comedy only needs to worry about getting the yuks out of its paying customers, but a serialized adventure story that is going to be running for at least twelve weeks should probably be putting some effort into its storytelling. Already, we're seeing how hardened killers like Ciel might end up growing closer to a guy like Toto. By the end of things, I'm sure that everyone in this party will have become one big, happy family that might not even be trying to kill one another anymore. That's the dream, isn't it?

There is a fine line between something being enjoyably stupid and irritatingly stupid. The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses is an anime that falls into the former category, mostly because it is aware of exactly the sort of dumb trash it is aspiring to be. Sure, the art can be janky-looking, the animation is inconsistent, and some of the main characters look like a horny kid's One Piece fan art after any copyright-infringing details have been hastily scribbled over with whatever colored pencils were lying around at the time. I could easily imagine a version of Shy Hero where all of those faults are positively grating, but here? I dunno, they kind of added to the raggedy charm of the whole production. What can I say? It made me chuckle.

I think something that this show does genuinely well is give us characters that are worth a damn. Now, to be clear, I am not arguing that Toto, Anemone, Goa, and Ciel are exceptionally deep or artful protagonists. They are all clearly ridiculous idiots, and the show doesn't take them seriously for a second. As the main quartet of a comedy riff on fantasy anime cliches, though, they each possess identifiable personalities and are performed with enough gusto to keep scenes interesting. More importantly, though, is the fact that our three assassins play off of each other with a friendly murderous rivalry that can be well and truly charming. Sure, anyone who lacks patience for silly sex-comedy antics will likely find someone like Goa pretty tiresome, but we've got two whole other princesses to rely on for other gags once her routine with our titular shy hero is done with, so it's not like she can drag things down completely.

It's also worth noting that the show is actually capable of producing decent cuts of animation, even if the art and character designs consistently give off “Bargain DVD You Might Find in Some Obscure Bin Tucked Away in the Back of a Wal-Mart” vibes. The fight between Anemone and the decapitated zombie monster we meet partway through this premiere isn't half bad. This isn't the kind of anime that will ever produce popular YouTube supercuts of all its impressive setpieces, but The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses might surprise you with its competence if you can look past its more glaring and obvious shortcomings. The same goes for its jokes and its main characters, too. This cartoon won't be setting the world on fire any time soon, but I could see it making for decent watchlist filler (especially if you've got a folder on your computer labeled “Taxes” with a bunch of Nami and Nico Robin pinups that you saved off of DeviantArt back in the day).