My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's

Episode 10

For nearly this whole season, I've been begging for My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's to slow down. It's constantly been undercutting both its dramatic tension in action scenes and its pivotal emotional moments by rushing through them. And while it's taken the better part of nine episodes to pump the brakes, it finally does so in episode 10. This entire episode is dedicated to one simple question: Will Akira decide to kill Gram or not?

Everything we've learned about Gram makes it seem like, if anyone ever deserved to be killed, it's him. He drugs people and makes them his slave soldiers, kidnaps those he finds attractive, and sells people to the demons. He's a cancer on the kingdom, and the world would objectively be better without him. But the question remains, why is this Akira's job to solve? The simple answer is, it's not. Everyone just wants to make it so.

Both the King and Crow have promised to reward Akira for the kill. Likewise, Crow makes it clear that Gram is tangentially related to the death of Saran in that his soldiers were rented out for the kill, making it personal. But while Akira set out to get revenge for his dead friend as one of his two main goals from the start, the target was always the person who sent the assassins (i.e., the human King), not a middleman nor the assassins themselves. So now Akira has to decide not only if he should kill Gram but how far his bloody revenge will spread.

Needless to say, the plot has set things up so that Akira has every reason to kill Gram—from big picture ones to personal ones. However, while Akira is an assassin by class, that is in no way the kind of person he actually is. While quiet and reserved, he is a normal Japanese teen. Before coming to the fantasy world, the most dangerous blade he ever held was a kitchen knife. He's not a natural-born fighter, and he's most certainly not a killer. Simply put, if not for being in the fantasy world, he would never have even considered taking a life—full stop—and now he wonders what it would mean for him if he did the deed.

After all, his other main goal aside from getting revenge for Saran is to return home to Earth and his family, to his sickly mother and loving sister. Can he hug them with bloodstained hands—knowing that he killed a man even when he didn't technically need to? Would they see a monster inside—the monster he believes will be born the moment he takes a life?

This ties in to Amelia's fears as well. It's not that Amelia will see Akira differently if he murders Gram—she won't stop loving him no matter what. It's that she's afraid he will stop loving himself if he goes through with it.

And to top it all off, we see through Crow Akira's fear made manifest. Crow is a good man whose inability to live up to his own morals has seen him spend decades punishing himself. He has refused to make human connections or fall in love until he has righted the wrong of his sister's murder—and now, such time has passed that he clearly wishes for the release of death once his mission is complete.

In the end, this is a fantastic episode of the show. It expertly delves into the moral conflict our hero is facing from many different angles and, in the process, helps build dramatic tension to the impending climax where Akira must make his choice and then live with it. It is also the perfect example of how good this show can be when it just slows down a bit. Let's hope this pace continues into next week and beyond.

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My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.