Sentenced to Be a Hero

Episode 10

Episode 10 of Sentenced to Be a Hero finds the perfect balance of combat, downtime, and intrigue while introducing new characters and concepts to boot.

Dear reader, this might be my favorite episode of the season. It's not necessarily the best in any one area; there have been episodes with better fight scenes, more interesting character beats, and more impactful reveals. Yet this week, we see all of these elements woven together with a deft hand, near-perfect pacing, and great cinematography. It's the complete package and moves at a steady clip throughout its runtime. Even though the prior weeks have all been really strong, I think this is the ideal weekly entry, and I hope we keep getting more like it.

Perhaps the best element of this episode is the careful balance between the faeries and the humans in terms of potency. As I said way back in the first episode, the sheer overwhelming power of the faeries versus the humans created such a mismatch that it was hard to feel much of anything watching all the slaughter. It felt like all the little guys didn't matter much in the grand scheme when city-sized kaiju and goddess ultimate attacks were getting chucked around willy-nilly. This week, though, we get a very interesting dynamic. The faeries are strong and deadly to be sure, but the humans put together a formidable defense and - at times - deadly counterattacks. We can see the scales of battle tipping back and forth in a constant 60/40 to 40/60 and back again. A sense of shifting momentum that can turn on a dime is way more engaging as a viewer than watching one side or the other get obliterated without much effort.

This episode also underscores the political dance of various factions within this society. Temples, knights, heroes, nobles, etc., all rely on one another yet don't fully trust one another. Even beyond the (admittedly very interesting) internal corruption sub-plot that Kivia is pursuing, the heroes have to attack temple ships to ahem encourage reinforcements to be sent to aid in the fighting. Grimdark settings like this benefit greatly from a sense that the enemy within and the enemy without are both huge threats, while making it clear that if the factions banded together against the external threat, they would likely be successful (thus underscoring the tragedy of the infighting).

The character moments are pretty great, too. Rhyno is obnoxious and a bit creepy, but his magitech power armor with a giant cannon arm is extremely cool. He adds the much-needed tank archetype to the mix, which I approve of. Plus, Teoritta getting to have fun with the people and eat too much butter are very sweet moments and greatly appreciated.

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Sentenced to Be a Hero is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.