The Legendary Hero is Dead!
Yuusha ga Shinda!
It’s Thursday, which means one of my absolute favorites of the season is airing tonight. There is an absolute bounty of excellent shows with great animation and writing, but this isn’t about those. This is about the Legendary Hero is Dead! A dark fantasy comedy with a thigh obsession and a flexible sword, ready to make Thursdays of Spring 2023 just a little funnier.
The anime opens with our hero Touka tending to his radish farm and being harangued by his childhood friend/neighbor Yuna. She is calling him a pervert for his stocking clad daikon radish he has sitting out. I’m not sure I can convey how hilarious this moment is, because while Yuna is yelling at Touka and he is desperately trying to tell her how every man has a stocking clad radish, you see some of them men in town rapidly hiding their own.
We continue past these to learn that demons are once again heading for this village, but never fear, Touka has a plan for defeating them. He has dug a pit trap in his yard and has a charcoal grill with a large piece of pork cooking behind it. Touka is very confident that this will lure in the demon who will fall and die in the pit trap.
This plan of course fails and Yuna is in peril, but it’s okay the Legendary Hero Sion has arrived! He slays the demon and is subsequently being fawned over by the village populace, but especially by Yuna. Then, Sion is lured away by the smell of cooking meat and falls directly into Touka’s pit trap and dies.
Understandably, this event leads to Touka’s social standing going down. He is responsible for the death of the Legendary Hero! Who could possibly save us now? Who will seal the gates to hell and end the demon's war?
The answer to that is Touka, but in the body of Sion the Legendary Hero. The next morning Touka awakens in Sion’s body. Having been placed in it by the necromancer Anri, who traveled with Sion and promised that she would reanimate his body with the soul of whoever killed him. That way someone would still be able to go forth and seal the demons away forever.
Touka is very upset by this whole situation, but it is the only way he can get back to his own body. So, after a very ridiculous and fan service riddled moment where he has to explain everything to Yuna, he sets off to save the world. Touka has to learn to use the Legendary sword and keep from being a skeleton while traveling to seal the gates with Yuna and Anri.
There are so many ridiculous moments in the first episode, and they keep up that level of comedy with each subsequent episode. Most of which stems from the fact that Touka doesn’t have enough natural magic power to properly maintain Sion’s body or to use the Legendary Sword as intended. The flexible but unstable nature of the Legendary Sword allows Touka to be able to use it as a mask, wall, fake flooring for a pitfall, but never really as a sword. He can’t quite keep it rigid enough for that. Especially if he doesn’t want to look like a rotting corpse.
There is also the running theme of Touka’s thigh fetish and the power of luscious thighs. They can and do save lives in this anime. There is a considerable amount of thigh related fan service in this anime. It is consistently a main motivator for our hero and hilarious every time.
The best part of the whole thing though is the banger of an opening. Shinda! by Masayoshi Oishi is an amazingly catchy song, the animation demonstrates the feel of the entire show. I listen to this song constantly; it makes my day. It is a great starter to a hilarious and relaxing show. It may not be the best anime of the season, but it is a real contender for the funniest.
I really hope that you will check out The Legendary Hero is Dead! streaming now on Crunchyroll.