Endro! Review and Reflections After Three

“Well, I don’t imagine anyone west of Bree would have much interest in adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner!” —Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Yūsha is a hero who resides on the island of Naral: she is the latest in a generation of Heroes, whose duty is to defeat the ancient evil known as the Dæmon Lord, whenever one appears. When she and her friends, Seira, Fai and Mei use a spell to seal away the Dæmon Lord, an accident occurs that sends the Dæmon Lord backwards in time. Manifesting as a small girl, the Dæmon Lord Mao decides to work as a teacher at the Adventurer’s School with the aim of preventing Yūsha from reaching her potential as a hero in the future. Her first attempt as a teacher is to rig a simple assignment and send them down the wrong path with the goal of forcing their expulsion, but Yūsha and her company return with the Hero’s Sword. Later, Mao learns of the girls’ unique talents (Seira is well-read, Fai is a capable fighter, Mei excels with Cartado and Yūsha’s luck is unmatched), and decides to throw the group into chaos by asking them to elect a leader. The girls struggle to decide who should lead their party, and after failed attempts to find one leader, decide that they can lead one another as the situation calls for it. Mao realises that history may repeat, and consigns herself to living a normal life. When the girls begin their practical for finishing assignments, they are somehow assigned to locating cats. They later receive a quest for retrieval, but end up detouring to help a little girl find a lost cat, defeating a stronger arachnid to do so. In their excitement, they forget to pick up the herb they were originally set to retrieve. This is Endro! (End Roll!) after three episodes, a fantasy anime drawing elements from slice-of-life series that has proven to be surprisingly enjoyable for the various misadventures Yūsha and wind up becoming entangled in as they explore their world.

By this point in time, the notion of “alternate worlds” (isekai) anime are one that has been the subject of no small discussion among the community; isekai stories are characterised by a high fantasy, RPG-like setting where a protagonist may have recollections of a past life; the typical isekai series has a protagonist whose capabilities in their original world were limited or otherwise unappreciated, and in this new world, their profound knowledge of things one might consider to be trivial (e.g. RPG mechanics, high fantasy tropes, etc.) allow them to find success. It’s a genre whose popularity is such that there are presently no shortage of such series (mirroring the fad in battle royale games), and so, the surge of isekai series means that commonalities between different series are manifesting now to render different series unremarkable. Endro!, on the other hand, might be set in a fantasy setting where RPG mechanics are present, but the series has not displayed any traits found in other isekai series (for one, wish fulfillment in the form of an uncommonly powerful protagonist with recollections of life in another world). Instead, Endro! focuses on Yūsha and her friends’ blissful everyday lives as they train for the eventual challenge of defeating the Dæmon Lord. Things more common to slice-of-life come into play, with the end result being a fluffy and humourous series that, despite drawing so many elements from well-established genres, manages to come across as being quite original and exciting to watch.

Screenshots and Commentary

• Endro! is not a Manga Time Kirara series (the manga was serialised to Comic Fire), but it does appear to be one prima facie: Yūsha resembles Yuru Camp△‘s Nadeshiko and is voiced by Hikaru Akao (Comic Girls‘ very own Kaoruko), and Seira looks somewhat like Aoba from New Game. Mei is voiced by Inori Minase, who delivers her lines a great deal like GochiUsa‘s Chino Kafuu, while Fai looks like Koyume from Comic Girls.

• While one might imagine that following the outcome of Yūsha’s triumph over Mao, she’s enjoying a well-deserved sleep, it turns out that we’re now back in a period before Yūsha had even become a hero. Mao is transformed into a small girl and decides to stop Yūsha from defeating her by expeling her from the Adventurer’s School. The notion of endless, looped time was previously explored in The World in Colours, and the simplistic usage left some disappointed. In Endro!, it’s a bit early to tell what impact Yūsha’s failed forbidden technique has on causality.

• While a monsterous being modelled after classic anime villians before, Mao becomes a small girl with dæmon horns after being sent back in time. As the teacher for Yūsha’s class, she proves to be knowledgeable on the world, but secretly schemes to prevent Yūsha from ever reach the point where she could challenge her. This suggests that Mao’s capacity for evil is likely matched by her ability to know what goes down in Naral.

• Seeing Aoba, Nadeshiko, Koyume and Chino in a fantasy world was sufficient to convince me to give Endro! a go for blog posts: as the winter 2019 season started, I was intending to wait and see to pick any anime to write about, since changes in my schedule mean I can no longer write with the same frequency as I used to. As such, I would prefer to only write about series where I might be able to say something useful, amusing or both.

• Mao’s insidious plan involves doing whatever it takes to expel Yūsha using her position as a teacher; she is able to control the nature of the assignments and exams, but also manipulate some aspects of reality to send the girls astray. However, Yūsha’s luck as a hero and her indefatigable spirit means that she somehow manages to find a way through. Besides their outward resemblance to other Manga Time Kirara characters, each of the girls have a unique trait: Seira has a fixation on horned gorillas, Fai’s mind never strays far from food, and Mei lives for Cartado. Whenever topics allow the girls to express their interests, they tend to delve into a long-winded talk that leaves the others flummoxed.

• RPG elements in Endro! are present in all but name; everything seen in RPG games are available, including notions of levelling, looting and questing. However, Endro! gives no signs of being an RPG: the characters seem to be a natural part of their world rather than experiencing it with an external perspective. As such, viewers are free to focus on the humour and character dynamics, rather than attempt to work out game-like mechanics or rules.

• When the girls get caught in a dungeon with seemingly no chance of escape, Seira throws an adorable fit. I haven’t seen very many series where the “arms and legs become reduced to simple geometric shapes”, so it is always quite entertaining to see this go down in what Cantonese people call 扭計 (jyutping nau2 gai3, literally “to kick up a fuss”). When Endro! was close to airing, I heard speculation that the series could go grimdark very quickly, given that Studio Gokumi’s last work with heroes had the heroes languish in despair as they discovered the truth about the world. After one episode, it is clear that there will be none of this, and this works to Endo!‘s favour.

• Yūsha manages to somehow free the girls, finds the Sword of the Hero (two-handed, binds on pick up, confers +150 strength and +150 stamina, and on attack, has a chance to deal massive damage against all opponents, ignoring resistances, etc), picks it up against Seira’s suggestion and promptly uses it to defeat a golem guarding the sword. However, unaccustomed to its power, Yūsha inadvertently destroys the dungeon they were originally supposed to be in.

• Besides being party members, Yūsha, Seira, Fai and Mei are friends, as well. During their down time after hours, they spend many evenings having various conversations, with the effect that Yūsha sometimes falls short on sleep and dozes off during class, to Mao’s simultaneous displeasure and pleasure (for disrupting class, and for increasing her odds of being tossed from the Adventurer’s School). Despite their eccentricities, each of the girls in Yūsha’s group have their own unique talents, and Mao is quick to recognise this.

• While it sounds juvenile for me to say so, this was the magic moment for me in Endro!: while trying to work out who should be leader, the girls decide to test each individual, and here, Seira is embarrassed to admit that she’s not much in the way of “leading by example”. Fai, Yūsha and Mei’s eyes here are a riot, bringing to mind the cut‘s eyes from Girls’ Last Tour. So out of place and distinct the Eyes of Disdain are, I hesitate not in saying if the whole of Endro! was to be rendered this way, I would still watch it. From here on out, Endro! has established beyond any doubt that it is a fun series to watch.

• Yūsha fails as a leader for being too bold and for charging into a situation without assessing her surroundings, while Fai lacks the will to lead a team owing to her preoccupation with food. Chino Mei ends up pushing the team to camp out overnight to be first in line for a new card. The girls eventually take a third option, opting to simultaneously lead one another, showing their resourcefulness and ability to employ the sort of creative thinking needed to best a Dæmon Lord.

• Mao concludes that if she were to allow Yūsha and the others to mount an assault on her as they are now, their incomplete mastery of the time magic would result in her suffering the same fate as Dormammu: the heroes and Mao would be trapped in this moment, endlessly. Realising that this would essentially make her Yūsha’s prisoner, she decides to simply live in the moment. There’s a Doctor Strange reference here for the readers who are MCU fans, and I should note that it should be no surprise I am hyped about both Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame.

• After rolling a second consecutive quest where their goal is to find a cat, the girls become determined to get a proper retrieval assignment after recalling the brutally difficult effort it took to find a cat. Ho exceedingly efficient in their task. Yūsha has an unusual talent for rolling stacks, and they get five more cat retrieval assignment, becoming exceedingly efficient in the process. Thus, they cannot believe that they’ve gotten a real assignment on their third day, and set about finding some herb. When a little girl approaches them and asks about her cat, Yūsha and the others decide to take up the search as a side-quest of sorts.

• The girls follow a trail of tips from townsfolk into the woods, defeat an arachnid-type monster and secure the herb per their assignment. As darkness falls, they decide to set up camp, and Seira realises she’s forgotten to bring food. An irate and semi-delirious Fai begins munching on Seira’s ears, her go-to reaction when food is unavailable, forcing Yūsha to return to town for provisions. The next morning, Seira’s ears are noticeably worse for wear, and she resolves to never forget the food again on pain of having her ears worn down by a ravenous Fai.

• A year ago, we would have been three episodes into Yuru Camp△, and was quickly proving to be one of the most enjoyable anime of the season. While there’s a bit of camping in Endro!, it’s nowhere near as comprehensive as what’s see in Yuru Camp△. As such, I will not be doing any comparisons between Survivorman and Endro! today. The page quote today comes from The Unexpected Journey, when Bilbo is declining Gandalf’s invitation to help him with an adventure. Hobbits are known for their love of food and a simple life: I’m certain that Seira is feeling this way now: while Yūsha and the others are no stranger to adventure, missing dinner is something that Fai simply won’t tolerate, and Seira’s ears pay the price for her oversight. A little-known fact about me is that I will become as unreasonable as Fai if I miss a meal.

• We’re approaching the Chinese New Year now, and that means family dinners to welcome the Year of the Boar. Earlier today, we had the first of our dinners at one of the best Chinese restaurants this side of time. Among the things on the menu were fried cod, fried shrimps, birds’ nest sirloin, pork collar and snow pea shoots (in addition to fried tofu, yi mein, fried rice and crispy chicken): Cantonese cuisine may not look it, but it certainly can leave one feeling quite warm on a chilly winter night. I’d woken up to thunder, of all things, this morning, and the entire day was a blustery one.

• The next morning, Yūsha and the others arrive at a tower, whose attendant states that yes, a cat matching their description is to be found inside. Upon entering, the girls find plenty of traps and monsters awaiting them. Rather than fighting their way to the top, Yūsha somehow manages to find shortcut that leads them to the top. Here, they square off against an elite arachnid, and Mei notes the difficulty of the battle, correlating the colour of a monster to its difficulty. I am reminded of The Division, where different health bar colours on enemies indicate their difficulty. Red health bars are normal, purple enemies are tougher, elites have a mustard-yellow bar, and then named elites have bright yellow bars. When I started out, anyone tougher than a purple would take me a while to beat, and groups of elites would overwhelm me.

• Having sunk nearly two hundred hours into The Division, and acquired a full six-piece Classified Striker Set, plus every exotic in the game and excellent weapons, even named elites fall before me, and it is only in legendary missions where my character becomes inadequate when solo. Back in Endro!, after the girls beat the arachnid, they find the cat stuck on the roof. It turns out that Seira is indeed a good archer, but dislikes wearing glasses for fear of being counted as a bookworm.

• With another assignment completed successfully, Yūsha and company return the girl’s cat. However, they end up forgetting their original assignment and immediately depart to retrieve the heart-shaped herb they were supposed to be securing. Endro! surprisingly exceeds expectations, and after three episodes, I see an anime I could relax to every Saturday for the next season, which is a busy one. I purchased Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown yesterday and have every intention of experiencing Ace Combat on the PC. In conjunction with this, Battlefield V‘s Tides of War assignments are keeping me busy, and The Division 2‘s open beta is set to open on the seventh of February.

• Owing to the number of things to do, I likely will be writing about one more anime this season, and The Magnificent Kotobuki is probably the one other show to be accorded this. For both Endro! and The Magnificent Kotobuki, I will return to do whole-season reviews after the three-episode post, and in the interim, I will be writing a great deal more about games. For those who are here for my anime discussions, fear not: I also intend to look at Mirai no Mirai and Non Non Biyori Vacation in the upcoming months!

Endro! is so-called because of its premise: the series’ outcome is preordained and already known to viewers within the first five minutes. After Yūsha and her friends destroy Dæmon Lord, the end credits roll. However, while audiences know what the end results of Endro! are, there remains the question of how Yūsha and the others get to this point. This is a very clever way to remind viewers that the journey is more relevant than the destination, and so, when audiences see Endro!, they know that every choice and experience Yūsha and her friends make and have will contribute to the ending in some fashion. This particular approach is what makes films like First Man and Apollo 13 so enjoyable: audiences enter knowing that Neil Armstrong successfully lands on the moon and will become the first human to walk on the surface of another world, and similarly, that Jim Lovell and his crew would successfully return to the earth after an explosion in the Apollo space craft forced them to abort their landing on the moon. In both cases, the journey, seeing how the outcome was reached, matters more than the outcome, and Endro! is using the very same approach to set the precedence for viewers as to what happens; viewers come in with the knowledge that this series in a fantasy realm is going to be comedic, easy-going and light-hearted, which is a welcome departure from the darker and more serious atmosphere that some isekai anime convey.