Hero

At 12:30 a.m., Ore-sama aired on TV.

The ratings were pretty mediocre.

With online streaming on the rise, few anime creators paid attention to TV ratings anymore. Not many viewers chose to sit in front of the TV and watch anime in the middle of the night.

Of course, that didn't apply to anime airing during prime time in the daytime.

But Misawa Hiroshi, an animation director in his thirties with an already alarming hairline, was paying attention. When the anime finished airing on TV, there wasn't a peep on Twitter—not praise, not criticism. He dropped to his knees and let out a howl of "It's all over!"

No wonder he was going bald...

Actually, the number of people following Ore-sama was...

A little higher than anyone expected—at least, higher than Misawa Hiroshi had expected.

After all, despite being hard to defend in certain ways, the show was pretty entertaining.

For example, there was the protagonist's catchphrase and name...

The thing anime feared most wasn't a stupid plot or terrible animation. It was being boring, because then the audience wouldn't even want to keep watching.

For Ore-sama—or most new anime, really—the first episode drew the biggest audience. Whatever their reasons for tuning in, whether they were testing the waters, drawn in by the title, or fans of the original work, if the show seemed like their kind of thing, they'd click on it and watch an episode, or at least a few minutes...

If they liked it, they'd keep watching.

If they didn't, they'd move on.

Then the audience for the second episode would drop. Some viewers would give up because they disliked the plot direction or the protagonist's personality, the animation had fallen apart, or they thought, "Was I an idiot back then? Why did I start watching this show?"—or for some other similar reason.

By the third episode, the audience had more or less settled. After watching the first two, viewers had a general idea of what they were in for.

The number of people following the show wouldn't fluctuate much after that. It would stay roughly stable until the final episode, when it might rise a little. Some viewers had dropped it along the way, or simply hadn't had time to keep up. They'd watched a few episodes and eventually came back just to find out how it ended.

That was the usual trajectory for an ordinary anime's audience.

Shows with plot developments like the upperclassman getting decapitated, the protagonist getting cuckolded, or "Why has my pocket watch stopped?" were a different story...

Ore-sama didn't have any plot twists like those. It was an ordinary show that followed the three-episode rule. The sharp contrast between shit and chocolate in episode six, along with the way it built anticipation, drew in some new viewers. But episode seven's shit-tier production drove quite a few away. All in all, its audience hadn't skyrocketed or plummeted off a cliff.

It had mostly stayed steady.

Most of those viewers watched on streaming platforms, so it was too early for Misawa Hiroshi to declare, "It's all over!" The show's reception wouldn't be clear until it went up on the streaming sites.

Half an hour after the TV broadcast ended,

Ore-sama went live on a streaming site.

In a university dorm, Li Duoyu...

His name sounded pretty funny, and he was the kind of guy who gulped down drinks all day. With graduation coming up, he hadn't watched anime in ages.

So when people said they'd never give up being shut-ins, that was just a naive fantasy.

Work, graduation projects, goodbyes.

He'd been worrying about all that for the past two weeks. He had time to watch anime, of course, but most of the time he just wasn't in the mood.

Today, he finally remembered something he liked. He hadn't bought any cola, though, because he'd heard that stuff killed X.

He settled for a sip of plain water, put on his headphones, and opened You Are My Hero, the manga adaptation he'd liked most among the new anime this season.

As he recalled what had happened earlier and watched the latest episode, that familiar feeling slowly returned.

The characters in the anime pulled at his heartstrings, making him feel fired up one moment and down the next.

Whenever a roommate walked past and spotted the screen on his phone, they'd tease him with, "Watching anime again?" That would pull him out of the spell the characters had cast over him. He'd give an awkward little smile and say, "Just browsing," then punch his roommate and fool around with him. Only after the roommate left would he put his headphones back on.

After watching up to the latest episode, he took a long gulp of plain water.

His graduation-related gloom had finally lifted a little. But worrying about what other people thought brought it back, so the two feelings canceled each other out. His mood hadn't really changed—he just wanted some cola.

After exiting the You Are My Hero playback screen, Li Duoyu finally stopped thinking about lying in bed and scrolling through short videos. He wanted to take the opportunity to find more anime he liked.

He opened a bunch of shows he was following, and for some reason, Ore-sama caught his eye. It was simple: of all the titles, it was the longest.

Remembering how he'd spat cola everywhere during episode six, he smiled. He still remembered how excited he'd been. He clicked on episode seven with high hopes.

A few minutes in, Li Duoyu thought it was an eyesore.

Wasn't the ending of episode six pretty good? Why had it gone back to being a PowerPoint presentation?

He cursed the production team a few times.

Then he patiently kept watching.

Thankfully, even though the animation was a total mess, the plot was entertaining enough.

The protagonist finally rescued the heroine. After a PowerPoint-style fight, he barely escaped the demon lair and made it back to the kingdom. Then came the harem, turning his toe into a Holy Sword to show off, and all the other crowd-pleasing developments. At last, the king commissioned him to set off on a journey to defeat the Demon King.

The protagonist's party got up to plenty of other things along the way, laughing and joking. Their quest to defeat the Demon King felt more like a sightseeing trip.

Li Duoyu had no idea whether the production team had done it on purpose...

Either way, he'd nearly forgotten that, despite its chuunibyou theatrics, the show was at least trying to be a serious story. He was watching it as pure comedy now, ready to leave a "I love this anime the most.jpg" comment at the end.

At the end of episode eleven, the protagonist finally reached the so-called demon lair.

Li Duoyu glanced at the time. It was already one in the morning, and the final episode had just gone up.

Thinking, "I'll go to bed after this episode," he hit play.

The twelfth episode opened with a fade-in from black. The protagonist's face appeared on screen. "It's an honor to meet you..."

Before he could finish, the scene cut off.

The opening theme played.

What was that about?

Li Duoyu didn't seem to care much, but inside, his curiosity had been stirred. He wanted to know who the protagonist had been talking to and what he'd done.

He had to admit, the director and animation team knew how to mess with people...

Li Duoyu dragged the progress bar forward, skipping the opening.

The story picked up right where the previous episode had left off. After watching for a while, Li Duoyu noticed that the animation had improved a lot. At least, there were no obvious errors he could spot.

And when the protagonist's party fought the cannon fodder, it didn't look like a PowerPoint presentation anymore. It still wasn't great, but it was watchable.

The first half of the final episode kept up the show's usual tone of joking around while killing cannon fodder. They didn't even show the Demon King's face. Li Duoyu glanced at the progress bar, wondering, "Can they really wrap things up at this rate?" Then he kept watching.

A huge wave of minions charged in and scattered the protagonist's party. The heroine and protagonist fought together, wiped out the cannon fodder, and caught a glimpse of the Four Heavenly Kings who served the Demon King, along with the Demon King himself.

The protagonist met their gaze, then looked back at the heroine.

"Please don't go." The heroine grabbed his sleeve.

The protagonist, who'd been joking around the whole way, suddenly grew completely serious. Even his face looked a lot more handsome.

Watching this, Li Duoyu suddenly had a feeling...

"Did you know? I'm not actually a Hero." The protagonist turned his face—still at least eleven episodes' worth of a wreck—and looked straight into the camera.

His hair fluttered in the wind. His eyes were gentle, and he looked incredibly handsome. A flood of question marks filled the comments.

Li Duoyu: "..."

The protagonist looked meaningfully at the heroine. In a complete departure from his previous manner, he spoke softly:

"I'm really just an ordinary human. I trained hard in the countryside, worked hard, and came to the royal capital because I wanted to find a job as a guard and support myself."

"But I liked showing off, so I transformed my weapon and attached it to my toe. When I got into a fight with someone, I'd start by shouting, 'This guy's toe is a Holy Sword!' ...Then, for some reason, people started saying I was the Hero chosen by fate. But that wasn't a Holy Sword. It was just an ordinary weapon."

"But everyone kept saying it, and I accepted it because it meant I could get a meal. Later, my reputation grew and grew until even I started believing I was a Hero. I even dared to accept the mission to go alone into the demon lair and rescue you."

"You have no idea how scared I was when I faced the Demon King."

"But in the end, even the Demon King seemed to accept that I was the Hero."

"I rescued you from the demon lair and brought you safely back to the royal capital. Everyone believed even more strongly that I was the Hero because I'd rescued you from the hands of that 'cruel, invincible' Demon King they talked about. The people shouted my name. The king praised me. The noble ladies of the royal capital all liked me. Even the captain of the guard, who had seemed so fearsome to me, treated me with respect."

"But the Demon King wasn't that scary, was he?" The protagonist turned to look into the distance. "If even a country boy like me could escape from him, how scary could he really be?"

"But why hasn't the Hero foretold by the Goddess appeared? Why does the king keep a group of elite knights around just to guard the city walls? Why did someone who was beaten up by the captain of the guard at the start become the Hero everyone talks about?"

"I can't make sense of it."

The protagonist turned away from the heroine and took a step forward, his arms held slightly away from his sides. A breeze lifted the hem of his clothes.

"But, you know what?"

"Since you all say I'm the Hero, then I'll be the Hero."

After the protagonist murmured his final line, the camera cut sharply to his feet. From a low angle, it showed his entire body. After a brief pause, black and white alternated across the screen. They'd added only a dozen or so black-and-white frames, but the buildup was absolutely explosive!

Boom.

After half a second of buildup, the ground beneath the protagonist exploded. Flames spread outward and blocked the camera. It cut smoothly to the space above him. Accompanied by rousing music, he shot upward at a speed that seemed fast enough to escape the atmosphere, burst through the smoke from the explosion, swept past the camera, and launched into the air. Then, in a gliding pose, he charged toward the Demon King.

In midair, the protagonist accelerated again and broke the sound barrier. As he neared the Demon King, he swung his legs and slammed downward.

The protagonist landed perfectly. The ground caved in, and dirt flew everywhere.

As the wind died down, his clothes and hair settled. He straightened up, looked at the Four Heavenly Kings and the Demon King before him, and smiled. "Hello there."