Anime / Endro~!

It's Still Too Soon for the End Roll~!

Whenever a Demon Lord arises, a hero shall likewise arise to vanquish him. On Naral Island, a land of monsters and magic, that cycle has been repeating since time immemorial. Now, a young woman named Yulia "Yusha" Chardiet is the 999th hero, and together with her brave party—Elven priestess Ellenoar "Seira" Seiran, feral warrior Fai Fai, and card wizard Mather "Mei" Enderstto—they set foot into the Demon Lord's imposing fortress and cast the sacred spell that will seal him forever. And thus, the righteous heroines bring peace to the land....

From a Certain Point of View.

In reality, the girls are rambunctious, well-meaning idiots, and after Yulia flubs the sealing spell it accidentally transports the Demon Lord back in time and reverts to her human form: a small Moe girl. Naming herself "Mao", she decides to get her revenge by enrolling as an instructor at the Adventurer School that brought the girls together as a party. However, all her clever schemes to split the fellowship and get the girls expelled are stymied by Yulia's incredible luck stat, which makes sure every contrived scenario works out in her favor and brings the girls one step closer to becoming the warriors they're destined to be.

Endro~! (End Roll!) is an original Fantasy Slice of Life anime directed by Kaori and produced by Studio Gokumi, with character designs by Namori (of YuruYuri fame). It began airing in the Winter 2019 season and is currently available for streaming on Funimation and Crunchyroll.

Not to be confused with End Roll, which is on the other side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.

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This anime provides examples of:

• Advertised Extra: Despite the early emphasis placed on the inciting time loop and Mao-sama being thrown back into the past so she can change the future, she's very quickly downgraded to supporting character in favor of the Yusha quartet's fantasy slice of life shenanigans. In some episodes, she doesn't even appear, or is only depicted in her male guise in Yusha's terribad crayon drawings. She regains her relevance status in the last episodes.
• Affectionate Parody: Of Eastern RPG. The setting is a RPG Mechanics 'Verse where the standard plot of a JRPG has already happened 998 times before, so everyone knows all about the tropes and cliches of the genre… and they play along anyway, because being an adventurer is awesome.
  • Brutally Deconstructed with Mao's backstory. As while adventures prospered under the verses JRPG mechanic the demons suffered leading to what is essentially a vicious cycle with no end and Mao simply quitting because she simply couldn't stand it anymore.
  • It is further revealed that contrary to the prophecy, the order isn't that the Hero is reincarnated when the Demon Lord revives, but rather that the Demon Lord is forced to revive when the Hero reincarnated. This is due to their destiny demanding that the Hero and the Demon Lord exist at the same time and some unseen force using that to ensure the Demon Lord revives with less and less power each time due to premature resurrection.
• All Your Powers Combined: The sealing spell used against the Demon Lord uses the power of the entire party.
• Bait-and-Switch: In episode two, the girls have a pajama party in which they giggle over "ripped bodies" and nonstop poking as a sign of affection. It turns out they're discussing their favorite monsters.
• Because Destiny Says So: The fight between the Demon Lord and the Hero is a destiny engineered by some unseen force over nearly a thousand Generations to permanently kill the Demon Lord. This destiny has forced the Hero to conveniently reincarnate at the same time as the Demon Lord, who in turn is being forced to revive early and against their will. They will fight as their destiny says, the Hero will win, and the Demon Lord will be forced to revive again with less power than last time, slowly wearing down the Demon Lord's power until they no longer have the strength to resurrect.
• Bedmate Reveal: When Mao recovers from her fever, she slowly opens her eyes to Lush lying in bed with her and watching her sleep. When asked why she got into bed with Mao, she says it's "Because a little girl was sleeping here".
• Beyond the Impossible: Time travel is a feat that can only be achieved by Creator-class Gods, which makes Yusha's accidental feat all the more bizarre, though later implied to be due to Chibi-chan.
• Big Entrance: Yusha's party is fond of these, complete with poses and an explosion of colored smoke from Mei's special-effects Cartado. Doing this near Princess Rona in Episode 5 ends with them quickly surrounded by armed guards.
• Book Ends: The story begins with Yusha attending school with her friends, wielding a club, determined to become the Hero and with Mao as her teacher secretly plotting to prevent her from becoming the Hero. The show ends with Yusha using the club again after throwing away the Hero's Sword, accompanied by her friends and a now-free, happy and reformed Mao as their teacher, while declaring to become the Hero now that she can chose who she becomes, free from destiny.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Mao invokes this on Seira, claiming that elves are insufferably haughty and self-righteous. Seira then subverts it by complaining about Mao's elven cultural stereotypes.
• Cassandra Truth: People tend not to believe Yusha when she tells people that she's the Hero. This ends when the Rona uses a royal treasure Cartado to confirm her as the Hero in front of everyone.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: On the hunt for a lost cat, the girls continue casually discussing their quest even in the throes of RPG combat against a spider.
• Cards of Power: Cartado are cards with a variety of effects that are used for spell-casting and are the system of magic for Adventurers. One theory has the name 'Cartado' supposedly deriving from the phrase "Car tado"^note Ancient Lapanestan for "World, be filled with light!" said by the great Creator while holding up a card when the World was made. The basis of modern Cartado was created from the "Seven Founding Heavens"; the original Seven Cards of mythical rarity gifted by God. Their strength depends on a user's magical aptitude and skill, and while higher grades of cards are individually more powerful, multiple cards can be combined together in different combinations to boost their power or create different effects. This means that if someone can devise and create the right combinations, even the lowest-ranked cards can compete and even surpass the higher-ranked ones, something Mei takes great advantage of.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: In episode 3, the girls keep getting assigned fetch quests to locate a missing cat. They get so used to the repetitive task that when they're finally assigned a real adventurer's quest, they immediately get sidetracked helping a little girl find her missing cat and forget about their actual quest entirely.
• Culture Chop Suey: Takes place in a standard Medieval European Fantasy setting, yet the background classmates include Native Americans, Africans, and Asians (judging by their ninja garb).
• Deus ex Machina: In the last five minutes, Chibi-chan is revealed to be a god-tier interdimensional space dragon who can eat the ideal essence out of things and reduce them to normal humans. This is used to conclusively conclude the ceaseless cycle of Demon & Hero that's been spinning for thousands of years.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening theme is sung by the voice actresses of the four main characters while the ending theme is sung by Inori Minase (Mei).
• Elite Four: Mao-sama had a set during her 999th incarnation as her Generals. She was unimpressed.
  • She was impressed by Rona's elite bodyguard however: Sword Master, Grappler, Archer and Arch Wizard. They are the four strongest people in the entire kingdom, and by Mao's admission are likely stronger than the Generals.
• Eye Catch: Each episode's eyecatch features one of the characters saying the show's title while showing the episode's number using their fingers.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: Yusha and her party manage to defeat the Demon Lord, after which the audience is treated to a credit roll featuring scenes from all their adventures up to this point... in the first five minutes of the first episode. This is the source of the show's title (the "end roll").
• Fetch Quest: Episode 3 revolves around these, as a practical exam for Yulia's Adventurer School.
• Grows on Trees: Cartado are not created magically, but actually grow on short trees. They apparently can grow on any tree, however a strong theory is that they grow more due to the earth rather than the trees themselves. The earth of the secret Tarka village is the most suited to grow them, hence why they are considered the manufacturer of Cartado.
• Heroic BSoD: Mao tried to induce this in Yusha when stating her Class by pointing out that a Hero only exists if there is a Demon Lord, which there isn't (at least to everyone besides Mao) so that makes Yusha Classless. She despairs for all of seven seconds before popping back to normal and confirming that she'll just have to find the Demon Lord to become a Hero, much to Mao's exasperation.
• Hidden Elf Village: The Tarka village is secluded from the rest of the world in order to protect itself from evil merchants who raid them for their monopoly on Cartado. Everything that happens there is only read about as guest are a rarity.
• Hidden Villain: Meigo states that some unseen force is responsible for the creation of the destiny the Hero and the Demon Lord follow, reviving the Hero to force the Demon Lord to resurrect early and lose power with each successive generation. This is only revealed in the finale and we are never told who is responsible, and even Meigo doesn't know who is manipulating this destiny behind the scenes.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: Lush first met Mao asleep in an alley during a mission, and very causally decided to take her since she was a cute little girl sleeping against a wall.
• Kleptomaniac Hero Found Underwear: One of the items Yusha finds on her leadership test (i.e. she marches into somebody's house and starts rifling through their stuff in search of loot) are a pair of racy panties, much to the embarrassment of her victim.
• Lost in Translation: Episode 5 relies heavily on punning Yusha, which is both a contraction of Yu-lia Cha-rdiet and the Japanese word for "hero". Inevitably, this gets lost when "Yusha" is translated back into English as "hero", such as Princess Rona announcing the "Hero Festival" adorned with statues and merch of Yulia.
• Marilyn Maneuver: Mei uses a wind Cartado to lift the skirt of a Yusha figurine, to the real Yusha's great embarrassment. According to Mei, she was wearing pink.
• Mundane Made Awesome: After Seira shoots down Chibi-chan being the leader because she's not bipedal, Chibi arduously proceeds to stand upright and walk on two legs.... Complete with swelling, triumphant music and the girls clenching their fists and giving her impassioned cries of encouragement.
• Nested Mouths: Spiders in the forest around town and their tougher palette swapped boss variant have these.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Mao's attempts to foil Yusha's development into a hero only further it.
• Non-Player Character: Parodied in episode 3. While Yusha and her party are questing for a missing cat, they discover a stone tower in the middle of a forest. A single average townsperson waits outside of it, standing ramrod straight and never turning or moving his eyeline, who monologues that he saw the missing cat on the top floor. The top floor of a tower filled with monsters. When they thank him and walk past, they question why he's standing there. Fai guesses it's his job.
• One-Word Title: Named for the credits, or "End Roll", which is the basis for some of the episode titles, such as the first: "It's Still Too Soon for the End Roll!", and the last: "After the End Roll...", which basically makes the whole show, the titular End Roll.
• Palette Swap: Discussed. In episode 3, when Yusha & co. confront a boss spider, Yusha quips that it's a recolored version of an enemy they fought earlier, only tougher.
  Mei: Even when monsters share the same form, if their colors differ, their strength and levels are completely different, too!
• Random Drop: When an enemy is conquered in battle, they flee and fade away, leaving a mini treasure chest in the spot they disappeared.
• Red Shirt Army: Mao's Flash Back in episode 6, reveal that she once had an army of faithful minions aside from her teacher/assistant Meigo and four generals in every cycle of her defeat and reincarnation. However, she's forced to send them to their deaths trying to stop the current hero's party every time they come around, knowing fully well how little chance her army had against them.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: The story is a loving parody of video game conventions, which takes place in the world where said video game conventions are just part of life.
• Screw Destiny: Due to Yusha's determination, and with the help from Chibi-chan, Yusha and Mao are able to get rid of the Concepts of the Demon Lord and the Hero and deny the destiny forced on them.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: The moment Mao realizes that once she become the official Demon Lord again, she would be forced into facing off with Yusha's party, trigger the failed spell, and create a Stable Time Loop which would force her to deal with them over and over again for all of eternity, she promptly drops the aspiration on the spot and resign into the idea of a normal life instead.
• Shoot the Rope: In episode 3, Seira is called upon to use her elven archer skills to free a dangling cat from a spider's web.
• Shout-Out: Multiple:
  • In episode 3, as Seira's rambling fantasy trails off, she mentions getting sucked up by a tornado and meeting the Wicked Horned Gorilla of the West.
  • A recurring background character at the school is a feline student who happens to be dressed in some quite familiar garb.
  • Mao's skirt looks a little too much like Dimentio's cape.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The time travel of Endro-! is far too convoluted for a single entry in the Time Travel Tropes.
• Unreliable Narrator: Episode two reveals what really happened during the confrontation between the heroes and the Demon Lord, from the Demon Lord's truthful perspective, which is a lot less epic and flattering than how episode one portrayed it from the heroes' side of the story.
• Verbal Tic: The Mackerel always say the word "Mackerel" at the end of their sentences, even in exclamation they will just simply say "Mackerel". The only times they won't is if they merely call out a person's name, or if they are so desperate that they forget.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: When the girls are putting on the festive robes for the Cartado festival, they have difficulty wearing them before they are given more appropriately sized ones. Mei can't get hers past her butt, Fai gets stuck at her breasts, and Yusha has great difficulty at her waist before she manages to get it on... only for the back to rip. Seria's is the only one who didn't need a resized one, to her slight depression
• What If?: The first episode shows what would have happened if the Forbidden spell had worked, with it sealing the Demon Lord, Yusha and her friends returning home, getting thanked by the Kingdom, and riding a giant flying penguin. However, that isn't the case for the actual story where the Forbidden spell failed due to Yusha forgetting the incantation halfway through it. The spell clashed with the Demon Lord's aura, which caused the Demon Lord to be sent back in time to before the heroes became Adventurers, while also trapping her in her human form of a tiny, adorable Demon girl.
• Wham Episode: Episode 11 has several moments. It is revealed that Chibi actually ate Mao's Demon Lord maid (who they name Meigo), though she lack her memories. When Ronna uses a Cartado to restore them, it seems to have no effect, but it turns out to have an unexpected one: Yusha's group remember theirs and reveal that Yusha's spell did a Mental Time Travel but sealed their memories. Upon labelling Meigo as the Demon Lord's attendant, she turns herself in to protect Mao (revealing that the Cartado had worked) and Mao decides in turn to reveal her identity at the Demon Lord to protect Meigo, kidnapping Ronna and challenging Yusha to rescue her.
  • The finale has its own share also. It is revealed that the Demon Lord does not chose to resurrect and are actually forced to by some unknown force, with the Hero also being made to revive at the convenient time to slay the Demon Lord before they regain their power, all as one long destiny to weaken the Demon Lord to the point of permanent death. Yusha throws away her title as Hero and Meigo gets Mao to do the same as the Demon Lord, with Chibi-chan revealed as a Concept-eating, dimensional dragon that gets rid of the "Hero" and the "Demon Lord" concepts, denying their destiny and turning their future blank and free for them to chose for themselves.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Being a fantasy anime that takes place in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, strange hair colors are apparently normal. Of the main cast alone, Yusha has pink hair, Seira has purple hair, and Mei has blue hair.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: To the collectors of the world, Cartado can reach mythical heights of unicorns and worth more than diamonds or their own lives. In the Tarka Village, the biggest producer of the Cartado, however, the cards themselves are practically just fancy fruit and firewood. Even the Ultra-Rare ones.

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