Follow TV Tropes

Following

Characters / The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious - Seiya Ryuuguuin

Go To

Seiya Ryuuguuin

Voiced by: Yuichiro Umehara (Japanese), Anthony Bowling (English)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cautious_hero_seiya.png

The titular cautious hero, who takes excessive precautions in his quest despite his high stat growth.


    open/close all folders 
    A-F 
  • Action Dad: Along with an incredibly skilled and powerful hero, Seiya is the father to Kiriko, the child he conceived with Princess Tiana in Ixphoria and whose soul is now trapped inside a robotic body.
  • Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In his past, he begged the Demon Lord of Ixphoria not to kill Tiana and their unborn baby. His pleads went unheard.
  • Always Save the Girl:
    • When given the choice, he'll prioritize saving his friends over the world. He passes up on Igzasion in favor of saving Elulu from her sacrifice, despite how doing so means he loses the only weapon that can kill the Demon Lord.
    • Subverted in Ixphoria, but not for a lack of trying. Kiriko's soul is tied to Ultimaeus's life, which means she'll die when Ultimaeus dies. Seiya spends days researching souls and even considers a plan to freeze Ultimaeus solid, but eventually realizes he cannot save Kiriko. The best he can do is verbally comfort Kiriko as he finishes off the Demon Lord.
  • Amnesiacs are Innocent: When he's inflicted with a strong case of amnesia that reverts him back to his reckless personality, he's a lot nicer to people around him, including the Ixphorians who blame him for failing his previous quest and their world's current Hell on Earth state.
  • Attack Reflector: Counter Break is a destruction technique that reflects the damage back at the attacker. In this case, when Seiya lost his arm, this ability allowed him to also cut off Wohlks' arm without the latter realizing it.
  • Automatic Crossbows: Technically, it's a magic bow, but Seiya fires his magic bow at Beel Bub's flies so quickly that it's essentially this. Since his arrows are flying much faster than the ones used by Rosalie's archers, the normally fast flies have no time to react before dropping dead out of the sky as Seiya shoots them all down.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: His Meteor Strike spell is capable of destroying entire armies just one cast, but its capacity for incredible destruction means it can't be used anywhere else other than an open plain far away from civilization. Seiya never uses it again after wiping out Deathmagla's undead army for this reason.
  • Badass Cape: He used to wear a red cape in his previous life on Ixphoria.
  • Baritone of Strength: Has a deep, strong voice to go with his power and serious demeanor courtesy of Yuichiro Umehara.
  • Became Their Own Antithesis: Seiya is pathologically cautious, obsessed with arduous training, and prepares countermeasures for every possible threat. His past self was the polar opposite; impulsive, reckless, hated training, and only cared to defeat evil monsters as quickly as he could without taking the time to prepare himself. His personality drastically changed after his recklessness got his entire party Eaten Alive by the Demon Lord.
  • Begin with a Finisher: What Seiya does to the slime they encounter early on, blowing it away with a No Kill like Overkill massive attack.
  • Berserk Button: An irritated Seiya repeatedly slaps Rosalie for being reckless and getting her men killed by charging ahead without a plan since it subconsciously reminds him of himself when he failed to save the previous world he was summoned to by acting in the same manner.
  • Big "NO!": Screams this when the Demon Lord of Ixphoria is about to eat Tiana and their unborn baby.
  • Bishie Sparkle: From Rista's point of view, he is sometimes shown with this, signifying her crush on him.
  • The Blacksmith: In his efforts to be as prepared for any eventuality as he can, he uses his Combine skill to create weapons, armor, and magical accessories using whatever he can get his hands on, especially if the materials are high quality (the hair of Rista, a goddess, being a commonly used one). Often veers into Ultimate Blacksmith, as he has a keen eye for taking said high quality materials and making the best equipment that could ever be made out of what he has on hand at the time.
  • Blood Knight: Played with. Seiya generally avoids unwinnable or disadvantageous fights, but his obsession with being prepared means combat is almost always on his mind, thus he trains like a maniac. This allows him to resist the corrupting effects of the Berserk technique.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • His first method of Level Grinding and preparing himself to fight Chaos Machina again is to simply exercise in his room. Sure enough, even Rista is surprised when he did gain some levels and skills just by doing this mundane task instead of the typical way of gaining EXP in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, which is killing monsters.
    • His Platinum Swords aren't anywhere close to matching legendary weapons like Igzasion, but they can be mass-produced as long as Rista has hair and can be synthesized with other objects to give them special properties whenever he needs them.
  • Borrowed Catchphrase: In the Ixphoria arc, he sometimes says, "I have seen all that you have to offer," which is Emperor Wohlks' catchphrase.
  • Boxing Lessons for Superman: He insists on learning as many techniques from the gods as he can, becoming skilled at swordsmanship, archery, and destruction techniques in the process. This is because he's worried that he'll still be weaker than the stronger demons at his level cap, meaning he needs to learn additional skills to compensate.
  • Broken Ace: His baseline stats were far higher than the other potential heroes, he's an Instant Expert that learns the skills from some of the most powerful gods in the the Divine Realm in days, he always comes out on top due to his Crazy-Prepared nature and has multiple goddess falling for him. Even in Ixphoria, he was stated by Aria to always win despite being underleveled and never having a plan due to his natural talent as a fighter. However, people call Seiya "ill" for his exaggeratedly paranoid behavior and obsession with training so hard that his trainer ends up terrified of him. His personality ended up this way after his past recklessness and overconfidence got his entire party killed.
  • Brutal Honesty: The man never minces his words regardless of how insulting they could be, even when addressing gods and royalty. Someone's offended? Tough break.
  • Buffy Speak: Seiya calls the Transform Automatic Garuda skill as "turn into birds and come back, boom".
  • Cast from Lifespan: Valhalla's Gate is cast in exchange of one's own life. The user could survive if they have maxed stats though. Valhalla's Gate Another takes his life as payment and not even a fully powered healing goddess can stop that.
  • Catchphrase: When he feels ready to take on the next part of his quest, he'll say "perfectly prepared." His catchphrase used to be "gonna be okay" until Ixphoria's Demon Lord made the situation not okay.
  • Celibate Hero: Despite attracting the attention of several beautiful goddesses, Seiya only wants to focus on training. He nonchalantly dismisses Rista's advances, outright rejects Adenela's romantic gestures, and shoots an arrow at a naked Mitis when she tries to seduce him. This is actually a good thing because if Seiya were to give in to the advances of a goddess, he would automatically lose his qualifications as a hero. This was averted in Ixphoria, where he was in a relationship with Tiana.
  • Chick Magnet: Rista even puts a lampshade on this as she calls Seiya a "Goddess-Killer" after realizing that Adenela fell in love with him without Seiya even realizing it.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Seiya never fights fair if he can help it which is all in line with his cautious attitude as he completely annihilates threats so they don't come back. His entire plan for a dimension-crossing opponent he couldn't defeat was to manipulate the gods into doing it for him.
  • Combat Sadomasochist: Way back in the past, even if there's a hole in his chest and when he had only 2 HP left, he was still thrilled and happy to charge towards the enemy.
  • Comically Invincible Hero: A good part of the series' comedy is centered around Seiya's absurdly powerful abilities that allow him to obliterate entire armies by throwing meteors at them or destroy towns he was supposed to save while he uses over-the-top destructive attacks to overkill monsters. Turns out he is a Deconstruction because he deliberately makes himself ridiculously overpowered to compensate for risk. The result only looks like comical overkill.
  • The Comically Serious: Most of the humor in the series is derived from Seiya's completely blank, serious personality being at odds to the ridiculousness around him (especially Rista's reactions).
  • Crazy-Prepared:
    • He's a strong believer in being overleveled against all foes and tends to stock more armor and items than he needs.
    • After knowing that there are beings like Rista who can scan a hero's status parameters, he decides to use the Fake Out skill in order to fake his parameters in case the enemies also have a scanning ability like Rista. He's proven right when Chaos Machina does read his stats mid-fight.
  • Cruel to Be Kind: He intentionally pushes his allies away and refuses their help, since he doesn't want to risk them dying in battle. Aria later reveals to Rista that she summoned Seiya save Ixphoria 100 years back. Unfortunately, he was reckless and charged into battle, hoping things worked out. It did until they defeated the Demon Lord, who turned out to have a second life. He then killed the exhausted party by eating them, including Tiana, Seiya's healer and lover who was pregnant at the time she was eaten. Though neither he, nor Rista, who is the reincarnation of Tiana, remember anything from Ixphoria, his extreme guilt at not planning ahead and preparing for contingencies carried over and triggered his "overly cautious" status.
  • Dangerous Forbidden Technique: In the final battle in Gaeabrande, Seiya reveals that he has an even stronger version of Valhalla's Gate called Valhalla's Gate Another that creates a larger gate capable of withstanding Gaeabrande's Demon Lord's final attack, which was said by Rista to have twice the power needed to end the world. However, the cost is Seiya's life, which causes Seiya's body to break apart at such a rate that even Rista's full healing powers can't stop.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: He had a wife, who was pregnant, in the previous world he was summoned, Ixphoria. He was very headstrong and basically bulldozed his way to the Demon Lord. He killed the Demon Lord without realizing that he had another life; cue the Demon Lord annihilating his entire party, which consisted of his friends and his wife. After Colt and Aria were eaten, Seiya literally begged the Demon Lord not to kill Tiana. However, the Demon Lord ignored him completely and proceeded to tear the baby from his wife's womb and eat it, along with his wife afterward. Seiya was sent back to Japan, forgetting everything that happened. However, the cautious personality was engraved into his soul. The goddess who summoned him this time, Rista, is his wife's reincarnation. And to add further insult to injury, his unborn daughter’s soul ends up being used to power a robot, and she couldn’t be saved due to being connected to the Demon King.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: The Gunshot Sword skill that he learned from Adenela is a rapid-fire series of stabs and slashes that evoke the speed of firearms.
  • Destructive Savior: His tactic of burning the enemies' remains tends to result in property damage due to the scale of his fire spells.
  • Deuteragonist: He's the title character, the second most important character in the story, and Rista's Love Interest.
  • Disappears into Light: He vanishes into blue light just as his body can no longer take the punishment for summoning two Valhalla's Gates.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: He uses the class change system in Ixphoria to change his main element to earth, allowing him to create snake golems and manipulate the ground to create passageways.
  • Disney Death: At the end of the Gaeabrande arc, Seiya sacrifices his life using Valhalla's Gate twice to defeat the Demon Lord. Because of the Chain Destruction barrier in the castle killing both the body and soul, everyone thinks Seiya is dead for real. That's until Ishtar tells Rista that the effect of Chain Destruction was cancelled with the death of the Demon Lord, so Seiya is alive and she can resummon him.
  • Dissonant Serenity: He can be calm during situations where an ordinary person would panic, or his demeanor wouldn't fit in the gravity of the situation. Rista also puts some Lampshade Hanging on these scenes to put an emphasis on his unexpected reactions:
    • He quickly counters and slaps Rosalie's face while keeping his usual calm and stoic face. Rista then decries his "lack of feminism".
    • While patting Adenela's head in order to calm her down, Seiya calls her an "eyesore" and that she should leave. Adenela happily agreed, because she's that just in love with Seiya despite him having said mean things to her.
  • Doom Magnet: Played for Laughs when he's convinced he's become one due to holding onto a good luck charm given to him by Nina in Edona, which he thinks is a cursed item that attracts high-level enemies due to Chaos Machina ambushing him soon after. He decides to hold onto it anyway because it's easier for his enemies to come to him. Keep in mind this is all over a charm made by a small child.
  • Double Tap: Seiya burns his enemies' corpses just to ensure that they are dead.
  • Dual Wielding: Uses two Dragon Killer swords when he had to quickly defeat the Great Mother of Dragons.
  • Easily Forgiven: Played for laughs when Adenela almost immediately forgives Seiya for his harsh rejection of the cake she baked for him after he simply pats her head.
  • Establishing Character Moment: As soon as Seiya arrives, he reacts with immediate suspicion towards Rista and her claims, and then outright refuses to step foot in Gaeabrande until he's spent a week working out to level grind in safety.
  • Flaming Sword: His Phoenix Overdrive skill gives this, which he uses to kill Chaos Machina.
  • Flight: He has the Flight ability and can travel in air faster than Rista, but not as fast as Beel Bub. He loses Flight in Ixphoria, due to that world having different rules and available abilities.
  • Fling a Light into the Future: He did this to himself after failing at Ixphoria by leaving a message on the Properties screen.
  • Foil: Seiya's cautiousness is in contrast to Rosalie's recklessness. But when his backstory is revealed, this gets subverted and Elulu even lampshades that Seiya's old personality is like Rosalie's.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • When he says "Properties," it's seemingly for no reason other than not trusting Rista. It's because he left a message for himself on said screen, which warned him to always be prepared, after what happened in Ixphoria.
    • Volume 1's afterword describes two types of players: the more casual player who plays through the story without leveling much and the cautious player who overprepares. Seiya is an obvious parody of the latter type of player, but Ishtar reveals that he used to be a comically impatient and reckless hero who never grinds, resulting in his death in Ixphoria, making him a dark parody of the former type of player.
    • Seiya outright hates Rosalie's recklessness. There is a deep-seated reason for this: It reminds him of his past, reckless self.
    • Just after being defeated, Wohlks wonders if Seiya has faced death countless times before, possibly the reason why he's so cautious. He's right, that happened way back in Ixphoria.
  • Freudian Excuse: Seiya's tendency to use There Is No Kill Like Overkill by repeating blowing up the ashes and corpses of the Demon Lord's minions at first seems comical due to his nature of being overly cautious. However, this came about because when he was in Ixphoria 100 years prior, his lack of planning and gathering information ahead of time meant he didn't know that the Demon Lord of that world had a second life, which revived him and let him kill off Seiya's exhausted party who barely defeated him the first time around. Consequently, this carried over when his "Overly Cautious" status showed up the next time he was summoned in Gaeabrande.
  • Friend to All Children: He doesn't take kindly to those who harm children. The first two enemy generals find this out the hard way when they taunt Seiya by threatening to harm a child, or actually torturing them in Mash's case.
    G-M 
  • Go Out with a Smile: After sacrificing his life to defeat Gaeabrande's Demon Lord, Seiya for the first time shows his genuine smile to Rista, having recognized her as Princess Tiana's reincarnation and being happy that he was able to protect her this time.
  • Godzilla Threshold: Seiya has to learn Valhalla's Gate from Valkyrie due to a number of circumstances; he has already reached the Level Cap and can no longer improve his stats, and he lost both the Infinity +1 Sword and Infinity+1 Armor that would've made him stand a chance against the Demon Lord of Gaeabrande. At that point, he's already willing to risk his life in order to save that world.
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: Though he usually uses a sword, or magic if he has time to cast it, he also trained how to fight unarmed, telling Deathmagla that his sword could get stolen, break, or just be ineffective against his current opponent.
  • Good Parents: At first, he treats Kiriko with a lot of suspicion, but starts treating her kindly once he realizes that she's his daughter.
  • Gratuitous English: In the Japanese dub, his catchphrase is "ready perfectly". In his past life in Ixphoria, his catchphrase was "gonna be okay".
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: Wields a sword as his go-to melee weapon.
  • Heroic BSoD: During the battle with Vengeful Empress Celemonic, Seiya collapses from the stress of seeing the corpses of the demons' victims. A lot of the stress also comes from learning that Kiriko is his daughter and that she'll die once he kills Ultimaeus.
  • Heroic RRoD: Seiya slept for three days straight due to exhaustion from fighting Wohlks.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: In order to kill Gaeabrande's Demon Lord, Seiya uses Valhalla's Gate twice, which results in his body disintegrating. Fortunately, the effects of Chain Destruction go away after the Demon Lord's death, allowing Seiya's real soul to survive.
  • Hypocritical Humor: While under disguise as a beastkin, he chastises Rista for almost blowing their cover, yet he draws suspicion from the beastkin thanks to his habit of buying equipment in bulk.
  • I Am Not Left-Handed: His favorite tactic is to appear weaker than his opponent to analyze their fighting style, then reveal his true power and overwhelm them. Their is a skill for this called "Fake Out".
  • I Hate Past Me: It's heavily implied his rough attitude towards Rosalie is due to her resembling his past personality. When he meets a temporarily revived instance of his past self in Ixphoria, he can barely stand the latter.
  • I Was Just Passing Through: He claims he only saved Elulu from being sacrificed because he needs her to carry his stuff, but doing so means he's taking a huge risk due to lacking Igzasion. The fact that he's willing to compromise on his philosophy for Elulu shows that he cares more than he lets on.
  • I Work Alone: He doesn't want his allies to fight alongside him because he fears that they could die. So he tells them they are useless and goes on ahead. It's due to being traumatized from seeing his party get killed in his previous summoning. This is also the reason why he initially dismissed Mash and Elulu's offers of joining his party. Finally, Ishtar explains this to Rista, when narrating his backstory:
    Ishtar: Ryuuguin Seiya knew that the Demon Lord might kill you... That's why he went alone.
  • Improperly Paranoid: He is so paranoid that Rista, Cerceus and others think he is mentally ill. They see no other reason for why he is so overly cautious:
    • This is a man who uses a special attack on a slime wandering around a starter town, and even after completely obliterating it with the first strike, he then uses a high-powered fire spell on the empty ground where it used to be. By then, the area resembles an impact crater from a meteor, but he isn't satisfied and uses the special sword skill again. How many monsters resurrect again? None in the first volume.
    • He assumes that the pressed flower a friendly little human girl gives him is a "cursed item" immediately upon receiving it. Unless Rista explained what "S-rank world" means to him off-page, he wouldn't know how cunning the demons of this world are, yet he is suspicious before meeting Chaos Machina. It wasn't cursed.
    • He prevents Rista from viewing his stats because he suspects Gaebrande to host monsters that can obtain memories by eating people's brains. It is established that he is not a gamer, and so he shouldn't have knowldedge of monsters such as mind flayers. No such memory eating creatures appear.
  • Indy Ploy: Deconstructed. During his first summoning in Ixphoria, he rushed to all the enemy bosses without a strategy in mind and preferred to come up with tactics on the fly. This worked until he ran into the Demon Lord and had no way to deal with the latter's self-revival ability.
  • Ineffectual Loner: He prefers to fight by himself in order to prevent casualties on his side, due to his guilt in failing to save his party in Ixphoria. His solo attempt against Gaeabrande's Demon Lord would have failed if Rista didn't follow him, since he wouldn't be able to cast Valhalla's Gate again without her healing powers.
  • Instant Expert: He has a knack for learning new skills quickly, as shown by how he learns combat skills from the gods in a matter of days and gets to the point of rivaling some of his teachers. In Ixphoria, he learns how to perform class change on himself after someone does it for him once. He even materializes a fire bow right at the moment when Elulu just spoke the instructions.
  • Item Crafting: Once he learned the Combine skill, he has a habit of forging new weapons and stat-changing accessories. These can also be enhanced with synthesis materials, like the hair strands of his companions.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's very insulting towards his allies, is suspicious of every new person he meets, and can come off as callous to others' feelings, but he's firmly dedicated to protecting his friends and saving the world, in that order. At the end of the first volume, he chooses to save Elulu despite losing the opportunity to gain Igzasion. Near the end of the first arc, it's revealed that he's cautious more for others' sakes than his own, due to his past recklessness getting his party killed and dooming the people of Ixphoria.
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
    • When Seiya refuses to stop training to go save Edona from Chaos Machina, Rista reprimands him for being a coward. Seiya points out that if he tries to save one town before he's ready and gets himself killed, then that puts the entire world at risk from the loss of their hero.
    • Stemming from his overly cautious personality, Seiya at least tries to make some sense in explaining his decisions. Like choosing to teleport outside of Edona instead of the town center, as it would give him a chance for a sneak attack against Chaos Machina. Otherwise, the demon would just execute her hostage on the spot if she saw the protagonists teleporting nearby.
    • Seiya had every right to call out Rosalie for going into battle against Beel Bub without any strategy, thus getting her soldiers killed in the process.
  • Jerkass Realization: In Warped Gaeabrande, he treats the people of the warped world as mere illusions that he can sacrifice to make his quest easier. When he learns that the people of the original people are affected by the trauma experienced by their warped counterparts, he admits his approach was mistaken and wants to apologize to Rosalie in particular after the warped worlds are saved.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: He retreats with Rista once he realized that Chaos Machina is stronger than him during their first encounter. This is played with in that his actual stats are higher than Chaos Machina's displayed stats, but he realizes that she could be hiding her true power too. He also tries this when Crossed Thanatos first appears. Unfortunately for them, Crossed Thanatos simply chases them into the Divine Realm, and wreaks havoc for a while as none of the gods are able to stop it until Valkyrie is forced to step in.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: At the start of the Ixphoria arc, a werewolf attacks Seiya and gives him a status ailment that causes Seiya to lose his memories. Unlike the amnesia that is usually given to heroes whenever they're sent back to Earth, this ailment is much stronger to the point where Seiya forgets the trauma that made him cautious, causing him to regain his reckless personality from his first summoning.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: During his previous life on Ixphoria, he didn't want to train, he just wanted to push forward. Somehow, he manages to win battles through luck and some talent.
  • A Lesson Learned Too Well: The last time he fought a Demon Lord, he found out too late that it had an Auto-Revive skill, resulting in the death of his entire party. Having learned his lesson the hard way, Seiya uses massively destructive attacks to completely obliterate any remains of every monster he defeats, completely disregarding the safety of his allies and civilians as well as causing major property damage.
  • Let Them Die Happy: When going back in time to the moment where Tiana died, Seiya takes the time to console her, despite how doing so risks a time paradox.
  • Lethal Joke Character: He temporily changes to Jolly Piper as his primary class and Earth Mage as his secondary class. Rista is initially baffled that he would choose such a weak class, but Seiya uses a combination of earth magic and the piper's strong lungs to safely snipe beastkin with a blowpipe. This allows him to reach the level cap and isolate Bunogeos.
  • Level Grinding: The reason why he locks himself for training is to ensure that he will have higher stats than his opponents. At first, he uses the Fake Out skill to make his parameters lower than the real values, so that his opponents would underestimate him, when in reality, Seiya has the upper hand.
  • Literally Shattered Lives: The toll for casting Valhalla's Gate Another is so severe that the wounds in his body begin to form cracks all over him, slowly killing him as his limbs disappear.
  • Lust Object: Rista doesn't put much effort into hiding how much she wants to jump into bed with Seiya despite knowing it would get them both into big trouble because goddesses can't be in relationships with humans.
  • Magic Knight: He can also learn various elemental spells, as well as channeling magic through his weapon.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: Despite his dislike of taking even the slightest bit of damage, he has high pain tolerance. When Emperor Roseguard cuts his arm off, Seiya calmly activates a technique to mirror that damage onto the emperor's matching arm.
  • Make Sure He's Dead: He's always worried that his slain foes will come back to life because in his previous summoning, he was killed by Demon Lord Ultimaeus, who has a self-revival technique. As such, he spams his best skills and fire magic to ensure not a single cell remains, collateral damage be damned. After gaining earth magic, he starts sending his enemies to the planet's core to ensure their remains are incinerated.
  • Master Swordsman: After training with Cerceus and Adenela, he becomes skilled enough with a sword to adapt several of his techniques to Dual Wielding.
  • Meteor-Summoning Attack: He can use a spell called Meteor Strike to summon a meteor capable of wiping out tens of thousands of enemies. He also has enough MP reserves to spam it all day.
  • Mook Horror Show: Seiya's enemies can grow quite terrified of him once he neutralizes any potential threats they possessed, especially if he takes out a lot of them at once.
  • Moral Myopia: He scolds Ristarte for looking at his status screen because that is an invasion of personal privacy. Okay, fair enough, but he doesn't see anything wrong with entering Ristarte's bedroom and pulling hairs out of her head while she's sleeping.
  • Mr. Fanservice: The manga and anime trailer feature many shots of him working out while shirtless, and he's ripped in each one.
  • Mundane Utility:
    • Without their knowledge, Seiya gathers the hair strands of his companions (especially Rista) so that he could use them as synthesis material in forging new equipment with his Combine skill. Surprisingly, the results come with additional benefits depending on the person's hair. He speculates that the items will be of good quality when mixed with Rista's hair (one is a Platinum Sword), Mash's and Elulu's hairs helped forge the Dragon Killer sword since they belong to the dragonkin.
    • Even though he isn't dealing damage at that point, Seiya kept on using "Gunshot Sword" against the Dragon Mother in order to push her off the ledge and make her die from falling.
    • Seiya sees Mash and Elulu as his personal inventory carriers. After he defeats Beel Bub and the demon flies, he commands Elulu to buff Mash with Haste so that he can quickly carry the flies' corpses into a mound to be incinerated.
  • My Greatest Failure: In his first summon, he rushed to save Ixphoria, which resulted him in being underleveled and lacking in information to finish Ixphoria's Demon Lord. He was too weak to stop the Demon Lord from eating his party in front of him before the Demon Lord ate his wife Tiana and their unborn baby. He deeply regrets this failure to the point where he becomes more cautious despite losing his memories.
  • My Greatest Second Chance: Before getting killed by Ixphoria's Demon Lord, he left himself a message in his "Properties" window telling himself to be more cautious so he can save the next world to which he's summoned, along with any friends he makes there. He succeeds in saving the next world, Gaeabrande, though his real second chance arrives when he's resummoned to Ixphoria.
  • Mysterious Past: Not much is known about Seiya's life in Japan, other than him being unfamiliar with the Isekai genre. In the Twisted Gaeabrande arc, he's summoned in military camo and he states he occasionally has a job where this outfit is appropriate, implying he's in the JSDF.
    N-W 
  • Never Be Hurt Again: His subconscious only had his cautious personality left over after the mind wipe, meaning his constant pushing away people and extreme pragmatism is a result of not wanting to go through the same tragedy he experienced in Ixphoria.
  • New Game Plus: The closest explanation for why Seiya has the "Overly Cautious" personality even at Level 1. He has already been summoned before in an attempt to save another world. He may have lost his memories of his past adventures, but the trait of being paranoid and cautious became ingrained in him due to the guilt of failing to save Ixphoria.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Due to his overly cautious nature, Seiya made sure to pulverize Chaos Machina's remains to make sure that she won't regenerate. After casting Hell's Fire and Maximum Inferno repeatedly despite the others' protests, he accidentally sets Edona on fire, with the townspeople who previously praised him as a hero now demanding him to leave.
  • The Nicknamer:
    • He calls both Rista and Valkyrie "exhibitionists" after looking at their outfits. Both goddesses take offense to this.
    • He calls Mash as "mushroom" or "organic mushroom".
    • He calls Rista as "inferior herb woman" after her healing powers lost against a shopkeeper's herbal medicine.
  • No Social Skills: The only skills that he doesn't max out as soon as he can are those relating to anything that has to do with relating to other people. Just one example is calling Mash "Mushroom" even after he's proven that he knows Mash's actual name.
  • Not Quite Dead: After Seiya disappears into light from paying the toll of summoning two Valhalla's Gates, his friends mourned for him, thinking that he's truly dead. This wasn't the case as Ishtar revealed that the effects of Chain Destruction vanished as soon as Seiya summoned the second gate, and that his soul is perfectly safe, he's just sent back to Earth, and Rista can summon him again.
  • One-Man Army: He's so powerful that he can wipe out entire armies by himself. Early on in his adventure, he faces off against Deathmagla's 10,000 strong army of undead soldiers. He opts to throw a meteor that kills them all. And a second one, just to be safe.
  • The Only One I Trust: If someone gives him food, and their name is not "Rista", then he assumes it is poisoned.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
    • After training with Valkyrie, Seiya doesn't state that he's "perfectly prepared." This is because he knows that his chances of beating Gaeabrande's Demon Lord are slim and that he plans on sacrificing himself to win. It also applies before he attempted to fight Eraser Kaiser. Fortunately, Wohlks was the one who killed Kaiser. Finally, in the next battle, Seiya never mentioned this when he figts Wohlks himself, and it shows that he had a hard time in their fight.
    • Seiya shouting "Stop! You'll die!" with a worried expression and tone different from his usual stoic demeanor when his allies try to assist him in fighting Wohlks.
    • At the end of Episode 10, Seiya tells the party that they should take some time for R&R, which is unusual for a training maniac like him. This is so he can leave to fight the Demon Lord by himself while everyone else is relaxing in the city.
    • In Episode 12, after defeating the Demon Lord at the cost of his life, Seiya finally drops his cold front and thanks his party for their help.
  • Out of Character: After Rista finds out that he faked the ultimate sword Igzasion, Seiya whispers "Gonna be okay" to himself in a worried tone.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: While Seiya normally battles the tougher opponents, after defeating Beel Bub, he tells Mash and Elulu it's their turn to shine and show off some of the new skills they got after training with Ariadoa. Thinking they'd finally get a chance to fight something, Seiya instead kills all the remaining flies by shooting at them very quickly with his bow. He then asks Elulu to use her Haste buff on Mash, and has Mash collect all the dead bodies so he can incinerate them all at once.
  • Papa Wolf: He spends much of the Ixphoria arc trying to research a way to save the soul of his child Kiriko from Ultimaeus.
  • Percussive Maintenance: Invoked. When he loses his memories during the Ixphoria arc, he hits his head against his jail bars, believing that he can fix himself like a broken TV. Fortunately, this method succeeds in restoring his memories.
  • Playing with Fire: He specializes in fire elemental magic, though this means his aptitude for ice magic is low to compensate. He gets around this by making an accessory that allows him to use ice magic.
  • Pragmatic Hero: Seiya cares for the people of Ixphoria but will do some underhanded things to save them. When he learns that Chaos Machina set a time limit for him to return before she kills Nina's father, he insists on training until the last minute in order to maximize his chances of victory despite how heartless that seems. His reasoning is that if he fights her too soon, he'll lose and put Gaeabrande's entire population in jeopardy. Let's also not forget that he abandons his companions so that they won't be in danger when he goes to fight the Demon Lord.
  • Properly Paranoid: Despite the title claiming he's overly cautious, the demons are crafty and powerful enough to warrant his countermeasures. This is shown when the first demon general attacked him while he was traveling in a low-level plain, which would have resulted in his death if he didn't take several days to exercise in the Divine Realm beforehand in the off-chance that he encounters a strong enemy in a weak area. When visiting the Dragons' Den, he correctly anticipates that he'll need to prepare to fight against its residents, and prepares an anti-dragon weapon that allows him to breach the Great Mother's defenses. His suspicion towards Emperor Roseguard is also warranted, and he correctly guesses that the emperor made a deal with the Demon Lord out of frustration towards his aging body. While he also has a few Improperly Paranoid moments, especially in the early episodes, all things considered, his caution is mostly justified.
  • Real Men Hate Sugar: Going by his disgusted response both times people offered him cake, he doesn't care much for sweets.
  • Required Secondary Powers: He states that mastering Valkyrie's aura of destruction and using Gate of Valhalla twice is the only reason he's mentally strong enough to use the Berserk technique.
  • Screaming Warrior: When using Valhalla Thrust to push Gaeabrande's Demon Lord into Valhalla's Gate, Seiya screams at the top of his lungs.
  • Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Before fighting Wohlks, Seiya gets serious by dropping all his accessories and arm braces on the floor in order to attack faster.
  • Smells Sexy: Rista engages in some Perverted Sniffing when hugging Seiya.
  • Smug Super: Subverted. Due to his recklessness and devil-may-care attitude, Seiya's expression was mostly smug in the past. Then a tragedy happened during the final fight that changed his overall expression to The Stoic Seiya whom we knew from the start.
  • The So-Called Coward: Unusually for this, Seiya is not a pacifist, but rather a combat pragmatist who won't engage in battle without at least five contingency plans, even when the threat he's facing seems minimal. Rista, and many other characters, call him out for this, to which Seiya replies, not without reason, that while his methods may take a bit more time and dish out plenty of collateral damage, if he dies, the world will have much bigger problems on its hands. Ultimately, when given the option of increasing his chances of winning at the cost of innocent lives, Seiya will always take the moral option in the end, proving conclusively that he cares for others far more than he does for his own safety.
  • Stereotype Flip: Rista expects most Japanese to be familiar with Isekai tropes due to the popularity of that genre in their country. To her surprise, Seiya isn't familiar with such tropes, as shown when he doesn't recognize a slime as the typical weak fantasy monster. Despite this, he's very creative about using his JRPG abilities.
  • Stock Light-Novel Hero: A hilarious parody. Rista chooses to summon Seiya because he has some of the highest stats of any potential hero. Seiya is also a dark-haired, handsome hunk with a chiseled body and stoic persona. From the moment he appears, she lusts over him, and eventually, he gains the admiration of several other goddesses within the divine realm. However, he is The Paranoiac that won't do anything unless he is "perfectly prepared". He will spend weeks at a time doing nothing but training or working out until he has maxed out every single skill available, synthesizes the most powerful weapons as well as backups of those weapons and backups to the backups, buys hundreds of helpful items in bulk, and treats every single person he meets with complete suspicion and caution, including his own party members and Rista herself. And it's a good thing, because the villains of this world are just as savvy and prepared.
  • The Stoic: He's straight-faced and collected at all times.
  • Strong and Skilled: He's considered an exceptional hero due to his high stats and ability to learn new skills quickly. However, he's Weak, but Skilled compared to Gaeabrande's Demon Lord and Emperor Roseguard, since he cannot surpass their stats despite hitting the level cap, forcing him to rely on creative tactics to come out on top.
  • Take a Third Option:
    • In Gaeabrande, Seiya has to choose between the only weapon that can kill the Demon Lord and the life of Elulu. He chooses to save Elulu, but still kills the Demon Lord with clever use of Valhalla's Gate.
    • Subverted in Ixphoria. He learns that killing Ultimaeus will result in Kiriko's death, since her soul is tied to the Demon Lord. He attempts to research a way to preserve her soul, but ultimately learns that there's no way to save her.
  • Talented, but Trained: While Seiya is able to learn many skills by leveling up or seeing the skill used once, he trains under the gods so he can learn abilities he wouldn't normally have.
  • Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Basically the overall description of his appearance as provided by Ristarte at the beginning of the series; over 180 cm tall, smooth black hair, and a very good-looking face of noble features.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: He always blasts an enemy's corpse into oblivion with his fire magic and Atomic Split Slash, just in case they can come back From a Single Cell. Considering Ixphoria's Demon Lord defeated him by coming back to life from his upper body, Seiya has a point in doing this. In the second arc, Seiya uses his earth magic to send the enemies' corpses as close to the planet's core as possible. Fortunately, this new method is less destructive towards his surroundings.
  • Time for Plan B: When faced against Crossed Thanatos, an opponent that he cannot defeat head-on, Seiya runs across the Divine Realm in order to bait it and find someone capable of killing the monster. Fortunately, Valkyrie is there. In real-life MMO video game strategy, what Seiya does is called "kiting".
  • Took a Level in Badass: He learns how to use the Berserk state to boost his stats beyond a million, allowing him to match Ixphoria's demon emperors. After training in multiple elements and combat styles with the gods, he becomes strong and versatile enough to unleash a Curb-Stomp Battle on Ultimaeus.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass:
    • In the Ixphoria arc. After regaining his memories in Galvano, Seiya becomes far less tolerant of the Little Light's citizens' backtalk, to the point where he punches every man, woman, and child who yells at him. He also dumps Rista for letting the werewolf into the Divine Realm and has a much lower opinion of her than in the Gaeabrande arc.
    • In the Warped Gaeabrande arc, he is very callous towards his allies and has no problem sacrificing them to make his quest easier, in contrast to how he refused to put any of his allies at risk in the previous arcs unless absolutely necessary. This is because he sees the people of Warped Gaeabrande as mere illusions.
  • A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: When Aria summoned him to Ixphoria, Seiya tried to defeat the demon army as quickly as possible so that the people of the world won't have to suffer longer than necessary. While he has noble intentions, his lack of preparation gets him and his party killed by Ixphoria's Demon Lord.
  • Tsundere: Harsh type. Despite his very difficult personality and poor treatment of others, Seiya shows he does care for Rista and his other companions at the end of the day. Rista even calls him out on it after he was ready to sacrifice himself to defeat Gaeabrande's Demon Lord without letting her or any of their friends die.
  • Uniqueness Value: Seiya is viewed a rare hero, or a "one-in-ten-billion people" genius by Rista due to his overpowered stats even at Level 1.
  • Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: While Played for Laughs, Seiya is extremely rude, insensitive to people's feelings, dismisses and insults his allies by calling next to useless, and isn't above using violence when someone annoys him even if it's a woman. It takes the revelation of why he's like this to make him truly sympathetic, with most of his traits taking on a more tragic light.
  • We Have Reserves:
    • Defied in the Gaeabrande arc. He refuses to bring Roseguard's troops with him to fight the undead army because he doesn't want them to risk their lives for nothing. He chews out Rosalie for sending her soldiers to their deaths in battles they have no hope of winning.
    • Played straight in the Warped Gaeabrande arc. Since he doesn't think the people of the warped worlds are real and that his actions will have no consequences on the real citizens, he's willing to use them as meatshields in his battle against the Dragonewts. He tries to use the demons as meatshields too, since he thinks they'll probably do some decent damage to Mash before he wipes them out, but this plan doesn't work out because the demons betray the humans.
  • Weapon of X-Slaying:
    • He forged the Dragon Killer swords which help in slaying dragons. This is due to his suspicions of possibly having to defeat a dragon in their village. He's right, since the Great Mother of Dragons picked a fight with his party.
    • He uses the Dark God's Amulets to create the Holy Power Drain Sword, or Granny Rista Sword. This allows him to drain the power of godly beings and weaken them, which is useful for when he fights Nemesiel and later Ultimaeus's divine form.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: In Warped Gaeabrande, he believes the humans here are merely illusionary versions of the real ones, and thus are expendable.
  • When He Smiles: Before dying, he finally gives a heartfelt smile upon realizing that Rista is the reincarnation of his lover from a previous life and he got to see her one last time.
  • Willfully Weak: One of, if not the first ability he learns is one that hides his true level and stats, which he keeps a secret even from Rista. It's only against Chaos Machina that he finally reveals his true strength.
  • Wistful Amnesia: He doesn't remember his journey in Ixphoria, but he still feels subconscious regret over failing to save that world, which is why he became overly cautious.
  • Would Hit a Girl:
    • He throws Rista at a wall head-first hard enough for her to bounce to quickly get her off of him after landing on top of him due to their hasty retreat to the Divine Realm so he can immediately start working out some more, and conks her over the head when she's about to teleport him directly to Edona for his rematch with Chaos Machina, insisting on being teleported further out instead.
    • He slaps Princess Rosalie when she insists on marching herself and her army into a hopeless battle with flying insectoid demons. He slaps her again when she refuses to reconcile with her father, who went through a Death Equals Redemption situation.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Seiya Ryuuguuin

The Hero who was summoned to defeat the S-Ranked Demon Lord terrorizing Gaeabrande is overly-cautious in everything that he does despite the immense power at his disposal. Some think this is because he is cowardly, when in truth he's spending every waking moment training as hard as he can in order to prioritize the safety of the world: which will fall should he die.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (9 votes)

Example of:

Main / TheSoCalledCoward

Media sources:

Report