The gods are responsible for summoning people from Earth to save countless worlds imperiled by demons. Ristarte, a novice goddess of healing, is tasked with saving Gaeabrande, a world with an S-ranked salvation difficulty. She summons the strongest hero candidate she can find, Seiya Ryuuguuin, in the hopes that his talents can overcome even this impossibly dangerous challenge.
However, Seiya has an incredibly cautious personality, and refuses to take action until he feels "perfectly prepared." Despite his quirks, his careful methods may be the key to overcoming the cunning and powerful enemies that await him.
See also Full Dive, a later work by the same author.
The series provides examples of:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The miniature figure of herself that Rista gives to Seiya as a sort of service bell is rendered in CG in the anime. Starting in Episode 3, the ED puts it front and center, making it more noticeable.
- Affectionate Parody: Of Isekai story-writing conventions:
- As written in Take That!, Rista justifies her selection of a Japanese hero candidate because the Japanese are so used to these stories that they became a mainstream trend.
- How Seiya is portrayed, and why Rista is the point-of-view protagonist character. In most Isekai stories, the overpowered main character is usually depicted as a smug, reckless, average-looking, average-built guy mostly in their early teens, a common recipe for self-insert protagonists. Here, Seiya is way more attractive and muscular than your average guy, has no experience with video gaming or the isekai genre, and shows a degree of experience or realism by being paranoid in a new world. The summoners or gods in most Isekai are also depicted as powerful divine entities who have hidden motives in mind. Here, Rista is new to the summoning business, and she is a naive, comical goddess who grows by learning about the worldbuilding more than her summoned hero.
- An Arm and a Leg:
- Wohlks is able to cut off Seiya's left arm during their duel. Unfortunately for Wohlks, his own arm also got cut off by Seiya using an Attack Reflector. He gets better though, as Rista heals the limb after the fight.
- In the flashback sequence, Colt's right leg is cut off to demonstrate that the Demon Lord of Ixphoria just revived itself and is no longer messing around.
- As a consequence of summoning two Valhalla's Gates, Seiya's body crumbles as multiple wounds and cracks appear all over his body, his right leg being the first limb to disappear.
- Answer Cut: When Ishtar asks if Rista has the courage to know about the reason to Seiya's actions, a flashback is shown of their time in Ixphoria, along with Ariadoa and a mage named Colt.
- Art Shift: The art style of some characters switches back and forth between their natural appearances and a cartoonish appearance to respectively distinguish the serious, dramatic scenes from the comedic ones. This is more evident with Rista who sports some exaggerated facial expressions whenever she's being poked fun at. This is averted for Seiya as he's always depicted with his stoic expressions and Bishōnen looks because he's always serious.
- Bad Future: In the world of Twisted Gaeabrande, Seiya and Rista were never dispatched to save it. This forced Mash to step up and become the hero, sacrifice Elulu to obtain Igzasion, and kill Xenosload. But the ritual used to create Igzasion was corrupted and Mash descended into insanity from his experiences, becoming a worse tyrant than the Demon Lord ever was. Meanwhile, Elulu's soul is still conscious and aware of all this, becoming an equally mad and vengeful spirit.
- Bag of Spilling: Heroes can be summoned to save additional worlds, but their stats and memories are reset once they're returned home. Ishtar makes a slight exception for Seiya in his third summoning by giving him back his memories, while still resetting his stats.
- Black Swords Are Better: Valhalla Blade is a black otherworldly sword that is just as equally as effective as the Infinity +1 Sword Igzasion. It worked simply because of Wrong Context Magic. Being forged from Valhalla's Gate, itself a rule-breaking spell that the Demon Lord didn't expect, that sword (by extension) isn't bound by the rules of Gaeabrande.
- Blatant Lies: Seiya uses his Fake Out ability to make it appear his level and stats are all at one, despite the fact that he has already killed two of the Four Heavenly Kings at that point. Rista is more annoyed that he would use such obviously bullshit numbers than that he's still hiding his true strength.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: One notable example in the initial version of the Crunchyroll subtitles. In the final episode, when Ishtar is announcing the name of the world Rista is assigned to as punishment she says Ixphoria, but the translators wrote it down as Exfolia. Why is this important? Because Ixphoria is the name of the world Seiya and Aria failed to save, the same world shown in episode 11. The mistake was thankfully fixed later, but it's still present on the videos of a few anime YouTubers who covered the episode.
- Blob Monster: Slimes are considered as the lowest-level monsters in Gaeabrande. Chaos Machina exploits one of the areas where they can be farmed since slimes are usually the first targets for beginner heroes.
- Book Ends: From the anime adaptation, Episodes 1 and 12 involve Rista looking at Seiya's status sheet. The latter case then ends the series with a Cliffhanger.
- Breather Episode: Subverted. After the fourth Heavenly King of Gaeabrande is defeated, Seiya surprises everyone by telling them to take a break and have fun in the town while he prepares for the final battle with the Demon Lord. This is an excuse to get them away while he faces the Demon Lord alone to keep them out of harm's way. Rista, Mash, and Elulu only realize this after he doesn't come back to their room that night.
- Brought Down to Normal: The Hexagram Ritual of Retribution can remove the Dark God's blessing from the target, but failing the ritual means it can never be used on that target again.
- Call-Back:
- Seiya incinerates the demon flies' corpses with Hell's Fire, just like what he did to Chaos Machina's corpse.
- Seiya running away from a powerful foe that he can't defeat yet. This was his strategy against Chaos Machina during their first encounter, and he does it again against Crossed Thanatus. In the latter case, even Rista lampshaded the situation:Rista: How dare he!? Don't run away by yourself! Didn't this happen before too!?
- Casting Gag: Seiya is a cautious, experienced hero who is quite adept in analyzing situations and dealing with enemies. Yuichiro Umehara has also voiced another protagonist warrior who fits these exact same criteria, particularly that one slayer of goblins. Their connections make a lot more sense when you learn about both characters' backstories: Their cautious actions now are results of past trauma from seing a loved one dying right in front of them.
- Cerebus Retcon: Episode 11 delivers a serious Gut Punch, that puts the series up to that point under a whole new perspective:
- Seiya had been summoned to another world as a hero before, and failed hard in the climactic boss fight due to his own overconfidence, recklessness, and lack of preparation. His comrades were eaten alive, and the woman he loved, along with the unborn child she was carrying, were brutally killed by the world's Demon Lord in front of his eyes.
- The reason why Rista is always lusting after Seiya? She hadn't realized it herself, but this is most likely her subconscious desire to be with him again since she's the reincarnation of Seiya's murdered lover.
- Seiya going overkill and repeatedly incinerating his enemies' corpses just to ensure that they are dead? He's subconsciously driven by the trauma of losing from an enemy that can revive itself.
- Early on, anime viewers joked that Aria spilled her tea when she saw Seiya in the Divine Realm because she just found him attractive and fell in love with him at first sight. Guess no one will find that scene funny anymore when it is hinted to be a foreshadowing. She became emotional after seeing that the hero she once summoned is now back.
- Seiya slaps Rosalie so hard in order to shake her up from her recklessness until her cheeks got swollen. He doesn't want to see her recklessness because it subconsciously reminds him of his past self and the tragic incident that happened in Ixphoria.
- Cessation of Existence: Implied to be what happens to a hero or a deity who is killed while Chain Destruction is in effect, as that device is capable of killing both the individual's divine and astral souls. Once the target is dead, they're dead, no more resurrections. Fortunately, this is subverted as nobody in the protagonist party died in this manner.
- Chekhov's Gag:
- Seiya has a Running Gag of demanding spares or duplicates of his items and equipment. Sometimes, Rista is there to prevent him from overspending and that he only buys the optimal amount. But this comedic trait of him becomes beneficial in times when he persists without Rista knowing. During the fight against the Great Mother of Dragons, he uses a bulk of speed seeds and two crafted Dragon Killer swords. It's crucial for him to defeat the Great Mother fast since Elulu's life is at stake. The seeds and two swords are enough to help him in this dilemma.
- The doll that Rista made out of her hair is initially introduced as a creepy "gift" to Seiya as a synthesis material, with most of the other cast being grossed out after looking at it. It plays a crucial role in the final battle, however, as Seiya is able to forge the Valhalla Blade on-the-spot, using his Combine skill with a sword, the doll, and a spike from the Valhalla's Gate. The resulting weapon is then used to injure and kill the Demon Lord of Gaeabrande.
- Cliffhanger: The Gaeabrande Arc ends with Rista being tasked to save Ixphoria as her punishment for breaking rules. Fortunately, Ishtar gives her the chance to summon Seiya again as her hero. This is also perfectly used in the anime when Episode 12 ends just as Rista looks at Seiya's status sheet, and his "overly cautious" trait is still there.
- Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: Elulu covers Mash's face in front of a naked Mitis. She does it again to him after they see Seiya and Valkyrie naked in bed.
- Crapsack World:
- Gaeabrande having an S-rank difficulty means it's so utterly screwed that even the weakest of the demon generals far surpasses the Final Boss of a D-rank world, and said general is smart enough to keep tabs on low-level areas and take out any would-be-heroes before they get strong enough to be a threat. According to the Dragon Mother Leviae, the demons already conquered about 70% of the world and any humans unlucky enough to be in the conquered lands were eaten. Even experienced gods are wary of dealing with S-rank worlds.
- The SS-ranked Ixphoria is far worse than Gaeabrande. The few humans who survived the initial demon conquest are kept as slaves or food for the demons. Demon Lord Ultimaeus also had the souls of dead humans placed into killer robots. As for the demon's threat level, even an Elite Mook demon like Bunogeos is stronger than all of Gaeabrande's demon generals and the four emperors are all stronger than Gaeabrande's Demon Lord.
- Crazy-Prepared:
- Despite their strength, all the demon generals of Gaeabrande go to great lengths to prepare against the arrival of a hero, to the point where one of them monitored a town in a low-level area knowing that heroes are likely to be summoned there to level grind safely. In fact, even if any antagonist manages to outsmart Seiya, he will outsmart them even further on their next encounter if not on the first.
- Seiya himself falls under this, as shown by his insistence on buying spare sets of armor, hoarding utility items, learning skills to cover multiple situations, and making accessories that allow him to use elements he cannot normally use.
- Credits Montage: For Episode 12 of the anime, the opening theme, "TIT FOR TAT", is played in the credits instead of the usual ending theme. This is accompanied by several clips from past episodes.
- Cryptic Conversation: At first, Valkyrie is reluctant to train Seiya because she has a reason that has something to do with him. But before she could complete her sentence, Seiya points his sword to interrupt her. A slight change-of-topic and some lines later, she agrees to help. After The Reveal happens though, this scene could take on a different meaning, which implies that Valkyrie already knew Seiya reached the Level Cap, hence she understood why Seiya needed to learn Valhalla's Gate:Valkyrie: You've been talking about training non-stop, but you're already-
Seiya: You don't have to say that here.
Valkyrie: Oh? So you've realized?
Seiya: That's precisely why I want to train with you. - Crystal Ball: Rista has one that allows her and Seiya to see the current situation of a town in Gaeabrande.
- Deconstructor Fleet: Of some tropes and common story points in RPGs and Isekai works:
- Edona is a deconstruction of the First Town trope. Many see this town as one of the safest places in Gaeabrande, which is why Ishtar has Seiya and Rista teleport there to start their journey. Unfortunately, the demons know the gods are likely to choose an "easy" area as a starting location, leading to Chaos Machina ambushing Seiya in the town outskirts. Additionally, since most wouldn't expect high-level demons to visit the town, Edona is woefully unprepared to fend off even the weakest of the demon generals, who holds the townspeople hostage and threatens to start killing them if Seiya doesn't stop hiding.
- For the Trapped in Another World trope itself. Seiya's overly cautious and initially distrustful attitude is a reflection of how hard it can be to trust anyone if you are immediately transported to an unknown land, so it is just a natural self-defense mechanism of keeping your guard up at all times.
- For the Level Cap trope. Once Seiya hit this point, he realized that he isn't getting stronger no matter how hard he trains in his usual way of Level Grinding. This is why he had to compensate in learning other skills not related to a character's level.
- For the Double Tap trope. Early on, Seiya's acts of incinerating his enemies' corpses get overblown and Played for Laughs. However, once his backstory is revealed, this ridiculous act becomes justified as he was traumatized from fighting an enemy that could revive itself. So now, it makes sense why he wants to make sure that his enemies are truly dead.
- For the Sequential Boss, Take Your Time, and Trial-and-Error Gameplay tropes common in an Eastern RPG, with some Speed Run mixed in. Seiya ran through Ixphoria as fast as he could to kill the local Demon Lord and end its inhabitants' suffering since it was occurring in real time, and missed out on crucial information about the Demon Lord's second life. However, a speed run usually comes after a player has mastered a game and all of its mechanics. As such, it's not something one should do on their first playthrough. It all comes back to bite Seiya when he and his party are exhausted as the Demon Lord's second phase starts, and without Save Scumming it ends in a Total Party Kill, dooming Ixphoria in the process.
- Mash's involvement deconstructs the Hot-Blooded Stock Shōnen Hero. The young warrior is overly enthusiastic about joining the hero on his journey to defeat the Demon Lord and has a prophecy attached to him to boot. However, said enthusiasm doesn't help much when his stats are far below what's needed to actually make a difference, forcing him into the role of a Human Pack Mule for Seiya. Seiya's attempts to be Cruel to Be Kind to keep Mash out of harms way only frustrate him until he runs away to face Deathmagla on his own, getting curb-stomped and subject to Cold-Blooded Torture for his troubles. After this, he cools off considerably and begins to take Seiya's advice to heart even if it's annoying.
- For the Japanese-specific definition of "hero". "Yuusha", often used interchangeably in Japanese works with the English "hero", actually has a different underlying etymology; "Hero" means "protector" while Yuusha means "person of bravery", and this distinction is significant. Old-fashioned bushido pride heroes for acting quickly and decisively, and Princess Rosalie at one point says that Seiya is "no true hero" because of his overly-cautious nature. When Seiya gets a message from his past self, it warns him that people will likely hate him for being overly cautious, but to bear with it and save everyone.
- Deadly Dodging: In order to force Valkyrie to fight Crossed Thanatos, Seiya dodges Crossed Thanatos' projectile so that it will destroy Valkyrie's painting by accident, irritating her.
- Death Is Cheap: Gods and heroes have "astral souls," which are copies of their real "divine souls" used to control their bodies in worlds that need saving. This prevents their real souls from being destroyed if their bodies are killed. Gaeabrande's Demon Lord develops the Chain Destruction device, which can destroy the divine soul upon destroying the astral soul.
- Death World: Gaeabrande, to near-Everything Trying to Kill You levels. The peaceful starting zone with level 1 slimes? Oops, a powerful general of the Demon Lord is already waiting there to kill any would-be hero. The kindly priest at the church? A disguised zombie monster just waiting to ambush you when your back is turned. The village full of friendly dragonkin who invite you to a feast, with their adorable kids feeding you homemade cookies? Good news is, they're not with the Demon King... bad news is, their methods are so extreme they might as well be. The cookies are drugged, and the little whelplings are in on the Dragon Mother's plot to sacrifice Elulu. On any other world, Seiya would truly be "Overly cautious". On the S-Ranked Gaeabrande, his actions are perfectly reasonable and as bad as Gaeabrande is Ixphoria is worse.
- Deus ex Machina: The effects of Chain Destruction vanished as soon as the second Valhalla's Gate was summoned, finally killing the Demon Lord of Greabrande inside. This miracle allowed Seiya's soul to persist despite dying in that world. As revealed by Ishtar near the end of the arc, all is well as Seiya is just sent back to Earth after his "death", not a Cessation of Existence as the others expected.
- Dungeon Bypass: Since she is already running out of time, Rista violated a rule of the Divine Realm as she creates a portal shortcut to the Demon Lord of Gaeabrande's room, where the final battle is already taking place between the Demon Lord and Seiya.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Valkyrie, Adenela, Hestiaca, Ariadoa, Mitis and Cerceus are briefly shown
in the beginning of Episode 1, watching Rista as she gets assigned to Gaeabrande. - Elite Four: The Demon Lord's four generals Chaos Machina, Deathmagla, Kilkapul, and Eraser Kaiser are called the Four Heavenly Kings.
- The Ending Changes Everything: Knowing that Seiya was an optimistic hero in his previous summoning but lost everything and his behavior now is Wistful Amnesia PTSD makes it very hard to laugh at the over the top behavior with a rewatch.
- Enemy Scan: A common skill is Scan, which allows the user to read a target's status. However, they'll get the wrong readings if the target has a high Fake Out level.
- Evolving Credits: The anime OP starts with the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon Lord only in silhouette. Following each episode that debuts a Heavenly King, the silhouette for the one that appeared is replaced with an actual image of them. In a case of Freeze-Frame Bonus, after the Heavenly Kings are shown, there's an image of a fire that is shaped◊ like somebody's silhouette, assumed to be the Demon Lord of Gaeabrande himself.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The title of the series, The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious / Kono Yūsha ga Ore Tsuē Kuse ni Shinchō Sugiru, is an example of this.
- Fate Drives Us Together: Ishtar notes that it was not a coincidence that Rista summoned Seiya to save Gaeabrande, since the two were lovers in a previous life.
- Field of Blades: The place where some soldiers are massacred by the demonic flies is now surrounded with swords.
- First Town: Edona only has weak slime monsters nearby, so Rista decides to bring Seiya there for his first visit to Gaeabrande. Unfortunately, the Demon Lord anticipated this.
- Fog of Doom: Beel Bub's army of demon flies looks like a dark cloud from a distance.
- Formula with a Twist: This series introduces a standard Stock Light-Novel Hero who behaves the way a typical Min-Maxing gamer would, carefully grinding all of his most powerful abilities, crafting or buying bulks of the most powerful items, and over-leveling to the point of demolishing the setting's challenges.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- The buzzer statue modeled after Rista also gets a nosebleed like her when she sees Seiya come out of the shower.
- Rista's pupils turn heart-shaped when Aria tells about Mitis' sexual and masochistic tendencies when it comes to male summoned heroes.
- On the Double Entendre about "Seiya's elephant" (i.e. the underwear with a hole that would expose his crotch), there is a chibi blue elephant shown in Rista's eyes.
- One of the character stats shown in the ending sequence reads "Lv: umu".
- From Bad to Worse:
- After saving Edona, Jamie the fruit vendor gives Rista and Seiya some fruits as thanks, while the mayor offers to throw a banquet in their honor. However, Seiya rejects the offer. He then sweeps up Chaos Machina's charred remains in order to cast Hell's Fire. After overcasting the spell, Seiya accidentally burns the whole town using Maximum Inferno, in which Jamie gets caught in the blast. The last scene has the mayor begging Rista and Seiya to leave town.
- Seiya willingly forfeits the chance of obtaining the legendary sword Igzasion, because he doesn't want to sacrifice Elulu's life in the ritual of forging the weapon. There's a brief chance of hope when Princess Rosalie reveals the existence and location of the legendary adamantite armor that could help Seiya in defeating the Demon Lord. However, the third Heavenly King, Kilkapul, knew this in advance and summoned the adamantoise to destroy that armor and render it useless. Now both the Infinity +1 Sword and the Infinity+1 Armor are out of Seiya's reach.
- God's Hands Are Tied: Gods are allowed to accompany their heroes, but they're not allowed to use their full power to aid the heroes. They could be stripped of their divinity if they break this rule, or assigned to an SS-ranked world without any of their powers, as shown when Rista is punished for using her full power on Gaeabrande.
- Gory Discretion Shot: The flashback of Seiya's past ends without showing Princess Tiana's death.
- Gratuitous English: Overlaps with Calling Your Attacks as most abilities in this series have their names spoken out loud in English.
- Gut Punch: Episode 11 delivers quite a big one. Seiya and Rista's pasts are revealed and it's not pretty.
- Harder Than Hard: A non-video game example. Gaeabrande is an S-ranked world, the series' equivalent of "Hard". In the Gaeabrande arc, Seiya's quest is full of difficult choices and intelligent villains who know to target low-level areas, since that's where adventurers start out at, and can be taken out before they become a problem. Rista's punishment for breaking the Divine Realm's rules is to be assigned to Ixphoria, an SS-ranked world, without her powers.
- Harsher in Hindsight: Seiya's overly cautious is a running gag and the source of most of the hilarity. When it is revealed that his cautiousness came form a deep trauma that caused him to develop PTSD, it is suddenly not the least funny anymore.
- Healing Factor: Gods and goddesses don't die because they have fast regeneration, as shown when Mitis removes an arrow shot in her head.
- Hidden Elf Village: The Dragon Village is the home of the dragonkin/dragonewts, and can only be accessed by a teleporter in the Dragons' Den due to the village being on a distant and phantasmal continent.
- Hold the Line: The deities attempt to defeat Crossed Thanatos by blocking its path. Unfortunately, many of them fail, and Valkyrie is the deity who manages to seal it with Valhalla's Gate.
- I Have Your Wife: Chaos Machina draws Seiya and Rista back from their hiding spot in the Divine Realm by promising to kill a villager from Edona every ten minutes they're gone. She speeds it up to every five minutes once she gets bored.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Cerceus, in the anime, claims to be impersonating nori seaweed when Seiya finds him...
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The anime episode titles in Japanese all end in "sugiru," which roughly means "too," as in too much of something. The English translations of the titles don't always include too, but they all follow a similar theme of excess, such as excessive caution or excessive libido.
- Infinity -1 Sword: Seiya uses his Synthesis ability to craft an adamantite sword called Adamantitor. He notes that while it lacks Igzasion's ability to kill the Demon Lord, it's still the second best sword out there thanks to its indestructible nature.
- Infinity+1 Armor: The legendary adamantite armor is made out of the hardest metal in Gaeabrande. But it gets destroyed even before our protagonists were able to reach it due to the Crazy-Prepared Demon General Kilkapul, who summoned an adamantoise specifically just to destroy the armor. Seiya salvages a large enough fragment to forge an Infinity -1 Sword.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The holy sword Igzasion is prophesied to be the only sword that can kill the Demon Lord of Gaeabrande. And in order to forge it, Elulu's life must be sacrificed. Seiya objects, and this legendary weapon can no longer be obtained as a result. However, the sword returns in the Warped Gaeabrande arc, only for it to be used as a weapon of genocide and conquest by the warped version of Mash. After Seiya defeats Mash, he's somehow able to keep the sword even after the timeline is restored to one where Elulu never got sacrificed.
- Interface Screw: There exists a passive ability called Fake Out, which makes the user's status unreadable to anyone lacking a high enough Scan level.
- Item Crafting: Seiya eventually unlocks an ability called Synthesis, which combines various items together to craft whatever he needs to be ready perfectly at the moment. Since the hair of a goddess makes for a very good universal ingredient, Rista's poor scalp tends to be abused.
- Lens Flare Censor:
- When the Great Mother of Dragons prepares to battle against Seiya, she strips off all her clothes, with her breasts and crotch blocked by rays of light. They disappear when she transforms into her dragon form, as there is no human-like anatomy to censor in that state.
- In Episode 8 of the anime, Mitis' naked and naughty parts are censored using a blinding lens flare◊, of all things!
- Level Cap: The maximum Level that can be reached is Lvl. 999, and separate to that the max a person or deity's stats can reach is 9999999 with their HP at 99999999. Though it is pretty much impossible to get maxed stats normally, even through training and reaching the Level cap, and only really something gotten through Divine power like with Valkyrie. Likewise, a human or Hero can never reach Lvl. 999, being Level Capped at lvl. 99. Seiya has already reached his maxed level way back in the Dragon Village, thus his stats can't go higher no matter how hard he trains, although his Fake Out skill prevented Rista from reading it. He then had to compensate for his stats by learning other techniques from the deities.
- Level Grinding: Played with extensively, given the premise. Seiya refused to even embark to a starter village until he's done extensive exercising in the Divine Realm. He also regularly used the Fake Out skill to hide his true level and stats, even from Rista. He then bullied gods in the Divine Realm to train him even though at that point he had invoked Invincible Hero and all other villains Can't Catch Up. This had its downside, as even at max power, he didn't have the strength to defeat the Demon Lord, in part because he prevented his allies from assisting and leveling up with him. He instead learned a Taking You with Me technique.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Seiya and Rista never told Elulu and Mash that the "Igzasion" sword that he crafted was fake. It was only a cover-up so that the two kids (especially Elulu) wouldn't worry about the whole incident back in the Dragon Village.
- Ludicrous Gibs: This is the result of Beel Bub's "reverse fireworks" tactic. He and his demonic flies pick up soldiers, carry them high in the air, and let them plummet back to the ground until the soldiers' bodies are crushed and leave a splat of blood. This is intended to demoralize the rest of the soldiers, and lure the hero out of hiding.
- Maou the Demon King: There seems to be a Demon Lord in every world that needs saving. The power of the local Demon Lord is one of the factors in that world's difficulty level.
- Meaningful Background Event: An extremely subtle one in Episode 12 to boot. There are purple cracks running throughout the Demon Lord's castle, representing Chain Destruction's presence. Chain Destruction is nullified and the cracks go away after the Seiya kills the Demon Lord with the Gate of Valhalla: Another, but it's easy to miss since everyone is panicking about Seiya's impending death.
- Mood Whiplash: Episode 12 can be a huge rollercoaster of quickly-alternating emotions. During the fight against the Demon Lord of Gaeabrande, there's a feeling of despair and unease as Rista, Mash and Elulu notice that Seiya is having a hard time fighting, then when Seiya summons Valhalla's Gate, everyone is worried about his worsening condition. Then the scene becomes dramatic as Rista unlocks her powers in an attempt to heal Seiya. She does succeed though, and the party is back to their usual comedic antics and gags. Unfortunately, that doesn't last long either, as Elulu notices that the Valhalla's Gate isn't disappearing and that the Demon Lord is still alive. Seiya summons a second gate to end the Demon Lord at the cost of his life. With Seiya disappearing into light, Rista, Mash and Elulu can do nothing else but mourn. However, it's later revealed that the second gate was able to neutralize the Demon Lord's Chain Destruction, so even though Seiya died on Gaeabrande, he merely returned to Earth, rather than his soul being destroyed as the others feared.
- My Greatest Second Chance: Retroactively for Seiya and Rista. Later on in the novels, they are able to go back to the B-rank world they failed to save the first time, to try to put a stop to the conflict for good.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The names of three of the Four Heavenly Kings Chaos Machina, Deathmagla, and Eraser Kaiser don't inspire much confidence.
- Noodle Incident: It's not mentioned how or when Seiya learned about Valkyrie's painting hobby.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: Even if Rista had to break the rules in order to save both Seiya and Gaeabrande, she is still punished for her actions, with the immediate consequence of not being able to use her healing powers on the next world assigned to her. The next world in question is in fact, Ixphoria, and she can still summon Seiya. All of these means their second chance to save that world.
- Not What It Looks Like: Rista, Elulu and Mash are shocked to see that Seiya and Valkyrie are both naked in bed. Seiya explains their situation with this phrase, correcting his party's wrong impression. There's nothing sexual involved, it's all part of the ritual for him to learn Valkyrie's destruction arts.
- Note to Self: Prior to the start of the story, Seiya had been previously summoned by Aria. His recklessness ultimately led to the loss of his party and Ixphoria. Before he was killed, Seiya left a message telling himself to be more cautious in case he were to be summoned again.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Cerceus has this reaction when Rista's party returns to the Divine Realm from Olga Fortress, warning them that Adenela has gone mad after being rejected and wants to stab Seiya in the back. Rista also has this when she realizes that the latter goddess had followed her to where Seiya is.
- Aria reacts with this after she learned that Mitis is the one training Seiya with the bow, fearing that Mitis might sexually assault him.
- Rista, when she realized that Seiya never said "Ready Perfectly" before fighting Wohlks, because he knows that he'll have a hard time fighting him. In fact, it was also a Call-Back to when Seiya never mentioned this Catchphrase after training with Valkyrie, hinting that he was never certain how to win against Eraser Kaiser by himself in the first place.
- Physical Heaven: The Divine Realm is where all the deities reside. It is a beautiful place that's only accessible via a portal.
- Poke in the Third Eye: Rista and Seiya retreat back to the Divine Realm for more training after they unexpectedly run into Chaos Machina. Rista uses her crystal ball for recon, but is greeted by Chaos Machina looking straight back at her through the crystal ball, who then gives them an ultimatum.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child:
- The holy sword, Igzasion, is supposed to be the only weapon capable of killing Geabrande's Demon Lord, but it can only be made through the sacrifice of Elulu, due to her being a dragonkin who absorbed energy from the human world.
- Gaeabrande's Demon Lord developed Chain Destruction, a device that can kill the real souls of summoned heroes and gods. He harvested the negative emotions of countless priests that he tortured in order to make it. While the novels only mention this process, episode 6 of the anime shows the bodies of all the priests that were sacrificed.
- Rank Inflation: All worlds that need to be saved are ranked by letters to denote the difficulty of the task. It's also possible for the difficulty rank to increase if the Demon Lord of that world successfully conquers it. This happened to Ixphoria, which went from B-class to SS-class after Ultimaeus took over.
- Reaction Shot: We don't get to see the full length of Seiya repeatedly countering and slapping Rosalie's face, as we are shown the other protagonists and council members' reactions instead.
- Religion of Evil: The demons have their own Dark God who gives them blessings. Demon Lords who succeed in conquering a world get a significant power boost from this evil god, causing the world's difficulty rank to increase.
- The Reveal: This isn't Seiya's first rodeo, nor Rista's. He was originally summoned to a B-rank world as a normal hero, but lost during his final confrontation so hard that he was sent back to his homeworld. Rista was his lover and party member who lost her memories after her death and ascension.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: When told that among the group there is likely an undead that infiltrated, Seiya immediately pours holy water on the priest, revealing him to be the zombie. When Rista asks how he knew, he states it was because he was old and withered and assumed he would have become an undead sooner or later.
- RPG Mechanics 'Verse: All characters, including the gods, have their own numerical stats and specific abilities. This is deconstructed when Seiya hits the level cap and finds that no matter how hard he trains, he'll never be able to stand a chance against Gaeabrande's Demon Lord in a straight fight.
- Running Gag:
- The fact that Jamie's fruit stand was burned down. The other villagers quickly noticed this, then the line gets repeated by Jamie and Rista. And when Rista blames Seiya for the act, he just forgot what happened, even though it was his fault.
- Due to his defining trait of being Crazy-Prepared, Seiya will most likely have spares or duplicates of his weapons and equipment. Not even consumable items are safe from him since Seiya will buy a bulk of them from the sellers. Sometimes, Rista will be there to interrupt and make sure that he only buys the optimal amount and not overspend.
- Seiya revealing that his new weapons are forged with his Combine skill, by using the hair strands of his companions (especially Rista) as synthesis material.
- Rosalie takes Seiya's suggestions seriously in the Roseguard Empire meeting, even if he's just taking them as a "possibility". This happens three times before she gets fed up.
- Seiya overreacts whenever he loses just a tiny parameter, like being fatigued after casting a spell (when in fact, that spell only consumed little MP), and acting like he has been gravely injured (when in fact, it was only a scratch wound that took 100HP out of the ten-thousand HP points that he has).
- Sarcastic Title: The title of the series is based on how Seiya's status screen lists his personality type as "Overly Cautious", which the POV character, Rista, agrees with, as he's far more cautious than common sense would dictate. However, most of Seiya's worries and countermeasures turn out to be justified when the demons keep using increasingly ruthless and cunning tactics that would have killed a less prepared hero, making him sufficiently cautious rather than overly cautious.
- Secret Room: Ishtar has a special room in the Divine Realm that houses the tree holding the real souls of deities and heroes. It is also a place where time is stopped.
- Self-Recovery Surprise: This happened when Seiya fought the Demon Lord of Ixphoria. He rushed as fast as he could to the Final Boss and missed out on crucial information about the Demon Lord's second life. By the time they beat his first phase, the entire party was too exhausted to stand a chance for the second phase. Cue Total Party Kill.
- Ship Tease:
- Aside from the fact that Rista has a crush on Seiya ever since she saw him, including her sexual imaginations with him, there are several other scenes that tease their relationship, such as the goddess landing right on top of him, thinking that she was going to receive a kiss. This is probably her subconscious reaching out to a lover she can't remember anymore.
- Mash and Elulu have several moments of Puppy Love.
- Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle: The anime adaptation added the prefix Cautious Hero / Shinchou Yuusha to the title. To make things simple, this series is just called Cautious Hero by fans.
- Shout-Out:
- The pose in which Seiya arrives in the Divine Realm is reminiscent of that of the time-traveling protagonist from The Terminator.
- Rista's hand sign and motions when making portals resembles the way Doctor Strange makes portals with the Sling Ring.
- In Episode 2, Chaos Machina says to paint the town red in a clear reference to the Clint Eastwood movie High Plains Drifter.
- In Episode 7, Adenela's enraged appearance, expressions, hairstyle, and burning red Battle Aura all make her look like an Expy of Berserker for a short while.
- In Episode 9, there are two Expy characters based on Street Fighter:
- The god Arx looks like a visual expy of Akuma, from the color theme, eyes, hair, clothing, bead necklace, and "fist fighting" style.
- Kebono is an expy of E. Honda, and he has the divine skill named "Hundred Violent Slaps", which makes the connection obvious.
- In Episode 9, the three deities who helped (but failed) to stop Crossed Thanatos, invoke exaggerated poses◊ à la JoJo's Bizarre Adventure for some reason. Additionally, the ice goddess' attack is named after a dessert for some reason, just with the words reversed (Ice Daaz Häagen).
- Some of Rista's comedic Art Shift facial expressions are references to the art styles of other anime:
- When she checks Adenela's room, she is extremely horrified at the writings on the walls, with her face being drawn to the style of Attack on Titan.
- In Episode 9, she temporarily takes on a Pablo Picasso style when surprised.
- During the healing stand-off in Episode 10, she is drawn with heavy masculine features that resembles the style of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
- In Episode 11, Rista and the female tailor from a clothes shop does a handshake similar to that memetic scene from Predator.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Seiya and Rista progess through Gaeabrande fighting through the Demon Lord's minions in order of increasing strength, saving the Demon Lord himself for last.
- Status Buff: Fitting for the RPG Mechanics 'Verse trope, many characters can increase their stats thanks to certain items or spells:
- Deities can invoke the Order command, which requests a portion of their sealed power to be unlocked by Ishtar, Valkyrie did this when she had to use Valhalla's Gate, while Rista requested her healing powers to be fully unlocked so that she could save Seiya during the final boss fight.
- Seiya ate a bag of speed seeds to drastically improve his agility in combat.
- Elulu learns the Haste and Quick spells from Aria that would increase the speed of the target ally. She mostly uses this on Seiya to help him in combat. The one time she used this on Mash though is for Mundane Utility, so that he could pile up the demon flies' corpes as quickly as possible.
- Stink Snub: Rista has bad body odor. Seiya just coldly calls it "goddess odor", while Mash and Elulu pretend that nothing's wrong, but Rista can tell from their awkward faces anyway that she does stink.
- Summon Everyman Hero: The gods set up a system where they summon people from Earth, grant them fantasy abilities, and send them off to save worlds in danger of being conquered by demons. This is because they're limited in how much they can interfere in mortal affairs. In a twist on this, the story is told from the summoner's POV, not the hero.
- Summoning Ritual: Kilkapul summoned Crossed Thanatus into Gaeabrande by sacrificing the heads of his family and killing himself inside the magic circle.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- This light novel might be an Affectionate Parody by taking a jab at the common plot points, characterizations and tropes of the Isekai stories, but there is one aspect of it that is quite realistic - Seiya being very paranoid and cautious of the strange, unfamiliar land that he is summoned into. Being skeptical of strangers is a natural reaction, and it takes a little while to build up trust with them, unlike how the overly optimistic protagonists of other Isekai stories are portrayed.
- Choosing to escape from stronger enemies can indeed save lives, than risking an attempt to challenge them first. This even gets lampshaded by Chaos Machina as she is surprised that Seiya is aware of this.
- Even if you're an overpowered hero, you really can't save everyone. While the main cast was busy in the Dragon Village, another human settlement was attacked, left open for an ambush that allowed the Demon Lord to murder several priests. The aftermath was shown in the Cliffhanger of Episode 6. And it happens once more in another area; Kilkapul managed to raze the village of Izale while Seiya's party is away.
- Seiya's desire to fight his way through his enemies in Ixphoria as quickly as possible had disastrous consequences when he didn't gather any information about the Demon Lord prior to fighting him.
- Take That!:
- Early on, Rista explains the reason why she had to summon a Japanese hero as her ally: because the Japanese are obsessed with parallel world stories, they may have already been familiar with the concept. This has some grounds in reality since the "Isekai" stories became a popular trend in many Japanese light novels, manga and anime since the 2010s. Heck, from the start, this series is well aware of the genre that it belongs to.
- The odd-looking "俺TUEEE" phrase in the title is derived from online slang that mocks a work with an overpowered protagonist. Naturally, it can apply to many titles within the isekai genre, and this series lampshades how overpowered Seiya is.
- As Rista skims through the names of Japanese candidates, she gets increasingly confused over the similarly-sounding and reused names. This is a subtle jab at how most of the typical characters from multiple anime series have the same common Japanese names, much more so than the unique character names an author can give.
- The author stated that Seiya is based on the type of gamer who will do everything they can to level up before actually starting the main missions, therefore they are usually way overpowered by the time they start.
- Take Your Time: Zigzagged. The time flow in the Divine Realm is 100 times slower than that in Gaeabrande, which does give Seiya plenty of time to train there without worrying too much about the demon invasion. However, that still means that, even when using the Divine Realm as an intermediary, he has to hurry when more immediate danger shows up, such as when Deathmagla is about to kill Mash. Furthermore, most of the places visited by Rista and Seiya seem pretty peaceful, which would make one wonder exactly how much of a threat the demon invasion really is. However, the Dragon Mother later states that's pure coincidence, and that in truth, the demons already control a good 70% of the world and rapidly making progress.
- Talking Is a Free Action: While Kilkapul is summoning Crossed Thanatos, nobody in the party bothers to interrupt. This is justified in the light novel since Seiya states that the summoning technique would finish even if he killed the summoner.
- Talking Weapon: Valhalla's Gate is a giant Iron Maiden with a screaming statue of a woman. Its second version, Valhalla's Gate Another, uses this to full effect, as the larger iron maiden has a statue of a man who can communicate with its summoner.
- Thinking Up Portals: The deities can make circular portals between worlds via hand gestures.
- Title Drop: Done by Rista in her monologue once she saw Seiya defeat Chaos Machina.
- Trapped in Another World:
- While the Divine Realm serves as the central hub point, there are multiple worlds that each of the deities are tasked to save, and they can summon forth individuals from Earth. The gods and goddesses can also create portals for instantaneous world-hopping for them and their chosen heroes.
- Downplayed with the summoned heroes from Earth since they aren't permanently "trapped" per se. They will return to Earth should they die in the parallel world.
- A True Hero: Observers constantly question how much a "hero" Seiya is, with his tactless demeanor, unwillingness to fight "fairly", and desire to be overly-prepared for any eventuality. Princess Rosalie at one point even states that Seiya is unworthy of the definition of hero because it means "brave person", which could only barely describe Seiya and describes people like her father. For the most part, however, the series justifies Seiya's form of heroism and proves his methods to be correct more often than not.
- The Unfettered: Everyone in Gaeabrande is very sneaky and pragmatic about how they try to achieve their goals. Everyone that is, except Deathmagla and Princess Rosalie.
- Unishment: After Rista violates the rules twice to try to save Seiya, even Ishtar states she cannot completely defend her from the consequences. Her punishment is that she now has to take on a SS-rank world, said world being one where a Demon Lord succeeded in taking over, and she is stripped of all of her healing powers. However, because she is taking on such a dangerous world, Ishtar allows her to summon a previously reincarnated hero, which turns out to be Seiya, and said world turned out to be Ixphoria. This makes it clear that Ishtar is giving Seiya and Rista a second chance to save that world.
- Wall Pin of Love: Subverted: Seiya does this to Rista in their room, so as to get her attention and make a request. He then takes off his shirt. Due to Rista's comical nature, she mistakes this for a sexual, romantic moment when in reality, Seiya just wants to have some time to exercise.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The residents of the Dragon Village want to sacrifice Elulu to create the holy sword Igzasion, all to defeat Gaeabrande's Demon Lord. They'll go as far as to slip the party paralytic drugs to ensure that they can't interfere with the ritual. They also killed any of their citizens who opposed the sacrifice, including Elulu and Mash's families.
- Wham Episode: In the anime, it's Episode 11, where The Reveal happens.
- Wham Shot:
- The Warmaster Wohlks holding the God Eater after some exposition with Rista reveals that he's a traitor working for the Demon Lord of Gaeabrande. She even wonders beforehand how was the Warmaster able to obtain knowledge regarding the deities' and heroes' immortality, and the weapon that can permanently kill them.
- Aria is seen crying just as the party return to the Divine Realm, worried that Seiya is nowhere to be found. It shows that Aria is deeply worried about him, and Seiya's past (alongside Rista's) are revealed soon after by Aria and Ishtar.
- Colt being stabbed in the back, which means the Demon Lord of Ixphoria actually had two lives, when it sent Seiya's party in the brink of death just from taking out the first.
- Would Hit a Girl: Seiya has no problem slapping or abusing women if he believes they deserve it, such as when he slapped Rosalie twice when she tried to hit him.
- Wrong Context Magic: So the Demon Lord of Gaeabrande is immune to any other weapon that is not Igzasion, and his anti-magic barrier makes Seiya's trademark spells useless. What the Demon Lord didn't realize was that these restrictions only applied to his world, and Seiya is able to bypass them by using Valhalla's Gate, a spell that isn't magical in nature, being a torture device summoned straight from hell. And even without Igzasion, Seiya manages to forge the Valhalla Blade from the gate's spikes on the spot, making it an effective replacement sword that does kill the Demon Lord.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: The Divine Realm is a place where time moves a hundred times slower than in the mortal realms. Seiya takes advantage of this by training to level up faster than if he trained in Gaeabrande. However, Chaos Machina mentioned that the Demon Lord noticed that a hero was summoned a week ago in Gaeabrande, the same amount of time Seiya trained in the Divine Realm.
- Your Magic's No Good Here: The Demon Lord of Gaeabrande created an anti-magic field in his castle that renders Seiya's offensive spells ineffective.
