The brave young hero Yulia Chardiet and her adventuring party burst into the lair of the Demon Lord, and banish the fiend with magic. Having now completed their quest, the end credits roll. Wait a minute… The first episode only just started… This can’t be the end already, can it???
Nope! Turns out the heroes magic spell sent the giant Demon Lord back in time, and now in the form of a small girl known as Mao, the Demon Lord decides to take up a job teaching at the local adventurer’s school. After all, if she can expel Yulia and her friends before they can become the heroes of legend, nobody will be able to defeat her! That’s the plan, anyway.
From Studio Gokumi, Endro! takes place in a brightly coloured fantasy kingdom called Lapanesta, where keen adventurers study and quest in the hope of becoming the hero of legend, destined to defeat the Demon Lord as part of a cycle that has been going on for many many generations. This generation sees the enthusiastic and appropriately-nicknamed Yulia “Yusha” Chardiet become the hero, and along with her friends and fellow party members of elf priest Seira, wild warrior Fei and the magic-crazy Mei, the four are put through their paces at school by the now chibi-fied Demon Lord, but her evil resolve may not have what it takes to stand up to Yusha’s relentless positivity, and Mao steadily gives up on the idea of being the Demon Lord and settles into being a full-time teacher, as this life doesn’t seem so bad. But will destiny really be so easy to subvert?
Endro’s colourful world gets a nice amount of lore and history as the series goes on, from the card-based magic system of Cartardo to the local fantasy races and the stories of heroes past, and it establishes a lived-in and fleshed out, yet fun and silly setting for our pastel-clad band of adventurers as they romp through quests on the way to once again becoming the legendary heroes they were before the series was whipped us back in time during the opening scene.
The members of the main party, along with Mao and the kingdom’s hero-obsessed Princess Rona each get a decent amount of character development, all getting an episode or two so we can learn what makes them tick. It’s a fun premise and I found it to be quite an easy show to kick back and turn off my brain too – something very welcome this year. A chill mix of low-stakes slice of life and fantasy adventure as our cheery heroes go about both their day to day lives as well as questing and helping out the locals of Napanesta.
