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A good idea, a poor execution.

Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki is plagued by poor pacing.

For those who don't know, pacing is one of the most important things in this medium.
When adapting a series or movie, be it live or animated you are going to have to cut stuff out or adapt the plot, it's one of the hardest things to do and some fans of the original source will be unhappy no matter what, I haven't read the source material but it's clear to me that the choices made of what to cut are... debatable at least.

There is romance, I am fine with it, ... it's integral part of the story and enhances the plot, or at least it should, it doesn't, it steals screen time from the main plot, the issue with the series is that too much time is given to the building of these relations, with the main plot dragging on because more than half of the episode is given to the romance, if at least that plot went forward it would be more forgivable, but it doesn't, a good chunk of that subplot is skippable, where nothing noteworthy happens.

So now we come to the main story, as I already said it moves slowly, the plot itself and idea behind it is fascinating and has real potential, which makes it even the more tragic for me. The protagonist is put on charge of a nation plagues by issues and threats, our hero must lead the nation out of this sinkhole. The plot revolves around political decisions and reforms and the fallout of those decisions, again great premise, but since the subpar romance takes the lead in the series we don't see much of it, instead of being shown the progress made by the protagonist we are often told it happened off-screen and we don't hear anything from those particular issues anymore, they are dealt with, the end. This is, again, thanks to the fact that the building of romance and friendship took the lead, thus important stuff is skipped, so we can have an episode dedicated to our MC day off.
We also see very little in the way of international politics and relations, only at the end of the season we see a little, and the season ends before we can really see anything getting done due to the pacing.
While I really enjoy the idea of the anime and would love to see how the MAIN plot progresses I don't think I would waste my time watching a second season after a first one that went nowhere.

At the end of the day I give the story a 4, great potential in the main plot, forgettable romance subplot and bad pacing. Due to the wasted potential tho, I find it even more frustrating, enjoyment is thus, only a 3.

Characters: Better than average, they aren't completely stupid, like in most anime, they have flaws but are intelligent, capable of making not asinine decisions, which is refreshing and doesn't break my sense of immersion like most anime, at the same they aren't anything to write home about, I haven't found anything particularly unique or outstanding about them, may be because they spend more time talking about food and praising the MC rather than doing anything noteworthy, very little development in anything but the romance. Again above average, I give it a 7.

Art: 5
Sound: 6
Both average and forgettable.

Overall 5: Wasted opportunity, boring.