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I made a bet with a friend that I would watch one season of an isekai, and I happened to choose the most flavorless one. "Realist Hero" has got to be the isekai of all time. The main hero is such a self-insert that at times the show plays like an Adam Sandler flick. The show meets so many stereotypes of the genre, it practically feels AI-generated. Let's go through the list:

Overpowered MC? Check.
Contrived harem plot? Check.
Terrible exposition and lore dumping? Check.
Emotionless dialogue and tone-deaf voice delivery? Check.
Soft magic system that empowers the characters when needed? Check.
Demon lord? Check.

The gimmick of this show is, ... the main character has the power of basic social studies knowledge, so instead of action sequences and dramatic battles, we get extremely boring dialogue about farming and resource management. But somehow, every single female character is in love with the MC by the end of the first season. "Male power fantasy" doesn't even begin to describe how Realist Hero is written. Kazuya Souma, the "hero" makes zero mistakes throughout the first season, since everyone in the world he was isekai'd to is worse at understanding basic management than a late Roman emperor. I put "hero" in quotation marks since an actual hero has character flaws and undergoes a defining arc in the form of the hero's journey. But Kazuya spends his entire time on screen being perfect, making his character impossible to become invested in.

I have nothing else to say about Realist Hero. It sucks. It doesn't even fit the bill of "so bad, it's good," because at least those shows aren't boring, just bad. Nothing about Realist Hero deviates from a tone-deaf wish fulfillment fantasy.

3/10.

I'd say this review contains spoilers, but this show is so shallow that spoiling it will probably add to your experience rather than take away.

I remember a seeing tweet reading "Opinions on Darling in the Franxx?" by a gimmick account which farmed interaction by asking people their thoughts on various anime. The top reply was a Goku profile picture responding with "Bait for guys who get no bitches and stack no paper." The rest of the replies were similar, while also mentioning how the show apparently copies Neon Genesis Evangelion to the letter. Needless to say, I was intrigued, since at the time it ... seemed impossible to me that a show could copy Evangelion and still fail. I wish I was right.

Darling in the FranXX is bad. Really bad. I would give it a 1 if I didn't know about Ex-Arm. Alternatively, I would give it a 10 if it was supposed to be a parody of Evangelion. In the off chance you couldn't tell by the capitalized "XX" in the title, the show is an over-complicated metaphor for sex. Child sex in particular. The first half of the show is your regular flavor-of-the-month mech anime until a teenage girl gets pregnant. Wait, did I say teenage? Apparently, the main cast of mech pilots are all test tube babies who were designed to age rapidly, so for all we know she could have been, like, five years old when she got knocked up. By another five-year-old. At least in Evangelion this didn't happen.

Let's get back to the part about the show being a giant sex joke. Every other scene includes a shot designed to make the viewer horny--that's not an exaggeration. The mechs are piloted by a boy and a girl, where the latter must assume a prone position directly in front of her male ally, who controls the mech using handles attached to her ass. It wouldn't be any different if the mechs were operated by the pilots having dry sex, because the animators made a show out of each time a girl bends over before a mech fight. Did I also mention how the mechs are supposed to be sexy too? Or the amount of bikini and/or completely nude shots in the show? This is what people refer to when they joke about anime being hard to recommend.

I won't get into the plot because it is literally a verbatim copy of Evangelion's. If you saw NGE, you have also seen Darling in the FranXX. The only notable difference is, the replacement for Gendo Ikari is only motivated by his desire to hook up with a loli, instead of a dead wife character. I didn't make that up. There's also a cringe-inducing arc where the Rowley Jefferson character has a mental breakdown because his co-pilot didn't find him attractive. Finally, the ending is laughably bad. They defeat the surprise twist villain with the power of friendship. I didn't make that up either.

Nothing about the characters, their voice performances, or the soundtrack is notable, and the OP is pretty bad. I didn't care to listen to any of the EDs. The manga adaptation apparently makes some of the show's worst parts more tolerable, but I don't want to expose myself to this disaster any further.

Once again, I'd give this show below a 3 if I hadn't seen what a truly shitter anime is. Out of respect to the people who clearly had a passion for this project I won't call it "Horrible" or "Appalling," even though at times it feels like serialized porn. If you want a mech anime with actual passion and good character arcs, watch Evangelion or Code Geass, and save Darling in the FranXX for when you're having a rough time and need to watch a "so bad it's good" anime to lift your spirits.

3/10.

One more thing, can we agree "FranXX" is the worst name for a mech?