Cute Girl in the Hero’s Party Anime Premieres January 6

The television anime based on There Was a Cute Girl in the Hero’s Party, So I Tried Confessing to Her now has a start date. The official site announced on Friday that the show will premiere on January 6, along with a new main visual and two more cast members. The series adapts Suisei’s light novels and Kairi’s manga version.

The premiere is set for 11:00 p.m. JST on January 6, airing on Tokyo MX, HBC, RKB Mainichi Broadcasting, and BS11. For viewers elsewhere, Crunchyroll will stream it worldwide outside of most of Asia, though its coverage does include India and the wider Indian subcontinent.

The two newly revealed cast members are Iori Noguchi as Happiness, a harpy and a former subordinate of Yōki, and Ayumu Murase as Raven, the swordsman of the hero’s party who now leads the Knight’s Order.

Behind the scenes, Yasutaka Yamamoto serves as chief director, with Tomonori Mine directing the series at studio Gekkō. Yukie Sugawara is writing and overseeing the scripts, while Satoru Kōsaki and MONACA handle the music.

The story follows Yōki, a man reborn into a fantasy world not as a hero or the demon lord, but as the demon lord’s underling. When a hero’s party storms the castle, he is there to fight them off, yet everything changes the moment he lays eyes on the party’s priest, Cecilia, and falls for her.

My take: A romance that starts on opposite sides of a battle is such a fun setup. The premise made me smile, and I am hopeful the anime leans into its sweeter, sillier side.