Studio Kai’s anime original Sentenced to Be a Hero has taken the anime scene by storm with quality animation and compelling plot hooks from its nearly hour-long premiere episode. After laying the groundwork for its world and characters, the series uses episode two to strip away any lingering romance about what it means to be a hero in this world. The state weaponizes the title of “hero” as a death sentence, endlessly reviving fallen heroes as they lose fragments of themselves with every return.

Sentenced to Be a Hero follows two heroes, Xylo and Dotta, as they battle monstrous faeries and demon lords to back up the High Council’s Holy Knights through deadly missions. In this universe, "Heroes" are expendable cannon fodder, resurrected each time they die in battle to then get sent back into deadly missions to die all over again. On the surface, this sounds like a pretty sweet deal, given the functioning immortality, but there’s a huge consequence to constantly dying and being revived. Each time a Hero is revived, they lose a piece of themselves,........

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