SHY – 01

「シャイなので」 (Shai Nano de)
“I’m Shy”

Fall anime is finally here in force, and while we work through the twenty odd flavours of isekai and fantasy (nothing says comfort like old staples) there’s a few standouts to help spice things up as SHY is here to reinforce. I’m not sure yet how good it will wind up being, but so far at least it’s off on the right foot.

Much as summarized in the RC preview, SHY is basically what happens if you take My Hero Academia, gender bend Deku, ratchet up any underlying social anxiety on his (her?) part by three notches, and focus more on the extracurricular side of things. The first bit of this episode doesn’t even try and hide the influence: the world starts off chaotic, heroes magically appear to fix everything, and now we get to see the results of that great change in societal direction. Mind you the powers in SHY aren’t My Hero Academia’s Quirks – if anything they’re teased as extraterrestrial in origin and more akin to the magical girl economy thanks to transformations and weird alien mascot creatures – but the concept remains the same. In this world a hero is defined by the power.

Front and centre in this then comes Momijiyama Teru (Shimoji Shino), who as mentioned is what Deku would be in the female form and with a heaping dose of terminal introversion. Not that SHY really hides this either, as besides Teru literally having the hero name Shy she full on goes full overthinking and worry wart after failing to flawlessly save everyone from a broken rollercoaster. You can get a good sense of what the overarching theme of this story will be from this, as Teru’s focus will be getting out of her shell, the immediate upcoming arcs will play to that in some capacity, and any secondary characters both good and evil will put Teru in situations needing a response different from burying her head in the sand. Hell Russian drunkard hero Pepesha (Noto Mamiko) proves the point, between both giving Teru a necessary peptalk and helping her come to grips with the limitations of heroic deeds. Remains to be seen naturally how well this theme of heroes as mortals and the underlying story/character development play out, but so far SHY is showing it has the right pieces to stay on the tracks. At least in terms of writing; there’s something to be said for the show’s love of split shots already being dubiously indulged in.

And as for the villains in this tale, that will likely crop up in detail next week. Easy to guess who one of the main masterminds is thanks to choice cameos, but the real unknown is who they are, what they’re after, and where exactly they came from. Considering the supposed leader of the heroes in Uni-Lord (Inoue Kikuko) has a freaking space station and keeps hinting towards humanity having its heroic powers bestowed by more advanced benefactors for a specific reason not unreasonable to think alien invasion of some kind for one, or that some ancient enemy has decided Earth makes for a great staging ground. Quite a few tangents for this to take given the information thus far, and while I don’t expect a lot on this front (it’s still a veritable comic book series at heart), it’s enough to keep me curious seeing where things go from here.

After all, any time one of the good guys is both mysterious and rocking a mask and you know you’re in for a good time. One way or another.