I think it was supposed to be funny
Small Fry Heroes is a superhero parody along the lines of the movie Mystery Men in which a small band of people with "special" powers come together to save the world. Do they? Does it matter?
The concept might have been fun were it not for the fact that what we really have here is a series of nearly bottle episodes almost entirely set in one conference room which are intended to be a satire of the Japanese government's relationship to it's constitutional mandate to have no human forces with "war potential". (via Wikipedia: Article 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.) And so a minor functionary of the Ministry of Defense (Madozumi played by Rokkaku Seiji) is directed to collect a set of people with the least offensive set of supernatural powers that he can find resulting in what is hoped to be seven inaugural special defense reserve cadets with the hope of expanding the roster to people with more useful powers later once the Japanese public and other nations have accepted their presence.
Each of the "cadets" are given roughly an episode each for us to learn just how lame each of their powers are and then they face a final challenge. There's some internecine conflict between the members of the groups which are not especially interesting and do not really go anywhere. And there's some exposition giving some background and detail about the Minister of Defense (Kurokawa played by Takasugi Koh) and his plans for Japan's armed forces. There's essentially one action scene along the way (yes, in the conference room), and so do not watch this expecting much in the way of action. Instead, expect riveting discussions of merch and the thrills of call center interactions (yes, both in the conference room).
One gets the sense that the idea was to show how by working together these otherwise fairly useless powers can accomplish something more. Do they? Does it matter? There is a denouement. Yay.
Like all comedies, YMMV. Pretty much all of it fell flat for me (yes, even the real Spider-Man bit). I do think the actors did what they could with the material, but honestly even if you're a fan of one or more them, I would give this series a skip.
The concept might have been fun were it not for the fact that what we really have here is a series of nearly bottle episodes almost entirely set in one conference room which are intended to be a satire of the Japanese government's relationship to it's constitutional mandate to have no human forces with "war potential". (via Wikipedia: Article 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.) And so a minor functionary of the Ministry of Defense (Madozumi played by Rokkaku Seiji) is directed to collect a set of people with the least offensive set of supernatural powers that he can find resulting in what is hoped to be seven inaugural special defense reserve cadets with the hope of expanding the roster to people with more useful powers later once the Japanese public and other nations have accepted their presence.
Each of the "cadets" are given roughly an episode each for us to learn just how lame each of their powers are and then they face a final challenge. There's some internecine conflict between the members of the groups which are not especially interesting and do not really go anywhere. And there's some exposition giving some background and detail about the Minister of Defense (Kurokawa played by Takasugi Koh) and his plans for Japan's armed forces. There's essentially one action scene along the way (yes, in the conference room), and so do not watch this expecting much in the way of action. Instead, expect riveting discussions of merch and the thrills of call center interactions (yes, both in the conference room).
One gets the sense that the idea was to show how by working together these otherwise fairly useless powers can accomplish something more. Do they? Does it matter? There is a denouement. Yay.
Like all comedies, YMMV. Pretty much all of it fell flat for me (yes, even the real Spider-Man bit). I do think the actors did what they could with the material, but honestly even if you're a fan of one or more them, I would give this series a skip.
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