English Dub Review: The Rising of the Shield Hero “Catastrophe Returns”

Wave 2, start!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The next Wave has come, and Naofumi and his crew are more than ready to take it on. No longer by his lonesome, Naofumi has amassed quite the party to assist him in this coming battle. As the Wave begins, Naofumi begins his usual plan of defending the villages, aided by his soldier allies and the old woman he once saved with his medicine, who turns out to be a retired adventurer itching for a fight.

With his new allies covering the ground, Naofumi is able to find some bigger fish to fry. He heads skyward where a ghost ship of zombie pirates flies above the lands below. Once there, he finds the other heroes bickering with each other instead of working together to defeat the zombie captain who controls the ship. After a sound scolding, he realizes that the zombie captain which keeps reviving itself can only be defeated by killing its shadow. He orders Raphtalia to use light magic to reveal the shadows of the zombie captain and stab them.

Once the shadows are dealt with, the soul eaters, powerful monsters in the wave, reveal themselves. One of them takes the form of the dragon that the sword hero killed. To defeat the creature, Naofumi taps into his rage ability, which sends him into some kind of shadow space where he can hear the vengeful thoughts of the zombie dragon. He struggles to fight against the thoughts of rage filling his mind, and unleashes the power within the curse series. Astounding everyone, he uses the “Iron maiden” ability to lock the zombie dragon with an enormous iron maiden that pierces the dragon and kills it in one blow.

With the beast defeated, it looks like things are going to be okay, but someone new arrives to test the mettle of the four heroes. A mysterious woman, clad in a black robe and wielding two fans arrives and identifies herself only as “Glass.” She challenges the heroes further, standing as the last obstacle between them and defeating the wave.

Our Take:

This “Wave” episode is a mixed bag of emotion. While it does do a lot of things that I like, in particular it’s new amazing special attack that Naofumi wields, it still falls short in the story department for me. This is a seven minute episode stretched out to 22 minutes, and that’s never a fun thing to watch. There are the makings of a good episode here, but without revision giving it a stronger sense of pacing and tension, it doesn’t amount to that much.

Too much of this episode gets bogged down in the weak dialogue and character interactions between Naofumi and the other heroes. Having the other heroes (And basically everyone else that isn’t Naofumi’s friend) be a bunch of obtuse assholes worked when the series was just starting out, but this particular conflict is running out of steam fast. There’s a point where it’s just unreasonable for people to be this dense. How many times will Naofumi have to confront the other heroes before they show him a modicum of respect? Suspicion over the accusations made of Naofumi are one thing, but when the guy is doing his best to help you kill a horde of monsters, you should maybe start changing your tune a little bit.

The best parts of this episode come in the form of the action. There is a lot of tension present here in Naofumi tapping into the hidden rage power that gives him an advantage over the other heroes. The “Iron Maiden” special ability came totally out of nowhere and felt like an incredible culmination of the advancement of Naofumi’s abilities. He’s not just “The guy with a shield” anymore, he’s got an advanced power-set that most likely makes him more powerful than any of the other heroes. Seeing how his new powers develop and change over time is going to be one of the most enjoyable things about this series. There are few more things more satisfying than the long-term growth of a character.

In a way, this episode embodies some of the best and worse this show has to offer. While it’s done a great job at making Naofumi empathetic and establishing the world and powers present in the show, it does have a problem with making the antagonists of the show arbitrary buffoons. There’s something missing here. Naofumi is such a good protagonist he needs some real characters to work off of to make the dialogue and character conflict more interesting.