English Dub Review: Rising of the Shield Hero “Reason to Fight”

Overview

The Wave appears before its scheduled time. Kizuna’s group is teleported to it while Naofumi and his party head for Kyo’s lab on Ethnobalt’s ship. There, they see the true depths of Kyo’s wickedness…

Our Take

So as it turns out, Naofumi and Kyo were both foils for each other, and in a way, two sides of the same coin as both were from Japan, but while Naofumi was just a casual, chill, otaku/slacker that got his shit together and didn’t let the gaming world consume his life, while Kyo on the other hand, all he got was his games and literally had no life thereby becoming an unrepentant Asshole who played games to feel powerful and recognized. And when that didn’t pan out, he took a very dark path so he could be reincarnated into a world where he could further live out his fantasy again. While this is going on, Kizuna and company are dealing with the Waves, Naofumi and his group have to deal with Kyo, with Yomogi who’s joined in and much as she did in the previous episode, is still beating herself up so much for helping Kyo succeed in his plans that she doesn’t need Naofumi to scold her, although now the party has three swordswomen.

We also later learn what happened to Kazuki’s followers. And as if to add insult to injury, we see what happened to their beloved Kazuki, and to put it mildly, it’s all kinds of fucked up… During the battle with Kyo when Naofumi gives into the rage of the “Wrath Shield”, Rishia becomes an excellent voice of reason even when Naofumi angrily says what all the fans possibly think of Rishia as a character. But Rishia’s words end up becoming something that would have been most useful for the Bow Hero Itsuki if he had listened. And to further reinforce this, another unexpected person even comes to help Naofumi at his darkest moment to remind him who he truly is, even when he can’t see it within himself…

Overall, this episode was decent. The animation was noticeably better, the action was solid and I did like the Kyo and Naofumi backstory montage at the beginning. It did a nice job of illustrating their similar but different backgrounds. Naofumi has always been a pretty kind leader whereas Kyo was always a douche trying to hurt people purely for personal gain. And while this episode felt like a Season finale, we’re far from over since the next episode is actually the very last one for season 2.