English Dub Review: The Rising of the Shield Hero “Filolial Queen”

Bird people. Bird people everywhere.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Naofumi and his friends thought they had finished their fight against Idol the tyrannical noble, but there’s one final challenge awaiting them. With the last of his strength, Idol summoned a dragon creature that looks like a tyrannosaurus to terrorize the town. Naofumi immediately jumps into action to help, since only he and his allies can.

On the back of Filo, Naofumi tries his best to lead the beast out of town, so that it can’t destroy any more buildings or injure any more people. The creature isn’t terribly smart, so it falls for this strategy hook, line and sinker. Once they manage to get into the woods, Naofumi and Filo turn the tables on the dinosaur by delivering a powerful flip kick to it’s stomach. Just as the battle is heating up, however a horde of “filolials”, the race of bird people Filo belongs to, surrounds the creature.

Stepping forth from their ranks comes Fitoria, the queen of the filolials, who does battle with the dinosaur and immediately has it dead to rights. Her might is impressive, and she defeats the dinosaur with relative ease. With that business done, she turns her attention to Naofumi and his allies, and asks them to follow her back to her home, so that they may discuss matters of grave importance.

After eating dinner and enjoying the company of the filolials, Naofumi and Fitoria take a midnight walk together and talk about what’s going on. Fitoria tells Naofumi of the dangers to the world beyond just the waves, and how they must be united if they’re to save the world. When she learns of the in-fighting going on between the Cardinal Heroes, she delivers an ultimatum to Naofumi. She would rather see the Cardinal Heroes killed by her own hand than let them destroy the world with their selfish conflicts among themselves.

Our Take:

This is an episode about as straightforward as it comes. Half of it is basically one long fight scene, and the other half of it is a long sequence of character exposition. However, straightforward doesn’t mean bad, especially not when it’s executed in a fashion that makes for an interesting episode. Shield Hero’s fight scenes have always had an element of intensity and creative setup to them that makes them quite enjoyable, and the reveal of the Filolial queen at the end of it is a good reward for Naofumi’s many struggles. This isn’t an episode as emotional as the last couple we’ve had, but one that is still quite entertaining.

The cornerstone fight sequence of this episode is really more of a chase scene, as Naofumi and friends try to escape from the dinosaur chasing them while somehow finding a way to strike back. Ultimately, it’s Filo that proves her strength to the party with her impressive aerial gymnastics, which gives her a much-needed time to shine. The fight looks great, and that’s even including the bad CGI that the dinosaur they’re fighting is made of. Sometimes bad CGI is unavoidable, but when you mix it with good hand-drawn animation, you can give the scene life it wouldn’t otherwise have. Shield Hero’s animation team clearly understands that.

The major drawback to the episode is just how much of it feels like filler. The interactions Naofumi has with the filos is cute, but not very substantial. It feels like there should be more conflict going on here, but the Filolial queen is too accommodating to make for an opposing character. It also feels like this transition to the next part of the story doesn’t give us a conclusion from the demihuman focused story that Raphtalia was going through. I would like to see more of the what the demihumans are going through and how they’re changing their world to live better lives.

All this leads to an episode that’s just average. Not too bad, not too great, it doesn’t inspire much acclaim or deserve much criticism. It feels like just one of those episodes that carries us along the next thing without much fuss. I think that every episode should be treated as a valuable one, but Shield Hero has gained enough goodwill with it’s plot that even when it coasts, it still keeps my interest. Certainly, the payoff of a good plot and well-developed characters is that even when the episode presented is less than stellar, it can still hold my attention because I care about what’s happening to the cast.