English Dub Review: The Rising of the Shield Hero “Four Heroes Council”

A new hourglass, new levels, and a new dawn.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Naofumi is victorious and is now truly recognized as the “Shield hero.” With his good name secured, Naofumi goes to the Dragon Hourglass to finally upgrade Raphtalia and Filo’s classes to their next level. However, what they find when they get to the Hourglass is that they aren’t able to choose what classes they want to level in; they’re confined to advancing the ones they’re already in.

Naofumi and the others then go to see the queen, who informs them that there is to be a banquet held in the heroes’ honor. The banquet is more than just a feast, however, but a cover for the queen to meet with the four heroes to advise them on what to do in the coming days. She advises that the heroes need to do more than just prepare for the next Wave, they also need to start working together if they have any chance of stopping the dangers to come. The heroes begrudgingly agree and agree to share the secrets of their strength with each other. New and exciting aspects of this world are revealed to Naofumi, namely that he has the ability to copy and a weapon that fits the same weapon class he has: namely, the shield. The other three heroes then each share what they think the best route to power is, but unsurprisingly, they can’t seem to agree on anything.

Meanwhile, at the banquet, Raphtalia is approached by a lecherous soldier who starts harassing her about being a demihuman. Raphtalia isn’t about to take that shit, so she draws her blade and a brawl is soon engaged. With her superior swordplay, she finds herself the victor.

The next day, Naofumi and his friends set out to take a ship to Cal Mira. Naofumi first makes a stop at the blacksmith to try out his new copying power, and sure enough, he’s able to copy every shield in the store, much to the blacksmith’s expense. With their shopping done, there is but one thing left to do. The three of them stop at the remains of Raphtalia’s old village, so she can honor her dead friend and reminisce. Once there, they also meet a strange man with red hair, L’arc, who affectionately calls Naofumi “kiddo.”

Soon, they arrive at the ship to Cal Mira, where they find that most of the rooms on-board have already been taken. They must share a room with a stranger, who happens to be none other than L’arc.

Our Take:

Shield Hero is now chugging along to its next big arc with a meeting of the four heroes so they can try and find some common ground to work with as things go on. New powers are learned and a new course set, but most of this episode follows the intrigue of the four heroes. Now, instead of just Naofumi’s personality dominating the conversation, we have four major personalities contending with each other, which makes for a fun new element of conflict in this show’s story.

There appears to be a noticeable upgrade in visual quality found in this episode. To coincide with the new arc Naofumi is entering, the show seems to have found itself cleaner, more polished animation.

Old wounds find their way even into moments of celebration, which adds a touch of realism that I enjoy to this anime. Even in the wake of Naofumi’s victory, there are still the same issues that the kingdom faced before present in the current plot. Racism against demihumans is still common, and the queen’s power, however useful it is for Naofumi and the other heroes, isn’t effective against “Malty” (I don’t plan on calling her “bitch” in my reviews) trying to poison Naofumi to get some vengeance. On that note, however, it’s a bit jarring to see that Malty isn’t locked away in a cell somewhere. Though her punishment has been passed down on her, leaving a criminal to roam the halls freely is a dangerous prospect for the innocent she’s already wrong.

Despite all the positive qualities found in this episode, there were some jarring audio problems that weighed everything down a bit, here. Though not consistent throughout the whole episode, there were some line deliveries that felt stinted, especially from the queen. In addition, the volume of some lines wasn’t normalized with the rest of the cast’s audio, leading to some strange, muffled or distant sounding results. It would seem this is an attempt at masking over the queen’s voice when she’s speaking with her fan in front of her face, but it doesn’t work well.

A good 2/3 of this episode isn’t that interesting, feeling a little bit more like filler and exposition more than anything else. Yet, once the banquet gets going and we start to see the sparks fly between the four cardinal heroes, things become a lot more entertaining. This appears to be the origin of a new dynamic in this show that will serve as the meat of the struggles to come. After watching this episode, I’m reassured once more that good things are to come, even though I had my doubts about this series after last week’s episode.