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

Even medieval kingdoms have fake news.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Naofumi has just saved Princess Melty from an attempt on her life by royal soldiers. Though he managed to fend off the attack, a much more sinister plot is in the works. Through magical means, mages working for Princess Malty were able to film Naofumi attacking the guards and edit the footage to make it look like Naofumi was the villain of the whole affair. In a matter of days, the footage is distributed across the kingdom, and suddenly Naofumi is known as “The Devil of the Shield”, a wanted criminal.

Naofumi and his party decide it’s in their best interest to hide from the major populace within the mountains. They discuss what’s happening, and Melty asks a little bit about Naofumi’s relationship with her father, and why he hates him so much. Never one to mince words, Naofumi explains what’s happened to him since he arrived in this world, but their conversation is cut short when the party is found by the other three heroes, accompanied by Princess Malty.

Though Naofumi and friends try to escape, the three heroes are eventually able to corner them at the edge of a cliff. They demand that Naofumi turn himself in, but Naofumi, with Melty’s help, tries to explain that he’s been set up by Princess Malty. However, Malty isn’t about to let that happen; she lies to everyone and claims that Naofumi’s shield can brainwash people, and he’s been using that ability to turn people into his allies against his will.

Naofumi tries to explain further, but eventually, violence breaks out, despite a couple of the heroes having doubts about Malty’s claim. Malty is able to corner Melty and starts launching magical attacks at her sister and Naofumi. This creates further doubt about Malty’s motivation, but the attack continues until Naofumi uses his powers to get them across the canyon away from harm.

Once they’re safe, a mysteriously masked messenger informs the party that the queen of this land wants to speak with them, which will help them learn about the nature of this plot against them. They accept and begin their journey east.

Our Take:

This show will just not stop finding ways to screw Naofumi over. Just when you think that the man has found a way out of the doghouse, someone comes along and decides to drag him down in the mud again. This has happened so many times in the series now it’s almost taken to the point of being comical. In fact, I’m finding that Naofumi’s constant battling with Princess Malty is starting to feel a little stale. The idiot ball keeps getting passed around to basically anyone that isn’t Naofumi’s friend, so much so that it starts to cheapen the narrative strength of this conflict. Other than that, though, this episode does keep itself together in quality, for the most part. It does come to mind, however, that this episode could really use another rewrite to really get the dialogue down.

There’s something curious but somewhat unbelievable about the “Magical footage” plot twist. It just sort of happens without the kind of setup or explanation that would make this sort of thing seem feasible. I know that with magic, most anything is possible, but “filming” someone magically strikes me as just being a stand-in for a plot that works better in a modern setting. What’s worse than that, though, is how blatantly obvious it is that Malty is playing everyone, and how stupid they are for not realizing it. Collective bias is one thing, but it seems like Malty can say anything she wants and people just believe her for no good reason. Essentially, Shield Hero can’t keep pulling this card over and over again. It needs to be able to move on to bigger things.

That aside, the plot does deliver a pretty good episode, for the most part. It’s not the best we’ve seen from Shield Hero, but it carries the plot along to, hopefully, something better in the next episode. I’m also happy to see the different party members of Naofumi’s taking on bigger roles. Raphtalia is proving to be quite the fighter, while Filo and Melty do some excellent technique support. Where we go from here is more important than just this episode, which could probably have been cut down to ten minutes if all the fluff was taken out. Though I’m not complaining that much, they can’t all be winners, and so far we haven’t really had any loser episodes either.