Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Rising of The Shield Hero
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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This episode was more consistent with naofumi's characterization in the anime, that's sure; that was good becuase just two episodes ago we got wn naofumi suddenly thrown in the anime and it felt weird.
Le'ts just say that in this loop a good balance was found for naofumi not being a goody two shoes neither an edgelord (thoguh I admit I prefer edgelord naofumi, assuming the universe is not conspiring to make him look good). |
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Overall97629661
Posts: 9 |
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Although this change of Naofumi personality with respect to manga is consistent with the development of the anime, it is also a way to simplify the character to the level of a shounen MC, which will always be noble and kind no matter what happens to him. Naruto was discriminated against by his entire villa, but still he did not become a resentful with desire to take revenge, this takes away depth and contrast to the character, goes from being a person who makes mistakes to a saint who feels like an unreal character. Nor does it convince me that the queen is the one who has solved an entire arc of 20 chapters, if she had intervened before, none of this would have happened. The influence religious did not affect her, she knew that the 4 heroes must work together, I can not explain why her family was against her, they did not exactly explain the resentment of the king, the villains are too one-dimensional, they are evil without context, they also forgive an execution simply by changing the name to a nickname of joke, reduced all the trial and its crimes to a solution made for children of elementary school.
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MiloTheFirst
Posts: 429 |
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Howcome? the guy didn't demand for their heads not because he is above such thing but because he was really insecure about whether he would end up regreting it.
She had been working in the background this entire time, preventing other countries on declaring war on her queendom for monopolizing the heroes and disrupting the power balance. regarding the church, that was a separate issue and their conspiracy wasn't aparen until later on, plus they needed to be cut in a single strike, otherwise they would instigate a revolution
The king wasn't against her, he was just abusing his power while she was away. regarding his resentment, you do realize the show isn't over yet? Myne on the other hand is just a really rotten person, turning against her mother was nothing personal for her
You are absolutely right, and it only gets worse from there, Yusagi is just plain awful at writing villains, Myne is as best written as it ever gets, take that as you will
here is the thing, for me the scene was really nuanced. I also think the justification behind the change in sentence made more sense in the LN, but in the anime whether it makes sense depends on from who's point of view you evaluate it. from the perspective of a random onlooker, as you said, it is ludicrous to exchange a death sentence for sustained insult, but hey the masses weren't even aware that a conspiracy was going along all this time they just showed up for the spectacle which Naofumi sort of delivered. then from Naofumi's perspectie if you (caught his internal monologue during the trial), the whole thing was a farce (the queen had already told him in advance how things would play out in that mute scene on the balcony), the queen didn't need the public trial to execute them, she just did it to clean his reputation (which was accomplished whether her family got executed or not) then the execution rather than to make things right (in the end how would it even make them atone for anything) was just in order to show sincerity towards Naofumi from one politician to another (could you imagine if she didn't? "hey I know my family just tried to kill you but I will make sure to tell them off, so we cool now? good, now come to work next Monday") She needed him to be her country's ally and they did try to kill him after all, she needed to compromise that much. ultimately when seeing how utterly shameless Myne was at the brink of death he realized having them killed wouldn't make him feel better (my speculation is that he realize he would still hate her guts even after she lost her head), so might as well not sour the relation he would still need to have with the queen, the perpetrators got disowned and no longer hold any power to harm him, (it is implied they still get a life sentence). Anime's Naofumi is far from a Shonen protagonist because of his indecisiveness, while he ultimately makes the noble action you can hear in his vocal inflections how unsure he is about his own feelings then from the queen's perspective she never intended to kill her family, her objectives were clear, to pacify Naofumi and to guarantee his future cooperation. first, She naturally promised to clean his name and then offered him plenty of riches to try and make up for it, after he said he didn't care about those things she had to prove her sincerity by retaliating against his aggressors, she didn't want to kill her family so she was hoping Naofumi would think about it over the night after their conversation and demand for something else the next day, but he didn't (because he isn't a goody to choose, until the last moment he really did want to see them suffer), at the end she committed to calling off their execution at the last moment and offer Naofumi her head in return (from a personal level it might not seem like a fair trade, after all he didn't have any beef with her. but on a political dimension, it is an equivalent exchange), if it came to that point, she was betting on Naofumi being a rational thinker and realize he had been cornered, she was willingly offering the live of the head of state so he couldn't publicly complain over lack of compensation and yet it was in his best interest not to take it (why would he eliminate his only and most influential political ally specially when her death would leave alive those two people that are after him?) having to settle instead for the riches, naturally she didn't want to die and there was the possibility of Naofumi accepting her head as compensation so she was scared through the whole ordeal. at the end her bet payed off and the best posible outcome for her came to be, She fulfilled both her objectives, her family was alive and Naofumi still had the disposition to collaborate with her country |
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Leviathonlx1
Posts: 197 |
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They wasted wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy to much time on the Pope battle dragging it out far too long so now we'll get a rushed as hell Cal Mira arc.
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Covnam
 Posts: 3650 |
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I thought this was a pretty good episode. Some observations/thoughts:
The Queen sure does know her daughter. The way she kept lying, despite the fact that it was visually obvious and causing her pain, there'd have to be something really wrong with her (unrelated to the fact that she was willing to do anything to get the throne). It was a bit odd that Myne jumped immediately from Motoyasu to Naofumi and not one of the other heroes or someone else, but maybe that was just done to save time in the show. At the end the Queen said that she planned to offer her life to Naofumi to save the other two, but clearly the more serious crimes that justified their sentence were all of their treasonous acts, so how would that be justified to the people? Personally I would have respected her more for going through with it and being upset/hating herself for it then trying to find a way out of doing her duty What was up with the cleavage shot of Myne in the gallows? I'm usually all for fanservice, but that seemed like an really odd place to put some in |
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Hiroki not Takuya
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It seems to me the two events weren't necessarily connected and as you said yourself, the trial wasn't needed to clear his name and could have been done without it. I believe the Queen genuinely wanted to compensate Naofumi for the wrongs committed against him and give him the chance to include the death penalty it he felt strongly enough. I don't think there was an intentional swap of insult for death either as I see Naofumi wrestling with the question of whether his being wronged justified a death penalty, the renaming was just what he could think of as a punishment other than going the other way. As Mr. Martin so accurately pointed out, the offenses deserving death were attempting to usurp the royal succession, endangering the world and creating a dire international incident which had everything to do with the Queen and not Naofumi. In terms of real life, executions are never to make anyone atone, it just serves as a warning to others not to be tempted to do what the guilty did, prevent bad actors and their supporters from further mischief and/or to instill fear of offending the monarch too much. Her trembling while telling Naofumi what needed to be done was indeed nuance that told me how conflicted she was and that the death penalty was never "off the table" to her. Rather she wasn't sure she could go through with it.
And while I'm tempted to say that fanservice is always welcome, I believe the shot was intended to highlight the lack of reaction from the slave crest to prove the sincerity of her request and to show her movements to highlight how desperate she was to get out of the gallows to bolster how desperate a move appealing to Naofumi was. As it turned out, these weren't lost on Naofumi either... |
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borisdrakoni
Posts: 49 |
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This week's episode honestly felt like it should have been the season finale instead of merely a transition into the next arc. No matter how the next four episodes go, I don't think that the ending will be able to match the impact of Naofumi's vindication and display of character growth along with the punishment of the king and princess who have so far been his primary antagonists in the story.
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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About the death penalty, not being enacted over treason; it has happened in our history as well, I remember a few times in the kingdom of france when the princess or queen did the treason and they "just" got life imprisonment (thought the poeple they conspirated with got torture + death penalty.).
Thanks for noticing , that was important; as mentioned before, the slave crest was the reason. I am not sure if they skipped some things completely as there is still chance they will present them in the next episode but here are a few things they skipped from the WN (naofumi's personality changed not mentioned) spoiler[ Myne will keep the slave crest , so giving her "freedom" is not exactly what is happenning. The queen told naofumi she has been supporting him from the shadows; the other two groups of adventurers that offerred him help after the first one and second betrayed him were sent by her/other kingdom; the anime skiped them. Remember that thing with the slave owner stupidly saying that raftalia was at least worth 250 gold coins ? you might think that i t made no sense that he sold raftalia to naofumi for cheap; well, the queen explained that she knew that raftalia's parents were former adventurers so she sent the slave owner to naofumi and have him offer raftalia to him, after naofumi refused to trust the previous two adventurer groups. ] |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3448 Location: Finland |
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I honestly can't remember reading that tidbit in the novel(official version) at least up until the currently translated volume and I'm pretty sure I'd remember something like that? WN only? |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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Yeah, WN only, I have not read the LN at all.
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Vikkio92
 Posts: 30 |
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You missed a couple of auxiliary verbs there, Theron. Also, the repetition of 'defend' (in italics) doesn't sound great, but that's just my personal opinion. |
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Covnam
Posts: 3650 |
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I'd have to say she probably doesn't think well enough of him like that, but you are right that he was really the best shot, though I'd have expected her to at least try Melty first (regardless of trying to kill her, she'd probably speak up for her sister if given the chance)
I didn't completely dismiss the slave crest when I thought about it, but doesn't it only react in relation to the person who the slave crest is tied to? They switched the crest from the Queen to Motoyasu during the trial for that purpose. In what way would it have reacted had she been trying to fool Naofumi again? Though I really can't imagine anyone would doubt her sincere desperation seconds away from death regardless... |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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^ The anime didn't make it very clear, but the Queen added Motoyasu, he didn't replace her as Malty's "owner".
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Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 2514 |
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As a bit of trivia, having deciphered the written language of Melromarc (hint: it's English with some bizarro Roman letters and Hiragana symbols), I have been going around translating the verbage in the show. In the Queen's "status magic" display this episode, the Princess's name is spelled Mein Sopha and in the upper right with the hourglass icon the title is "cal mira" so I think that confirms that the next wave will appear there and as some suspect, the next episode should have the group heading to Cal Mira. The sign at the Inn Ep2 said "Melromarc Guest House- No Demi Human", the shop with medicines is "Melromarc Herb Garden" and the shop in Ep5 with the older lady is "Shop Magical". The weapons shop sign interestingly is "Weapon Shop"
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Calsolum
 Posts: 898 |
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It was cute to see the queen act out of character for a bit showing that she has 'private' side that she doesn't show the public but it honestly doesn't make a lick of sense as to why she'd do that in the presence of the shield hero. It's really a small detail but jarring all the same.
Also, we get another session of the 3 stooges and Naofumi plus the queen. I'm all for Naofumi being 'better' than the other heroes but when the main reason is that his competition is too stupid to live it's really... dumb. Like, come on they couldn't figure out on their own that they all got their asses handed to them by Glass and the waves are supposed to get stronger? Out of all the 3 heroes, I like Ren the most but they're just sooo badly written that it's not entertaining. At least I can believe Ma- i mean Bitch as having an actual mental disability or something is physically wrong with her mind(even though I know that's not the case she's just badly written cause if she did have a mental disability it'd be debuff or something). Seeing Naofumi put his trust in their words and unlock a new ability was cool and shows his growth, but really given how half-assed his attempt was during the session it seems like a cheap attempt to mask a 'powerup' in the form of growth. Also, who wants to bet money that the heroes still won't believe him when he explains how their own rigid refusal to change their mindset is what's limiting their abilities? I know I keep harping on this point but really if the other 3 heroes weren't so incompetent and Naofumi had real strengths(for example a good mind for tactics or ingenuity) then this story could have been far more interesting. |
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