Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Rising of The Shield Hero Season 2
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
jdnation
Posts: 1997 |
|
|||
|
Okay... Now I know I've been advocating that the first half of this season should've dumped things for a faster pacing...
But now I find that this second more interesting half should've been more fleshed out and longer. I don't know how the novels are and how faithfully the show is adapting things... But the recent events with Raphtalia are very significant moments that are badly undercut by how fast developments occurred... This is something that is season finale stuff - being separated from Naofumi - learning to stand up on her own - learning to mature - earning the new weapon and hero title and therefore maturing into a grown-up body and losing the slave mark - reuniting with Naofumi - Naofumi also coming to discover how much he cares about her. All of these happened in... what? A couple of days? If not, the anime didn't really convey a significant passage of time. These should not have been things that just get done and over with in a couple of episodes! What wasted potential!!! I'm probably rewriting the entire story here, but Raphtalia and Naofumi should've been separated for a far longer period of time. Much like the tension of seeing Naofumi trying to clear his reputation in season 1, the audience should've spent almost an entire season seeing them apart and the tension of seeing them trying to get back to each other! We should have seen episodes of Raphtalia surviving on her own, forming relationships with other people, being an active force for moving the plot on her own, doing things that make her more dependable and independent, doing things that foreshadow the new hero designation and weapon and show how she EARNS THEM! And at that tipping point losing the slave mark and becoming a new hero! A stark contrast to those who just get isekai'd automatically into those designations and roles from the start! Then culminating in an episode towards the end where she finally reunites with Naofumi who also goes through his own arc having lost her and seeking her while dealing with other stuff until both their side-goals end up leading them to reunite in the same place and he's stunned to see her growth and she's happy to see how much he missed her and was desperate to find her! Then the finale is them working together once again with the rest to take down the baddy or whatever! Maybe there's something better waiting for us towards the end of this season... but man, there was a much better story that could've been told here, and the recent major developments feel very rushed and lazy and quite random... This is very disappointing... 
|
||||
|
||||
Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2514 |
|
|||
|
^^I'd wonder if she can go back and if she does, where does that leave the good folks that need a heroine in that world? Narratively, it would be cleaner for her to remain there but that would also sprout a bunch of thorny questions. If worlds successfully defended cause other worlds to perish (I think they said so S1) and she remains and is successful, then she destroys Naofumi and her village etc...If she returns and the Katana becomes level 1 (near useless) mirroring what happened to them then what good is it to take it? Or worse, it remains uber-powerful and she and Naofumi are successful in using it against the other world's heros and they bite it. Isn't that a horrid betrayal?
P.S. I just rewatched the last of S1 and unless S2 improves fast, I'll consider the story ended at Ep25 in honor of the late Mr. Kametz. As it is, S2 just doesn't compare. |
||||
|
||||
|
AQuin1904
Posts: 264 |
|
|||
|
Wow, are they actually planning to finish book nine in the next episode? I thought that final battle was too long, but there's still way too many developments that matter for cutting it down that heavily to work. I guess that's another way this season has suffered from allotting three episodes per book as opposed to five episodes per book in the first season (and the fluff-heavy book five got fewer, so some of the others actually got six apiece).
Getting Raphtalia's perspective on her escape instead of just hearing it after the fact was a welcome change, although the truncated timeline makes the situation less tense and her powerup less explicable. I kind of see why they'd give her miko outfit a big introduction, given the role it plays later (although the next season will probably stop just short of that). I'm sad that Naofumi and his magical girl mascot animal reenacting Yugioh chapter 3 didn't get more screen time. I guess finding out Kazuki's name is a nice Easter egg, but it also means dropping the gag of Naofumi never managing to hear it. Kizuna's world feels much less fleshed out with so little time to introduce more of her supporting cast. Most of them didn't do anything essential, but they did contribute to the sense that she had her own separate story going on. Yomogi's turn is comically abrupt in this version of events, and the fight with her really doesn't look good. The exploding weapon also seems scaled down from the book, in that the blast we got on screen sure didn't look like it was designed to definitely kill everybody. |
||||
|
||||
|
Penrhos
Posts: 167 |
|
|||
|
This is almost approaching The promised Neverland season 2 levels of brokenness adaptation wise.
The worldbuilding & character development has been so heavily cut it's actually breaking the story. At this point I'm no longer bothered if they make a season 3 if they continue to adapt the source like this. All they need to do now is get studio dean to animate it and it'll be total trash. 5/10 |
||||
|
||||
|
Thesarum
Posts: 402 |
|
|||
|
Animation quality hasn't been fantastic all season, but this might be a new low. What was going on with Glass in that fight sequence? So many conversation scenes had just one animated character talking to a bunch of cardboard cutouts too.
Somewhere here, between all the cut and rushed content and shoestring production is a half decent story. I liked the thing with Kizuna finding out her old friends had been trying to kill her new friends. And the argument about the best way to deal with their POW (though the rapid resolution of that is a bit jarring). It's just real hard to watch it. |
||||
|
||||
|
Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 2514 |
|
|||
|
At the pace the show is heading toward the season finale, it's beginning to seem like an "abridged" version
Kizuna: I'll keep looking for a way to stop the waves, will you join me Naofumi? Naofumi: Yes! I'll be right with you ... (Wave appears, Kizuna and the other heros disappear) Naofumi:...Well, that didn't last long... 
|
||||
|
||||
|
zekro94
Posts: 84 |
|
|||
|
Kazayama? Did the reviewer mean Kizuna?
|
||||
|
||||
|
AQuin1904
Posts: 264 |
|
|||
Iirc, Kazayama is her last name, although almost no one ever uses it in the books or show. |
||||
|
||||
|
zekro94
Posts: 84 |
|
|||
Oh yeah, it didn't click because they don't use it, thanks |
||||
|
||||
|
MFrontier
Posts: 11168 |
|
|||
|
It's interesting seeing a more emotionally vulnerable glass. Also was not expecting L'Arc to be a king.
Kazuki getting cleaved in half was hilarious. Like, Raphtalia warned him, his bodyguards warned him, they were healing him...and then he just walks up to Kyo in a huff and gets bisected so unceremoniously. And now he and his bodyguards are going to end up being used by Kyo. Kizuna really is the main character of this world, telling off her friends for hurting others for no good reason (why did they think destroying the other world would stop the Waves again?) and even being able to talk her enemies into helping out. No wonder she was able to get through Naofumi's typical pragmatism. Nobody told me this world had a hotter and sexier blacksmith. I found Yomogi surprisingly likeable. I mean, she's cute, but I like how she's this steadfast and loyal swordswoman who is also...pretty dumb. Like she's simple-minded enough to think her attacking a group means they're obligated to fight her one-on-one and act incensed when they don't. Is it any wonder she lost and ended up in handcuffs? But I guess I can't really fault her for believing in her childhood friend, even if I doubt Kyo is that child any more (if he ever was), and to her credit she's willing to let both of them face justice for their crimes. It looks like there were two other people with Kizuna and her group in the picture, so I wonder what happened to them. I wonder what Kyo's really after if he's kickstarting an even stronger version of The Wave. |
||||
|
||||
Covnam
 Posts: 3650 |
|
|||
Yeah, I was (pleasantly) surprised that they went back and showed that. Usually it either happens right away or they survive. This is the first time I can remember that the person would have been fine, was getting healed, but then moved anyway and completely fell apart because they hadn't been healed enough! Speaking of that trio, did they all get liquified in the tubes or will we see them next week? |
||||
|
||||
|
jdnation
Posts: 1997 |
|
|||
|
Glad it wasn't just me that noticed the drop in animation quality and direction in the recent episode...
The story in this new land is not getting better. Mainly because this new world doesn't seem to hold anything interesting so as mentioned, there is no world-building here whatsoever to make it interesting. Why have this in another dimension when it could've just been a faraway land across the sea or something? Even then, it's not that interesting a place... With the best plotline they had going of separating Raph and Naofumi being resolved in 24 hours, they've not done a good job of giving us anything interesting to go on... |
||||
|
||||
|
AQuin1904
Posts: 264 |
|
|||
|
That finale was better than I expected, but it definitely still suffered from how condensed everything has been this season.
The good: The new content in the opening was good. I really appreciated it getting more explicit with some details than the LN was at this point, although the episode suffers from having no time to go anywhere with those threads. The animation was at least serviceable throughout (much better than last ep) and the faces in particular were better than they've been in a lot of this season. Clips hinting at the next arc were a neat Easter egg. Doing more with the dragon at this point was a cool idea, especially if they plan to end next season on the big fight from book 12. The bad: As with every major confrontation this season, condensing the fights so much makes them look brainless and the villains nonthreatening. For better or worse (I tend to think worse, but your mileage may vary), big fights in Shield Hero model multi-phase MMO raid bosses, with a lot of intermeshing mechanics, twists, and usually multiple waves of reinforcements on one or both sides. I think they drag on way too long in print, but making them this short reduces them to nearly a parody of shounen action, with characters just shouting words and putting on a pretty light show until someone goes down. Compare this to the fights with the pope or with L'Arc and co. in season one. The baffling: They left in all the threads hinting at Kyo's resurrection plan, even down to his final lines, but they cut spoiler[Naofumi et al. figuring it out and killing Kyo's ghost]. That's a super weird choice, considering how that detail plays in to a bunch of later villains. Cutting Sacrifice Aura makes Naofumi temporarily succumbing to the Wrath Shield consequence-free. It theoretically also changes a bunch of details going forward, but that's all just power-level nonsense that I can't bring myself to care about. Leaving us on a high note with the other three heroes is a bizarre choice consider the next steps in their respective storylines. There's no sign of the baggage they're carrying the next time they show up in the LNs. (Come to think of it, did the anime even touch on what happened with their respective parties before Kyo nabbed them?) |
||||
|
||||
|
Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 2514 |
|
|||
|
Well, Ep12 came and went and while I have to give the team credit for moxi for adding a sequel hook, I could care less because of the shallow and rushed treatment this season. I suspect a good percentage of the viewers feel the same as well. I 'd bet the only ones interested in more are the LN/manga followers but some of the commentators here don't sound too thrilled with how things were handled either.
The only remotely interesting element this Ep, which was also confusing because the Japanese VA sound enough alike, was the parallelism between Kyo starting out in another world from a life similar to Mushoku Tensei and Naofumi. Not buying the "similarity" though and instead it seemed like a lame, desperate narrative attempt to drum up interest by association with Naofumi. Too bad, they didn't realize they had lost that goodwill from S1 a number of episodes ago.. |
||||
|
||||
|
Thespacemaster
Posts: 1108 |
|
|||
|
While it feels like finale, this isnt the actual finale, there is another episode next week and from what was shown and what rumors have suggested, half of it is a recap and the other half something else.
I really hope s3 is better paced than this season as it was all over the place but it had its good moments. The real issue this season suffered is that cut out to many of the improtant elements and for some stupid reason, the directors decided to add a few unneccsasry changes to the story. Like Why? S1 was good in how it was made, why could do they not slow the pace? Why the changes? Is it because of the controversy it got last time? if it is it was pointless and you ruined it reputation. Honestly i have no idea how they could of messed up the adaptation so badly even with covid they had 3 years to do this and this is it? It seems like they were lazy in thinking since it is already popular the fandom wont mind.... YEAH we minded alright. S3 is already in pre production but i hope the reception that s2 got might give them second toughts in how to do s3 from the initial plan and do it better cause in all honesty, this whole mess is not really on the story but more so on the people that adapted it. They messed up badly. Last edited by Thespacemaster on Sat Jun 25, 2022 2:49 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group