Tate no Yuusha/Shield Hero Season 2 Anime Episode Discussion

[Frontier]

So it turns out Naofumi and Kyo were both foils for each other...both are from Japan, but while Naofumi was just a casual, chill, neet who enjoys online games and adventuring with his party (that looked suspiciously like the one he ended up with when he got Isekai-ed), Kyo was a fat, slobby, incel who played games to feel powerful and recognized. And when that didn't pan out, he killed himself so he could be reincarnated into a world where he could live out his fantasy again .

Why wasn't Raphtalia summoned along with the other Heroes to fight the Wave? Is she not a Cardinal Hero thereby not transported like they and their party are ?

While Kizuna and company are dealing with the Waves, Naofumi and his group have to deal with Kyo, with Yomogi as a guest star party member. She's beating herself up so much for helping Kyo succeed in his plans that she doesn't need Naofumi to punch her, although now the party has three swordswomen .

Jeez, Kyo barely even acknowledged Yomogi. He just called her "b#tch" and that was it ..

So Kazuki's followers get mutated into Byakko mutates...but they stand no chance against Raphtalia. Also there's a third girl there, for...some reason. And as if to add insult to injury, then they see what happened to their beloved Kazuki-sama .

Not all that surprising that Kyo would "revive" Kazuki as a homunculus zombie, but to make it worse he uses the Mirror Hero's soul to implant into the body so he can use the mirror to fight Naofumi's party. Not that it really held them off that long, but nobody deserved that fate .

Kyo wanted Rishia and Naofumi to himself because he blames them for his original failure, and he turns the trash talk to Naofumi up to 11 and rubs it in how much he's been trying to screw with Naofumi, to the point of deliberately trying to take out Raphtalia and Filo, to rile him up and making him unlock the Wrath Shield again. Naofumi becomes consumed with the weapon and we even get to hear a voice coming from it .

Oh hey, Kyo actually made fun of the slavery thing. He even cuts Rishia off before she can defend it. And then Naofumi is so consumed by the Wrath Shield that it brings up his most negative and dark emotions, like how he only saw Raphtalia and Filo as tools initially or when he chokes Rishia while proclaiming what the fans think of her as an annoyance he's stuck with while she's trying to get into Itsuki's pants. But Rishia takes it better than you'd expect because she's not surprised Naofumi thinks of her that way but she knows he's better than that, especially when it comes to Raphtalia and Filo .

And with the power of Ost, the Opening, and Raphtalia/Filo, Naofumi is able to overcome the Wrath Shield and blast Kyo...except Kyo dies laughing saying that Naofumi's still screwed, which makes me wonder what Kyo knows .

Well, Naofumi and his party have completed their mission, so they have to go back home...but Kizuna is sad to see him go after everything they've been through together. At least they left things off with the other world group on a good note, and maybe they can actually look forward to the next Wave if it means reuniting .

We end on Naofumi getting a medal and title of viscount, the Three Stooges just standing around because they were the only ones to fight in the Wave so I guess people are cool with them again, the possibility of the Phoenix waking up after the Spirit Tortoise, a Spear Lady (new Hero?), that slaver holding some probably significant Demi-human's in his cages (why does Naofumi keep dealing with this man?), Kizuna and Yomogi taking care of civilians hurt in the Waves, and Naofumi and company returning home in time to prep for season 3 .

Originally Posted by cyberdemon

Naofumi’s first English voice actor, Billy Kametz, has passed away due to stage 4 colon cancer.

RIP Billy.

[stray]

Originally Posted by cyberdemon

Naofumi’s first English voice actor, Billy Kametz, has passed away due to stage 4 colon cancer.

I don't follow really follow English VA but that's still kinda sad.

I'm confused otherwise, I thought this was supposed to be a 13 episode season. Maybe we're getting a beach episode or something? Would have been nice to see Naofumi hang out with Glass' world gang but I guess it is what it is.

[Kanon]

Huh, yeah, okay. That about sums up my feelings about this episode and the entire season. I'll only watch the next season if there's nothing else airing that day (just like what happened with this one).

I did like Naofumi dissing Rishia, though at this point I sure hope Naofumi has grown on her enough that she's given up on Itsuki and will stick with him.

Originally Posted by stray

I'm confused otherwise, I thought this was supposed to be a 13 episode season. Maybe we're getting a beach episode or something? Would have been nice to see Naofumi hang out with Glass' world gang but I guess it is what it is.

I was going to ask about that. MAL has it listed as 13 episodes but that was clearly the end of the season. Guess they made a mistake.

[Estzero1]

Originally Posted by Kanon

I was going to ask about that. MAL has it listed as 13 episodes but that was clearly the end of the season. Guess they made a mistake.

No, one could think that, but it's actually not a mistake. This season will indeed have 13 episodes. Not sure what they will do though .

[frubam]

What an underwhelming end =0v. Honestly, Kyo was not nearly a big bad as previous antagonists made themselves out to be. Most of the time, the antagonists were either stronger than Naofumi(1st Glass encounter, Pope, Dragon, Dinosaur) or on even level(L'arc/Therese fight, various episodic scrub monsters); Kyo was so heavily outmatched, it made the fight super anti-climatic. I at least thought that Kyo getting Naofumi mad was part of some plan to steal his flame/dragon power for himself, and in a better story, I think that would have been the outcome. Then everyone could have combined their power to defeat him, which would have had a much more satisfying appeal for me. But nope, he was just riling Naofumi up just for kicks. Real stupid actually. MAYBE you could say he wanted Naofumi to kill his friends, but that's quite a stretch for a few reasons.

Overall, I'd say this season was a bit underwhelming. Then again, "revenge" stories usually lose their steam once said revenge has been carried out. Even though they tried to revitalize the revenge component with Kyo(Ost 'death', Raph/Filo steal), the story was so rushed, the actual impact of what Kyo did to him felt nonexistent. I'll prob watch next season too, but I won't be as excited as I was watching the first season. There's still a lot of world to explore, other countries to traverse, and other heroes to find(Seven Star). The little tidbits they showed at the end don't really hype me up or anything; more just curiosities about the other countries that I want to see.

Originally Posted by Frontier

Why wasn't Raphtalia summoned along with the other Heroes to fight the Wave? Is she not a Cardinal Hero thereby not transported like they and their party are ?

Katana is a vassal weapon, so she is a vassal weapon wielder, she also wasn't in Kizuna's party, which seems to be a requirement to teleport with her.

[Magewolf]

Kyo was a horrible villain. He was all powerful and all knowing until he needed to die and then he went down like a punk. Of coarse to be fair Naofumi is a horrible protagonist when you remove the teenage angst.

I think I am out. I was looking forward to more stupid and unintentionally funny plots but this season has just been boring.

[Kamijou Touma IB]

I see one of my favorite characters was in the cage next to the slave trader.

Spoiler for Spoiler:

https://shield-hero.fandom.com/wiki/Atla_Fayon and her brother Fohl

[Dengar]

I hope anime only watches got some enjoyment out of it.

As a LN reader, this was nowhere near the quality of adaptation that the first season was. And I don't mean literal faithfulness. This adaptation barely felt faithful to the spirit of the original work.

If there's anyone who draws any enjoyment at all from the premise, I implore them to read the source material. It does many of these characters much more justice, even if the spirit turtle arc itself is boring. Ost has more impact. The old lady and Eclair get to do more. Even that incredibly forgettable girl at the end gets a bit of proper development.

Also the final battle is completely different. I'm not sure why they suddenly decided to make Kyo a Japanese person. Didn't they realize that that completely contradicts the backstory of the forgettable girl? Also why did they make his Japanese self look completely different? None of the other summoned heroes work like that. Ethnina isn't even a Japanese name. The Light Novel never mentions any of this. I hear he doesn't even appear in the WN, so this can't be from there. What about the manga?

The anime original stuff over the course of the Kizuna World arc is a personal pet peeve of mine that still bugs me, but it's personal, I understand that. But I don't think it's easy to deny that everything is incredibly rushed and awkward, and nowhere near the quality of storytelling that the first season had. Even the mirror vassal weapon just gets treated better in the LN. The stuff with the demon dragon in he shield is completely different. That rant that "possessed" Naofumi did never happened.

Well, I hope one can make a bit of sense of my rambling. I don't entirely regret watching it, but I am most certainly disappointed.

[cyberdemon]

What the heck were they thinking with that last scene with the three stooges?!

[grecefar]

This season sucked and I am speaking as anime only viewer.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Dengar

That rant that "possessed" Naofumi did never happened.

But that was the best part of the episode by far. Finally someone calling out Rishia for what she is/was. Though as I said, I hope she's grown out of it by now.

[Twi]

Originally Posted by Magewolf

Kyo was a horrible villain. He was all powerful and all knowing until he needed to die and then he went down like a punk. Of coarse to be fair Naofumi is a horrible protagonist when you remove the teenage angst.

I think I am out. I was looking forward to more stupid and unintentionally funny plots but this season has just been boring.

To be fair, that's a problem with the source materials too. I mean, strictly speaking, Kyo could have been an excellent antagonist from a "what-if" situation to make him more in line with Naofumi like they were trying to mirror with the reincarnation bit. Someone willing to be the villain if necessary to get the job done.

I mean, they are in a war between worlds, so crippling and killing the enemy side is a viable tactic, and having you could even justify the experiments by shunting souls into artificial bodies to make it so that you can have dead soldiers and heroes continue to fight after their original bodies die to make up for the lack of manpower or risking the vassal weapons falling into the wrong hands. I mean, Raph is the perfect example considering she's literally an enemy from the other world who just claimed one of their weapons and took it with her back home.

Originally Posted by cyberdemon

What the heck were they thinking with that last scene with the three stooges?!

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they shouldn't be there right now.

[Frontier]

I've been assuming Kyo was Japanese since he and Naofumi first talked. Even Naofumi got that impression.

It's weird. They rushed through the Spirit Tortoise arc and it still felt as boring as every source readers described it and they rushed through this arc apparently even more and altered stuff yet it still came out the stronger arc.

[magnuskn]

Ergh. I was a huge fan of the first season, but this one was pretty bad. Not outright terrible, like the last Index series, but what a rush-job on the second half of the season, nonetheless.

Obviously compressed plotlines, near zero character development and dodgy animation in many episodes. I can only hope that the next season (which we know is coming) won't have that, but given that it will be made by the same team, that's not a big hope at all.

I actually liked Kyo as a villain a bit, but purely because he looked a bit like Shiroe from Log Horizon.

Anyway, 4,5/10. And that is purely on the nostalgia of seeing Raphtalia again.

[frodonk]

I didn't know s3 was announced before the end of s1. I probably heard about it then forgot about it, but looking at the last few scenes it was as if they're teasing all those future content because they might not get another season

I wouldn't have any idea about how they messed things up compared to the source material if I haven't read about it here, but even without that context this season doesn't have the same impact as the first one, even if you left out all those discussion in the first season regarding slavery.

At least I got to see glass again

Originally Posted by Dengar

Also the final battle is completely different. I'm not sure why they suddenly decided to make Kyo a Japanese person. Didn't they realize that that completely contradicts the backstory of the forgettable girl? Also why did they make his Japanese self look completely different?

This really confused me as well. Thanks for clearing this up for me, no idea what they were thinking when planning this second season if even obvious plot inconsistencies like these made it through.

[magnuskn]

Maybe they wanted to contrast him with Rudeus over in Mushoku Tensei, who got his shit mostly together?

[Dengar]

Well it's like... This version of the final battle does an absolutely terrible job showing that he's nothing without his allies. He beat Kyo basically all by himself. This actually wasn't a thing in the source material.

Spoiler for Light Novel:

Instead of the dragon thing possessing him, it assisted him in casting a corrupted version of All Liberation Aura, called All Sacrifice Aura. This would buff his whole party as all members were in fact present and needed. Kizuna was there as well. He actually summoned the wave during the final battle, rather than before it. But this ended up biting him in the ass because when a wave is active, the levels from the world on the other side of it get added to the levels from the world he's in. There was no big power of friendship laser (there was a laser, just not as cliche as this, and it didn't even finish him off), just the result of teamwork and various skills and effects. There's a whole bunch of things I'm not mentioning as well.

[BWTraveller]

Originally Posted by Dengar

I hope anime only watches got some enjoyment out of it.

As a LN reader, this was nowhere near the quality of adaptation that the first season was. And I don't mean literal faithfulness. This adaptation barely felt faithful to the spirit of the original work.

If there's anyone who draws any enjoyment at all from the premise, I implore them to read the source material. It does many of these characters much more justice, even if the spirit turtle arc itself is boring. Ost has more impact. The old lady and Eclair get to do more. Even that incredibly forgettable girl at the end gets a bit of proper development.

Also the final battle is completely different. I'm not sure why they suddenly decided to make Kyo a Japanese person. Didn't they realize that that completely contradicts the backstory of the forgettable girl? Also why did they make his Japanese self look completely different? None of the other summoned heroes work like that. Ethnina isn't even a Japanese name. The Light Novel never mentions any of this. I hear he doesn't even appear in the WN, so this can't be from there. What about the manga?

The anime original stuff over the course of the Kizuna World arc is a personal pet peeve of mine that still bugs me, but it's personal, I understand that. But I don't think it's easy to deny that everything is incredibly rushed and awkward, and nowhere near the quality of storytelling that the first season had. Even the mirror vassal weapon just gets treated better in the LN. The stuff with the demon dragon in he shield is completely different. That rant that "possessed" Naofumi did never happened.

Well, I hope one can make a bit of sense of my rambling. I don't entirely regret watching it, but I am most certainly disappointed.

Seems I misunderstood something from external analysts I'd seen back when this arc was partway through. I got the impression that

Spoiler:

Kyo was one of a group of individuals reincarnated from Japans through another source that was specifically aiming forself-centered otakus who longed for the LN isekai harem. I thought the wannabe Katana hero was also one of these.

This being the case, having a Japanese name would be a little odd (though explained by the Oriental nation they reincarnated in), but there would be absolutely no disconnect between him being from another world and having a childhood friend in this one, any more than there is that Rudy from MT lived thirty-something years in his world but has a childhood friend in his new one. The anime seems to support that he's a reincarnation instead of a summon anyway, from the fact that he clearly committed suicide and that his body here is completely different from what it was.

Of course, they still made a ton of alterations and eliminated an aspect of the fight: these individuals can't just be killed. If they die their soul can come back in a new body, and as such it's necessary to destroy the soul afterward using something like a Soul Eater.

[Dengar]

That must be from a point in the LN I haven't reached yet. Which I guess is fair. I still think the scene lacks impact though. Especially since it does go against established rules (there are apparently more rules that have not yet been explained).

[Frontier]

Originally Posted by frodonk

I wouldn't have any idea about how they messed things up compared to the source material if I haven't read about it here, but even without that context this season doesn't have the same impact as the first one, even if you left out all those discussion in the first season regarding slavery.

That guy still keeping and planning to sell slaves just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Because you know Naofumi's going to keep doing business with him .

Originally Posted by magnuskn

Maybe they wanted to contrast him with Rudeus over in Mushoku Tensei, who got his shit mostly together?

I thought it was to make Kyo more of an obvious foil for Naofumi, not that they did much with it.