The Rising of The Shield Hero Season 2

Episode 9

Last week I mentioned how it'll be interesting to see Naofumi react to having his major pillars of emotional support removed in this strange new world full of hidden dangers. Thankfully, this episode does seem to be building towards a climax in that vein as Naofumi is clearly getting more worried and impatient about Raphtalia's well-being. We get little signs that something dangerous might be bubbling beneath the surface, and I am all for that because I think that is a pretty natural test of character for him after everything that he has gone through. It really does make me wish that season two started with this arc instead of the one with the turtle. Obviously a lot of things would need to be rewritten, such as the introduction of Kyo being the main overarching villain, but if the comments I've read are any indication this anime adaptation is already playing very loose with the chronology of the original light novels anyway. Either way, there is decent build up here, and I hope to get a satisfactory payoff before the season is over.

The rest of this episode is general world-building and setting up the next steps to saving Raphtalia. Along the way we are able to find Filo, which was unexpected albeit a bit easy. The fact that Filo's race technically doesn't exist in this world is interesting, as are the mechanics needed to basically adjust her into a similar one. Likewise, we come across characters that seem to act as parallels to some of the characters that we've seen before. It does make me wonder if there is a similar legend to what we saw in season one the Shield Hero. There are a lot of interesting nuggets being dropped here and while I wish things were this engaging at the beginning of the season, it's better late than never!

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The Rising of The Shield Hero Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.