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「災厄、再び」 (Saiyaku, Futatabi)
“Catastrophe Returns”
Everyone knows a recap at the beginning of the episode – plus an animation bump – means big things are in store, and sure enough, the next Wave commences. The knights from Lute are onboard this time, so unlike the first Wave, Naofumi and his group don’t need to stay behind to protect the villagers and get the chance to use their new gear, as well as a dragon-possessed Rage Series unlock, to snag a little boss-killing action for themselves. The MVP for the episode was by far and wide the old woman Naofumi saved once upon a time, and she’s as hale as a horse. She’s fighting monsters like she’s at the prime of her life again, which comes in handy when it comes time for Naofumi to find out why the other three heroes aren’t saving the day.
As usual, the answer is a lack of cohesion. The Spear Hero wants to attack the biggest, baddest monster on the ship, the Sword Hero believes they have to kill the zombie pirate to unlock the true boss, and the Bow Hero is basically acting as support because no one’s listening to him, anyway. They’re all very quick to point fingers at each other once Naofumi starts casting blame, but most likely each of them would be right in the game they’re accustomed to, which means the reason behind their inability to cooperate lies in the very simple fact that this world they’re in isn’t a game. Or, maybe, it’s just not the right game. We’re retreading familiar ground here, I know, but it’s worth mentioning again that none of them are precisely wrong in their assumptions. Based off of that, I’m beginning to wonder if the monsters aren’t starting to use the heroes’ prior experience against them. On the other hand, Naofumi skimmed through a novel. Every observation he makes, he’s making based on his own senses, which was how he noticed in a very short amount of time what the Sword Hero didn’t notice in three hours.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the Sword Hero. He was the first to come to the Shield Hero’s defense after Raphtalia called them out for standing around while Naofumi and Filo did all the work, told off Myne for being a bad hype man, and even smiled when Filo started teasing Motoyasu. The Bow Hero smiled, too, so I suppose that’s a point in his favor. One day they will all join Naofumi’s circle of friends, whether they like it or not. (The blacksmith will always be the founder of that particular club, though.)
With all that out of the way, a new villainess has introduced herself. Glass (Han Megumi) made quite an entrance. She defeated the Soul Eater the hero party were having trouble with by impaling it with swords of light that rained from above, and I already like her. Also, as a big plus, she’s recognized Naofumi as a true hero. The real deal. The genuine article. Unfortunately, this comes with the downside of her declaring herself his enemy, but honestly it’d be easier to count the people who don’t consider Naofumi their enemy, so she’s going to have to do more than make a flashy entrance to stand apart from the crowd. And assuming she was around to see Naofumi skewer that Soul Eater with an Iron Maiden, why on earth isn’t she doing the sensible thing and running in the opposite direction?
Preview
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> why on earth isn’t she doing the sensible thing and running in the opposite direction?
I assume this is rhetorical, but anyway, considering her display of force just beforehand, it’s pretty clear why she’s chosen to engage regardless.
Personally, no matter how powerful I thought I was, I wouldn’t want to tussle with a guy who had even the remotest possibility of crushing me in an iron maiden with glowing red eyes. At best, I would ask him if he wanted to team up
Loved this episode. Naofumi showed the others what he can do and probably surprised himself as well. If course the other heroes were still being idiots by not belong him and needing to be convinced. They truly are despicable ppl.
Hope we get more details on the cursed shield and new armour and how Filo is affected.
Unfortunately, the first impression the other heroes got of Naofumi was soured by the business with Myne. None of them got the chance to form a proper opinion of him before they were convinced he was trash. Now, he’s basically spent the rest of the series climbing out of a hole. It hasn’t worked so far with Motoyasu, who’s a bit thick but also has the disadvantage of spending the most time with Myne, and Itsuki hasn’t really interacted with him at all since. However, Itsuki’s been through experiences we as an audience haven’t really learned of yet, and him and Ren did defend Naofumi after his duel with Motoyasu.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: I wouldn’t give up on them just yet.
I am wondering though, since he gets to keep the equip bonus of shields he mastered, wouldn’t it be more efficient in the long term to also master the shields that just give a stat bonus? Granted, the bonus is small so far with just a +1 or a +2 but if you think of it in the long term, then stacking those passive bonuses would benefit him pretty good. Going with the light novel, the total defense boost he would have gained so far is +33, ignoring the damage resistance part and the ones who haven’t given a number or percentage for their defense. Getting 3% damage reduction towards demons might be low as well, but combined with his other passive resistances might actually be a lot higher, depending on how those would together. Noafumi is a smart person as he has shown so far, so i can’t help wondering if it is just a translation issue that only some passives can be gained through mastering the shields or that he never thought about it thanks to a lack of gaming knowledge.
He is the shield hero after all, the tank of the party. Or as he himself said ( at least, if i am remembering correctly who said it ) he is the immovable object, so it would be in his best interest to gain as many defensive passives as possible to be the best tank possible right? Or am i thinking too much in a game-like manner now for naofumi’s character?
Maybe it’s too big a leap, but I’d kinda been assuming that his off-screen time when he and the girls have been leveling had also been him mastering combat shields, so I thought he had a lot of passive buffs at this point but they just aren’t going out of their way to display them.
hmmm that Glass person looks interesting…
if only because there is another faction at play here – chaos cult? resistance to royalty? I am craving answers at that point…
The Church basically comes off as a chaos cult at this point with what they’ve been getting the king to pull.
Someone pointed out that the Church has no Shield Hero monument, which means whatever grudge is held by the Church, it’s been there for some time. Hopefully, the Queen will be able to shed some light on where that grudge stems from at some point
Well, she made those Soul Eaters look like trash mobs. I don’t think Shield Prison would even work on her and thus make Iron Maiden unusable against her.
That Soul Eater looked weakened to me, but I see your point. She basically one-shotted the boss monster in order to establish herself as a tangible threat
https://randomc.net/image/Tate%20no%20Yuusha%20no%20Nariagari/Tate%20no%20Yuusha%20no%20Nariagari%20-%2011%20-%2009.jpg
I read somewhere that Raphtalia learnt a new form of martial arts from Granny. I think this scene proves how helping the villagers will pay big dividend for Naofumi. Every good deed Naofumi does is an investment with low yield till the investment grows and can’t be stopped. The other heroes can only get by with the good grace of the King and his constituents for now.
If they life this long, they have experience that the young ones lacks. But (and here is the point). Are they willing to hear them out?
Think about it with this BGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yERildSsWxM
in other words: Are these Heroes willing to do this “Faction Quest” with this “boring” NPC to gain their “Skill”? Perhaps these Heroes work only with Quest wikipedias, where our shield hero do it raw and for empathy
Well, i hope this one here, give out the gist
…what kind of music did you choose for a BGM? It’s not even country music.
The Lyrics was more the point here
Great song choice
Those three heroes are pretty strange for gamers. Wouldn’t the sensible thing to do is go all out when Naofumi was tanking? If it was me and the tank was a good friend or someone I don’t like, I’d go all out and use everything including AoE attacks.
When it comes to bosses like that, I don’t think anyone would worry about kill stealing.
That depends on the game, the monster and on your equipment i’d say.
While they managed to kill the target during those 3 hours, the enemy kept respawning until naofumi managed to pull out the real form. While i get that going all out right from the start might be more beneficial from your stand point, it is also a rather risky strategy if you don’t have info on the opponent.
If you have to kill multiple opponents that keep respawning until you find the core or boss, it is actually more efficient to save your strength until you get to the boss of that wave.
And both sword hero and spear hero said that they believed their opponent had to be killed before they could get to the boss. So by saving their strength a bit, they could then unleash their strongest moves the moment the boss arrives.
And considering Glass seems to be a potential boss level opponent with her strength and confidence, they might need all their attacks at full strength to beat her at their current level.
It’s also a good reason to use your AoE attacks since it most likely won’t be useful for a final boss. If taking game balance in consideration that is. But you have to agree that it’s better than doing nothing right? Especially when the do consider it the final boss.
Can’t say Glass should be put into consideration since they didn’t expect her at all.
AoE attacks can actually be pretty useful on the boss, depending on the game and its mechanics.
If a boss has multiple places where you need to hit before it goes down, there is usually a mechanic that allows AoE attacks to hit the multiple targets at once. And depending on how strong the AoE attack is, that might take 1 or 2 pieces out of the running at the very least.
Blade and soul had a boss with 3 hitboxes and if you used either a ninja or a force master then you could hit all 3 hitboxes at once, making the fight a lot shorter if you could capitalize on that. Not sure if they can still do that as their skills have been retouched, but before we had warlocks, it was a normal strategy at least.
And they did something else besides doing nothing, they tried to pull out the wave boss so that they could kill it 😀
Side-note, while Glass seems to be powerful enough to be a boss, i don’t think they expected a boss fight after killing the soulstealer Boss was killed.
I absolutely loved this episode; easily the best so far imo. I really sat there and thought, “man, suffering through all that bad writing is finally becoming worth it.” The “Iron Maiden” from Naofumi was just spectacular; much improved over the “basic” attacks we’ve been seeing from the other heroes.
To any of our LN readers out there, please tell me that it keeps going in this direction and improving from here, because if this episode is going to be the launching point going forward, then all the waiting will have been worth it.
Well, from what i’ve read so far of the webnovel (chapter 130 out of 454 chapters), there are some pretty weird and interesting things coming up. Some things don’t even make sense so far, even though the two of them follow itself closely from what i’ve heard.
I’m just looking for some creativity. Shounen series prove that you can do recycled things but still keep it interesting. The earlier parts of this series had some pretty poor writing and lack of creativity, but there’s been an uptick of that in recent episodes, with this episode being probably the most creative thus far.