It turns out that the queen is keeping a close eye on Naofumi. Why? Beats me. The better question is why she isn’t back home. We’ll find out later, I’m sure. It also looks like she isn’t a fan of her own daughter. Well, maybe the woman should’ve done a better job raising the girl.
Speaking of the Naofumi, we’re just now getting to the heroes’ reward for dealing with the first Wave. Not surprisingly, he gets a paltry sum that pales in comparison to the other heroes (Spear Jerk gets eight times his amount). To add insult to injury, the king wants to charge him for removing Raphtalia’s slave crest.
Luckily for him, both the sword hero and the bow hero come to his defense. So… what’s their deal? I can’t imagine that they’re actually decent people. Remember: the number one rule of these trashy harem shows is that every guy is a dickbag until he recognizes the harem lead as his superior. Clearly, Ren and Itsuki both think they’re better than Naofumi. But putting that aside, this is twice now that they’ve spoken out in his favor. It wouldn’t hurt the hero to, y’know, thank them. But instead, he just charges off without a word. Actually, he wanted to rant and rave at the king, but Raphtalia reminds him that they have better things to do…
…like enslave her again! So you buy a slave girl who lost her parents (which she even has nightmares about) and assume a paternal role in her life. You force her to kill even though she is triggered by blood. When she doesn’t listen to you, you threaten to abandon her. And now that she’s all grown up, she still wants to be your slave. Y’know, just normal isekai things. But look…
…this is her idea! Totally clears the slave owner. Thank you!
Also, she totally wants to bone her father figure. Again, just normal isekai things. The slave trader even adds that Naofumi could sell a virgin raccoon like Raphtalia for 35 smackeroos! Forget bitcoins! Buy all the slave girls! We’re going all the way too the moon with this investment!
As a result, Naofumi buys a monster egg. If you’re lucky, it can hatch into a dragon, which prompts our hero to sarcastically ask if this is a gacha game. A gacha game where you get slave girls? C’mon, this isn’t Fate! But I digress. Normally, you get a filolial from the monster egg instead. What’s a filolial?
Dude, that’s just a chocobo. Like, you’re not even trying to be original.
Yeah, what she said! More importantly, you can’t screw a chocobo! How is Naofumi supposed to have sex with that?! We’re trying to build a harem here! All isekai anime are harem anime! That’s just the law! I demand that that this chocobo turn into a girl at once!
Anyways, what follows is a bunch of merchants being grateful to Naofumi for defending Lute Village, but that stuff is boring. Let’s get back to the chocobo that we can’t have sex with.
Yep, definitely can’t screw that… unless…
Much like Raphtalia, the chocobo grows up very quickly. By the way, Naofumi names it Filo.
Well, since we utterly nothing better to do, let’s trot out the same goddamn conflict again. According to Malty, Spear Jerk is now a Lord, and he’s in charge of Lute Village. They start demanding that the villagers pay a ridiculous tax. You get the feeling that Malty is only here after hearing about Naofumi defending the village. So what am I supposed to think? That the girl just sits in her room every night, scheming up ways to dick over the Shield Hero? But why? What is even the point? What does she get out of this? Does she get a quivering orgasm every time Naofumi suffers? The author isn’t even trying now to give her credible motivations. Maybe he never did. Maybe he just wants to rail against this “boogeywoman” who is out to screw over innocent men like him. Aargh, fake rape accusations everywhere!
Luckily, the queen’s people are here, and they must have told Malty that the village belongs to Naofumi instead.
As a result, the girl proposes yet another duel between Naofumi and Spear Jerk. Ho hum.
So we get a dumb race between Naofumi and Spear Jerk, because we need to see what Filo is capable of. Apparently, chocobos are faster than dragons… which… aren’t really dragons in this universe. They’re just raptors.
Even though Malty cheats not once, not twice, but thrice, Filo still wins by a beak. Dude, Spear Jerk kinda sucks. Maybe she hitched her wagon to the wrong guy.
Speaking of wagons, Naofumi gets one as a reward for saving the village once again. This time, from evil socialist taxation.
Also, winning the race somehow turned Filo into a fat chocobo. Again, not screwable. Rectify this, anime! And with their new mode of transportation, he and Raphtalia hit the road to become good ol’ entrepreneurial traders. But when they wake up the next morning…
There it is! I knew there was a girl beneath all those feathers! A girl you can screw! It’s even a loli! Very cool and very legal! Good ol’ isekai anime! Never change, you fucking degenerates.
Moe Sucks 
I told them that only the first arc was the most “good” that they would see in this story, then goes from the typical protagonist of anime that only finds girls who fall in love with him to add them to his harem, with a villain it seems that Pierre Nodoyuna or the Rocket Team of the pathetic and recurrent that is.
Wait, does she really -choose- to become his slave again, or does he just give her something that looks like a slave brand because she wanted to have a constant reminder of those good times she had as a prisoner/child soldier? I know there’s no right answer here, but one is much more wrong than the other.
Also, even though the title of the post gave away the ending, I was still taken aback by how utterly shameless it is.
She’s a slave again. They go back to the slave trader to have it re-etched into her cleavage.
Huh, wow… I actually went and watched that part of the episode cause I thought there must’ve been some more context to it, but nope, it just opens up with her getting the crest, while the guy’s sole response is “eh, whatever, if that’s what you want”.
In fact it has so little context I don’t even want to believe that it’s really a functional slave crest and she’s willingly becoming his slave again as a sign of ‘loyalty’. Like, it’s treated in such a casual manner that it’s hard to take it seriously.
Does it really hurt the protagonist of those isekai anime to have a male party member? And not a shotacon option I must say.
We all know male chocobos don’t exist. In FF7, Cloud mated female chocobos to get the golden one.
Which one is worse – this or SAO?
As far as I know, Kirito never owned a slave. But from a pure enjoyment level, SAO is currently super boring.
Goddammit, Shield Hero. I tried to overlook it once, but I guess we’re just doubling down on this now.
Honestly at this point I don’t really care about the BDSM slave-play shenanigans. I at least understand the fetish beneath it — some people fantasize about control, and some people fantasize about being controlled. Sure.
This lolirom shit, on the other hand, never fails to gross me out. I’m really, really not interested in having a think about: “Okay, so you don’t like pedophilia… but is it still pedophilia if the little girl has an adult’s body/mind? How about if they’re literally a bird?”
Why? Just why, out off all the paths you could take with a revenge fantasy, would anyone decide to go into pseudo-philosophical hypotheticals about what constitutes pedophilia?
Goddammit, I laughed out hard reading your review. It was really well written and fun.
To answer one of your inquiries in the review, yes, Myne takes over the village just because Naofumi saved it and the villagers started being grateful to him. Yes, she *does* get a quivering orgasm everytime she messes up Naofumi and screws up his life. And, even though we do eventually find out why she has it out for Naofumi, and why she sabotages the saviours of the world we never really get a *good* reason why she is such a horrible person.
Supposedly, according to the author, Myne and the King are based on people he actually knew, so it’s pretty safe to say that the real-life equivalent of Myne screwed him over so bad that he directed all his bitterness, hate and venom towards her (yeah, I am also starting to believe the author is an embittered guy at this point). Myne is there to be a “Hate Sink” and be despised. That’s all there is to it. The king eventually gets a redemption arc much later in the story. Myne never does. She only goes from bad to worse.
I hope he doesn’t think this excuses their lack of characterization. Sure, you can find all sorts of clowns out there in real life. There are over 7 billion people on this planet, after all. But your job as a storyteller isn’t just to plop two “possible” characters in a story and call it a day. But at this point, I think it’s quite apparent that this dude has an axe to grind, and that’s all he cares about.
This is why seasonal “controversial” animes are ass. They will only bait us with hooks of shock factor to substitute a “darker edge”, but once the rage/hype dies down it’s just gonna be another typical anime with the same shit beats. Berserk initially worked because the world IS dark and unfair and actual consequences happen. Goblin Slayer and Shield Hero are still gonna fulfill a power trip one way or another.
This is hilarious. You’re really amazing.
I wish you were blogging when konosuba was airing. Not a bad isekai show. or even made in the abyss.
this Episode breaks the series. the queen Knew shield hero was going to have a hard time and didn’t leave one of her “agents” to assist him. The reason she left was because they were summoning the heroes. there’s no way she couldn’t have known that her daughter and husband didn’t hate shield hero