Author: Faris
Editor: KnightAvenger
Studio: Kinema Citrus
Watch at: Crunchyroll
After seemingly losing all faith in humanity in the previous episode due to the false rape accusation and, for a second, starting to go a bit emo, reminiscent of Spider-Man 3‘s Peter Parker, only not as awkward or as cringy, in this episode, we see our hero slowly regain some faith in people through a journey of becoming closer with the newly introduced character – a half-raccoon, demi-human called Raphtalia.
She was enslaved after her parents were killed by the first Wave of Catastrophe and her owner treated her very badly. Thus, it’s no surprise that, at the beginning, she is completely distrustful of and fearful towards Naofumi, the Shield Hero. We see her backstory through some flashbacks, and that helps build empathy for her. Throughout the 20 or so minutes of the episode, slowly but surely, she starts to trust him and he starts to mellow down. Their growing relationship is mostly shown through a montage of some small events and a couple of important events which fill out most of the episode. This also helps them both get stronger as well, since they end up killing quite a few monsters.
Speaking of killing the monsters, it is cool seeing the experience flash up every time a monster is killed, and the entire UI being shown is also interesting, for that matter. Seeing the Hero use that UI to do some stuff normally in RPGs like pick a skill, upgrade the shield by “feeding” the monsters that are dead to it, is nice and flashy, and seeing the different shield types and their powers is all cool. Some of the shield designs are less creative than others, but, either way, they are all relatively cool to see.
The structure of the episode differs from the first one, most notably, in that it is the proper length. We also get proper OP and ED, but I will review those in a later review or maybe in a separate review specifically for them, which is why I will not be talking about them in this review.
One thing that is, maybe, a bit troublesome is that due to the nature of the episode being the way it is, the re-watch value might not be as strong as that of the first episode. Of course, that is not a very big deal or anything, but it is something worth mentioning, in my opinion.
This show is starting pretty strong and I look forward to the next episode. Since there are going to be 25 episodes in total, hopefully, there are going to be more of these slower and cozier episodes before big conflicts start to unravel.
