English Dub Review: The Rising of the Shield Hero “Nadia”

Overview

After his bout, Naofumi encounters Nadia, another one of the coliseum’s fierce fighters. With some help from an old acquaintance, Naofumi’s team battles through the coliseum’s ranks, knowing full well that Nadia will be waiting if they emerge victorious.


Our Take

Long after the previous episode, Naofumi later encounters the mysterious woman, Nadia, when the two are unexpectedly ambushed by several competitors who forfeited which easily made me laugh as they don’t realize who they were dealing with. Naofumi and his party stock up at the local shop and briefly meets the merchant who runs the place. All of this seems kinda suspicious, until the big reveal that Nadia is their next opponent in the Fight Club who is quite unique in her attack style and magic, while proving to be a difficult fight for them revealing other tricks up her sleeve as demi-human. However, Raphtalia recognizes her as somebody she knew from her past which is a welcoming suprise. 

Realizing Naofumi’s heroic intentions to win the prize money, which just so happened to be their common goal, Nadia throws the fight. But then, the sponsors stop Naofumi from winning, forcing them and Nadia to team up against a new challenger, the mysterious “Murder Clown”, with a giant pair or scissors and summoning spells. It’s pretty spectacular in terms of animation when they make quick work of their opponent, but the Murder Clown escapes while giving them cryptic warnings about the future before disappearing. Meanwhile, a young tiger child goes to see his sister and heal her with a magic potion…

Overall, this was rushed but not quite as bad. And this so-called “Murder Clown” enemy was interesting, as her voice was glitching out a bit almost like a distorted radio when mentioning about the buffs that Naofumi’s group had and commenting about the attacks not being strong enough. Hopefully we’ll see her again and figure out what her deal is. Same with the tiger siblings shown at the end of the episode. Seems like they’ll be focused in the next episode, with the way the post-credits have teased…