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leliel_12[Trigger warning: Rape accusations, gaslighting, all the misogyny, slavery]
[Image heavy by necessity.]
[Link to Das Sporking version]
Leliel: [rolls head] Hoo boy. I am not looking forward to this…
Wanderer2691: Yeah. You were really bummed to discover there was, in fact, a dub transcript - which means you have no excuse, you can just copy paste it.
Iana: Oooh-hohoho…the seal’s claw curls for the lazy…
Luz: …Oooh, monkey’s paw local version, got it! …And yes, I’m being a little desperate, given how apparently this first episode is so notably bad that our hosts decided to break the two-episode pattern before it even started!
Anne: Mm. Yeah, the Persona duo lucked out too - though the note said ‘stay of metal torment’, so maybe we’re not that bad off…
Leliel: Trust me, that’s debatable, when a commenter pointed out that we accidentally pointed out a point-worthy failure before the intro was done.
Anne: …you have got to be kidding me.
Wanderer2691: We wish. Comm member kudzumac pointed out in the comments of the Introduction that not giving Raphtalia’s World even a commonly accepted planetoid name, even if it’s a pun on “earth” because that’s what is beneath the feet of everyone, is kinda sus. Now, naming a world often isn’t needed…but as we’ll soon see, even from Episode 1 of this anime, Raphworld isn’t the only alternate universe involved. Hell, there’s not even one Earth timeline involved.
Luz: [Deadpan stare] Well, that’s not gonna be confusing. At all. Especially if other worlds are hopped to, or from. Even if the vast majority of folks aren’t aware of the wider multiverse, anyone who is probably is gonna want to know where the heck they are in the Cosmere. Thank you, Brian Sanderson for that term that sounds less overused than Multiverse!
Iana: Even my world, with its seemingly wilful desire to break any attempt to change the past or create ideal alternates, is called Creation, to differentiate even from the planes of Yu-Shan, Malfeas, and the Underworld within it, and that’s before you get to more arcane phenomenon such as Authocthonia or Elsewhere. What’s this planet’s excuse, and is this backpoint a record for speed? It feels like a record.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 1
Leliel: Secondly, before we begin, I’d like to thank bunniefuu at Forever Dreaming Transcripts (link to the entire archive here, and I will try to link it whenever I use it: https://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewforum.php?f=2415) for their hard work, and apologize for using them as a source to skewer something they are clearly a fan of…but as a side note, this seems to disagree with the official subs a bit, so I am going to assume they are a fan translation, and if they’re in conflict, I will presume the official subs I’m using are more accurate, and {braces} will be used when changing out this script for the official subtitles when I feel it’s necessary and not rephrasings of the official script (or when there’s been an oversight in attribution). I will update the Table of Contents with these rules when this spork goes up. Assume where there is no citations, I screenshotted the anime myself. And without further ado…!
[Image heavy by necessity.]
[Link to Das Sporking version]
Leliel: [rolls head] Hoo boy. I am not looking forward to this…
Wanderer2691: Yeah. You were really bummed to discover there was, in fact, a dub transcript - which means you have no excuse, you can just copy paste it.
Iana: Oooh-hohoho…the seal’s claw curls for the lazy…
Luz: …Oooh, monkey’s paw local version, got it! …And yes, I’m being a little desperate, given how apparently this first episode is so notably bad that our hosts decided to break the two-episode pattern before it even started!
Anne: Mm. Yeah, the Persona duo lucked out too - though the note said ‘stay of metal torment’, so maybe we’re not that bad off…
Leliel: Trust me, that’s debatable, when a commenter pointed out that we accidentally pointed out a point-worthy failure before the intro was done.
Anne: …you have got to be kidding me.
Wanderer2691: We wish. Comm member kudzumac pointed out in the comments of the Introduction that not giving Raphtalia’s World even a commonly accepted planetoid name, even if it’s a pun on “earth” because that’s what is beneath the feet of everyone, is kinda sus. Now, naming a world often isn’t needed…but as we’ll soon see, even from Episode 1 of this anime, Raphworld isn’t the only alternate universe involved. Hell, there’s not even one Earth timeline involved.
Luz: [Deadpan stare] Well, that’s not gonna be confusing. At all. Especially if other worlds are hopped to, or from. Even if the vast majority of folks aren’t aware of the wider multiverse, anyone who is probably is gonna want to know where the heck they are in the Cosmere. Thank you, Brian Sanderson for that term that sounds less overused than Multiverse!
Iana: Even my world, with its seemingly wilful desire to break any attempt to change the past or create ideal alternates, is called Creation, to differentiate even from the planes of Yu-Shan, Malfeas, and the Underworld within it, and that’s before you get to more arcane phenomenon such as Authocthonia or Elsewhere. What’s this planet’s excuse, and is this backpoint a record for speed? It feels like a record.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 1
Leliel: Secondly, before we begin, I’d like to thank bunniefuu at Forever Dreaming Transcripts (link to the entire archive here, and I will try to link it whenever I use it: https://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewforum.php?f=2415) for their hard work, and apologize for using them as a source to skewer something they are clearly a fan of…but as a side note, this seems to disagree with the official subs a bit, so I am going to assume they are a fan translation, and if they’re in conflict, I will presume the official subs I’m using are more accurate, and {braces} will be used when changing out this script for the official subtitles when I feel it’s necessary and not rephrasings of the official script (or when there’s been an oversight in attribution). I will update the Table of Contents with these rules when this spork goes up. Assume where there is no citations, I screenshotted the anime myself. And without further ado…!
Episode 1: The Shield Hero
Anne: …whoa. Pretty waves...
Iana: …huh. Are those rations (Editor's note: Archaeopteryxes)? I’m not criticizing, it’s actually rather homey to see them. That or proto-sapient Pterok Dragon Kings.
Luz: …okay, when this is over, you’re gonna get one of your ghost buddies to show me what Creation’s like. You have freaking dinosaurs?! That can become sapient?!
Wanderer2691: [grumbling] You are going to regret thinking birds that develop human minds is cool in this show…
Leliel: And here, we come to our first shot of our hero, Naofumi Iwatani looking solemnly across the bay as the dino-seabirds flock across.
Anne: …whoa. Pretty waves...
Iana: …huh. Are those rations (Editor's note: Archaeopteryxes)? I’m not criticizing, it’s actually rather homey to see them. That or proto-sapient Pterok Dragon Kings.
Luz: …okay, when this is over, you’re gonna get one of your ghost buddies to show me what Creation’s like. You have freaking dinosaurs?! That can become sapient?!
Wanderer2691: [grumbling] You are going to regret thinking birds that develop human minds is cool in this show…
Leliel: And here, we come to our first shot of our hero, Naofumi Iwatani looking solemnly across the bay as the dino-seabirds flock across.
Iana: …okay I admit to bias, given how this is my dear husband’s favorite activity when he wants to avoid bringing down the mood or is otherwise bereft of things to do, but this is quite the impressive scene. One can feel the loneliness and pain of his journey and the way respite feels melancholy rather than calm, which I am led to believe is what we are supposed to feel. So, marks from me.
Anne: Yeah, this is definitely something that’d make Marcy perk up right fast. So, no issues - nor with how a ball bounces into frame and to his feat, and we are soon followed with a shot of its owner and - fluffy tail.
Luz: Fluffyyyy…
Iana: Given the prominence of a certain name, this is Raphtalia, I presume? I admit, I was pleasantly surprised to see a beastfolk protagonist, much less a…is she a racoonwoman or a tanukiwoman? I can never tell…
Wanderer2691: Tanuki, but you’re assuming that this world’s beastmen are like Creation’s beastfolk. We’ll get into the exact mechanics later, but Raphtalia is not a beastman, she is a demi-human, and there’s…honestly something we’ll save for the end where we reveal how they met that gives a permanent dark cloud over what should be a mildly heartwarming scene…but for now? For now it’s fine. We will say the wiki makes it clear the franchise is a bit confused as to what she is as well, but that’s not really an issue for the window of the franchise we’re covering.
Leliel: In any case, Naofumi looks over at her, and after Raphtalia comes over, he gets out of his brood pose to hand her ball over as sunlight shines through a ruined stone archway above and…
Luz: …are you kidding me right now. This wasn’t starting in media res as Naofumi reflected on how he got to that cliff…?
Luz: …it was a psychic premonition. Of course. In this dark, deconstructive isekai, our first moment is a vision of the female lead under a portal that looks like it’s gonna be important. Is this remembered at all?
Wanderer2691: Nope! Not even Raphtalia is recalled!
Luz: Great. Just great. It might be a nitpick, but if you’re going to deconstruct something, play it for a unique spin that shows people acting more realistically and cleverly, why not make it a motive to get to know Raphtalia and what the archway is? If Naofumi’s that miserable, it gives him a goal!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 2
Anne: I mean - I had no idea my friends were warped to Amphibia with me, not at first. One of my major priorities after escaping from the horror that is a monster-bug infested cave was at least confirming if they were there with me, and the idea my phone would run out of battery and leave me without even a picture caused a panic attack. Like, if I didn’t have anyone, I’d become obsessed with some image in my dreams of someone I apparently liked! To say nothing of other heroes! We’re not asking for much, just actually deconstruct a common trope!
[NAOFUMI] (Internal narration) My name is Naofumi Iwatani. I'm a {somewhat otaku-leaning second-year college student}.
Iana: [Hand raises]
Wanderer2691: “Otaku” is the Japanese word for “nerd” - and really, this is establishing him as an audience stand-in, as a lot of fans are going to be otaku types.
Iana: Ah. [Pauses, then hand raises again - then giggles as she watches everyone around her sigh] Don’t worry, I know what a nerd is, there are similar concepts in Champoor. But, yeah, it’s good to see him admit to being one up front.
Luz: Hmm…hypocritical as it is, I can’t help but wonder if making Naofumi a nerd is an early sign of how unserious this is about doing a real deconstruction…but that’s in the big “keep in mind” folder. Anyway, Naofumi accidentally invokes light damage on his eyes when he opens the curtains and…
[NAOFUMI] I'd brought my kid brother back in line when he started breaking bad,
Anne: …I’m sorry, what?
Iana: [Ears up] Did he just say…
so I had earned the privilege of living at home, allowance included. With no need for a part-time job, I got to indulge my otaku side.
Iana: Yeah, he did. He has family back home?! And he won’t be planning on going back?!
Anne: Not just that, but - he’s actively held as responsible for said brother’s welfare?! Because, you don’t get enough of a pay for you to live on your parents’ dime alone without having pulled out some serious stops there!
Leliel: And this is where the wiki comes in handy, because…this is said brother’s entire page beyond his introduction.
Leliel: You may also have noticed a distinct lack of…citations. Because he’s so minor, the wiki editors aren’t bothering to chase down mentions of him.
Iana: …so, to recap, his great salvation of his brother was…getting a new hobby. And moreover, that said brother is so irrelevant to the main plot that, in spite of being a huge tie to Naofumi’s own native life, he isn’t even given a name. Uh…huh.
Anne: …okay, yeah, unless Naofumi has a breakdown about dying alone and his brother isn’t going to know what happened, yeah. Gonna call some bullshit here - Sprig’s entire family got over here, and they were still kinda disoriented and homesick! I mean, they adapted fast, but come on, guys!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 3
Luz: Yeah, gonna be honest - I was pretty eager to stay in the Boiling Isles, but mostly because I was sure I could always head back home to Mami whenever I wanted. The angst came fast after the portal got blown up. Also, side note; ‘colored hair’ and ‘swearing around the house’? Really? That’s a punk phase, not ‘breaking bad’!
Wanderer2691: We’re not scoring it yet, but this series has some…interesting ideas about social harmony, that disturbing the status quo of ideals is worse than the status quo having bad things in it. This will become relevant later.
Anne: [Cringe] Well…that’s nice. But, basically, Naofumi’s not the kind of geek allergic to grass, so when he runs out of money, he pulls up a seat at the local library and reads his light novels there, but apart from that, he thinks of himself as a normal guy with geeky hobbies, until one day when he’s taking down some novels and a particular book falls on his head:
[NAOFUMI] “{T}he Waves of Apocalyptic Catastrophe,
{To save the world from them}, four heroes will be summoned from another world." {How very like an LN.}
Luz: Wait, that’s how he gets in? Not saved by some knight on dragonback, he has a manual?
Iana: Technically, that’s a grimoire! But I find it most intriguing - to have the basics explained in a book sounds like a valid premise in and of itself, especially as the lore found within proves treacherous! As we see when we cover the four weapons in question, the sword, bow, spear, and shield - though Naofumi points out the majority of shields are not meant as weapons, and-
[NAOFUMI]: Anyway, where's the heroine in this thing?
Iana: [Sudden lowering temperature around her] …”Slutty”. That’s what disqualifies her as the heroine - or the romantic lead, as it were. She has had lovers before you and enjoys the carnal aspects of affection. Really. Really?
Leliel: Linguistic note - the literal translation of the word here, ビッチ (“bicchi”), literally means “female dog”, but while in English the term “bitch” is a somewhat misogynistic way to refer to an asshole who is also female, and has been owned somewhat, in Japanese the term is exclusively meant for a promiscuous woman. Which besides being eyebrow-raising given that no, a tendency to enjoy sex and flirtatiousness does not a villainess make, is also something that really shows just how much this franchise wants you to hate Malty (because of course it’s her) - we haven’t even seen her full profile yet and the first thing we know of her is that she’s loose and that disqualifies her from being the main LI!
RED MENACE: 1 (Her tendency to manipulate people through sex is the first thing we, and our hero, know about her through a literal guide to her world, and she still pulls it off?)
Luz: In any case, Naofumi’s impressed by how each of the four Heroes get a chance to show off in the intro, including the Shield, but when he turns the page..
Luz: Well, dang. If the rest of the pages are blank, that means Naofumi has to learn it the hard way. Neat thematic that he is “pulled inside” to write the rest of it, but still. Oh well, at least it’s with him to be a basic guide and-
Wanderer2691: It’s never mentioned, nor seen again.
Luz: Uh?
Wanderer2691: It completely vanished from the story and will never be seen, mentioned, or even its contents remembered. Including the parts about Malty, which leave Naofumi open to being screwed over by her.
[Long pause]
Luz: [Long, frustrated groan] Because Titan forbid that this deconstruction actually look at the mechanism by which it took Naofumi here, huh? Including, but not limited to, how that book got there in the first place and maybe make it a plot hook.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 4
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 1 (There is no given reason why Naofumi wouldn’t remember “stay the fuck away from the Princess or anyone like her” - as shown in the light novel, the book outright says she’s a cruel manipulator.)
Leliel: One extremely useful book having fallen into the void later, Naofumi crashes into a summoning circle, a distinct small shield attached to his arm, and overseen by a group of people in robes who don’t beat around the bush - they recognize the summoning spell worked and plead with the heroes to save their world - and then he realizes he’s not the only voice going WTF to that. Since they’re in shadow there, I’ll skip ahead to show all four lit up:
Wanderer2691: Not pictured: Competence.
Leliel: We get the proper opening, and the robed people, who we later learn are representatives of the local dominant religion of the continent, explain they summoned the Four Cardinal Heroes to their world through an ancient ritual as their world teeters on the brink of destruction. To his credit, Naofumi believes them and the evidence of his own senses, only a little confused at being seen as a Cardinal Hero when he’s a random college geek, but he decides to hear their plea out. As for the others…
[REN {Sword Guy}] Forget it.
{ITSUKI - Bow} I also refuse.
{MOTOYASU - Spear} You can send us back to our homeworld, right? Do that and maybe we'll talk.
Anne: [Flat stare] Well. You three are for sure hero material. You just got pulled into an alternate world, and you’re already demanding to go back, despite them pleading? That’s…honestly kinda understandable, but I get the sense that “panicked demands to be put back after being abducted” isn’t the intended take on this.
Wanderer2691: Nope. At first, it seems like Ren’s just understandably pissed but playing it abnormally cool, but then Itsuki chimes in…
[MOTOYASU] How willing are you to accommodate our requests? Depending on your answer, we may end up as your enemies instead of your allies.
Luz: …wow. I’m not sure whether to be impressed with your ability to haggle in the middle of otherworldly abduction or wonder exactly who carved out your souls and replaced them with raw elemental greed. I, just…
[NAOFUMI] What's with these guys? They're not only taking all this in stride, they've already started demanding respect and rewards.
Luz: That. Who acts like this?!
Iana: Ugh. It’s like someone took Emperor Champara and cloned him…and even he was mostly dealing with us poor courtiers who had to smile and nod. In the safety of the palace. With people he had no need to make a good first impression on what the hell?
Anne: …this is framed so that we can’t help but hate the other heroes. As in, if it wasn’t for this being a supposed third-person viewpoint…this’d be something I’d look for the hologram projectors in. They sound like robots programmed to be jerks.
Leliel: Rest assured, first impressions are accurate…even if those first impressions are specifically made for Naofumi and more importantly the audience to despise these three, even though “overly saccharine or seemingly gung-ho” would be both more realistic and lead to a better reveal later.
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 2 (One for Itsuki and Motoyasu both, Ren’s just being cold but raising good points - ones Naofumi seems to be missing, such as “life back home you ripped us from”.)
Anne: In any case, the lead priest quickly makes a save and starts appealing to their selfishness, promising them an audience with the king of the country, Melromarc, and rewards from there, to which Itsuki and Motoyasu continue to act like they’re stubborn salesmen. Yeesh, I think pre-Amphibia Sasha would find them annoyingly entitled…
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 4 (Same two jerks, same two Greed actions in case we missed it).
Anne: They make their way up, with Naofumi taking in the sights of the medieval capital and the climate, though Itsuki and Ren ruin it when the first realizes Naofumi has never been outside Japan and chides him, and Ren makes it awkward when he points out it’s technically called a Mediterranean climate without much visible appreciation for the world - yeah, Marcy would be Foot-in-Mouth buddies with him, even if he’s a bit too serious.
Wanderer2691: And here’s where I need to pause for a second and bring up a really important point: Naofumi says this is a different world, but…
Wanderer2691: If I wanted this kind of “different world”, I’d be able to do a good simulation by looking at the RTP assets for RPGMaker. The deliberately standard and generic assets:
(https://rpgmakerunite.com/en/)
Anne: …that isn’t a cheap Super Nintendo game?
Wanderer2691: Honestly, it’d be better if it were; while I’m perfectly happy to understand why my buddy Leliel greatly enjoys them (a big part in life is realizing others may just not like what you like, and that’s totally okay; only bad thing in my mind when it comes to subjective taste is trying to supersede some “objective” consensus on what’s supposed to be the “correct” way to look at a story, as I’ve suffered for a long time with certain communities… *wordlessly glares at FE Fates discourse between 2016-2019*), a big reason I dislike most isekai, even cream-of-the-crop like Konosuba and Re:Zero, is that it feels that in place of actual settings you have copy-pastes of a bunch of various fantasy anime and classic JRPGs. Without even the barest hint of subversion or even some deconstruction. As a result, everything comes off as so… so… samey.
Luz: …yeah. Compare, say, Vision of Escaflowne, which has this as official art:
(https://escaflowne.fandom.com/wiki/The_Vision_of_Escaflowne)
Iana: I see the variance in dress, but - wait, is that a warstrider?!
Anne: [Raises hand]
Leliel: Creation’s term for a magitech mecha. They’re not as much of a game changer as that sounds, as they are mostly in the Real Robot genre of “needs actual infrastructure”, and most infrastructure that can maintain warstriders was lost in the one-two punch of apocalypses that was the Great Contagion (a super-pandemic made to destroy all life) and the Balorian Crusade (a massive offensive by raksha who wished to absorb Creation back into the Wyld). But yeah, there’s a reason Exalted very loudly ignores post-boom isekai in the face of wilder things like Escaflowne when looking for visual inspiration. And thematic as well; while I don’t want to turn this into “A Summary of Escaflowne And Also A Spork Of Rising Of The Shield Hero”, Escaflowne is a child of how Japan really does not see why there should be a border between science fiction and fantasy, if you ask me correctly. Escaflowne is a series where Hitomi, our main protagonist, becomes the center of a mass of political intrigue because her hobby of Tarot suddenly becomes actual prophetic ability, mecha were developed to fight dragons, there’s a race of angels that were deeply prosecuted for the actions of their ancestors, and this is the capital of the antagonistic Zaibach Empire:
(https://www.cbr.com/best-anime-blade-runner-inspired/#the-vision-of-escaflowne-1996)
Leliel: *Brave Sir Bender* “It’s too cyberpunk, you say? Bite my fantasy-mecha’s shiny metal ass.”
Luz: Ahh…classic anime memories. I’m more into plain high fantasy, but frankly, if the Boiling Isles had weird science instead of actual magic, I’d just strap on some gears on a witch hat and call myself Good Mystic Engineer Luzura - heck, magic as it is over there is pretty much a combination of language and chemistry! One is allowed to make their magic a science, and exploit that to show variant technology - the witches do it all the time, and it’s visually interesting! It’s not a point yet, but…to quote the transcript:
{NAOFUMI}: It's like how you'd expect to see it described in some kind of travel brochure.
Wanderer2691: And the thing is - it’s like any travel brochure. This comes off as the franchise tipping its hand for how shallow the world is, especially when we discover what beasts of burden are for this world. But, I digress. So we go up higher, and meet the king himself:
Wanderer2691: And I’m gonna pause again here and spoil later developments to say Aultcray having a regnal number (you know, the XXXII bit) will be, uh, a bit fucky. Because there’s no real-world historical reason for him to be the 23rd of his name, as we’ll discover - spoilers from later in the anime, but Melromarc practices matrilineal primogeniture; power is inherited from mother to firstborn daughter, with the King-Consort ruling in his wife’s absence.
Iana: …and this is a problem…how? Champoor practices absolute primogeniture, parent to firstborn of any gender, but I was able to ensure Empress Ravatri inherited from her sadly indisposed husband as she and Champara had no child and his illegitimate offspring weren’t of age anyway, so it makes sense to adopt a name in case he has to pick up the slack, as it were.
Leliel: His wife does not have a regnal number, despite the very idea of being named after, or renaming yourself after, your ancestors is to enforce a feeling of generational stability. Moreover, notice how not a single one of the Heroes is a woman, and how nobody notes how the gender everyone expects to run things is present.
Iana: …Oh. Well…that’s just silly, then.
Luz: …Just had a bad thought. What if this was going to be what was assumed to be the more Earth-normal patriarchy, but the writer retconned it in so that suddenly Malty wasn’t the only female royal with importance when they realized they wrote themselves into a corner?
Leliel: Hold on to that. Suffice to say, the fact that everyone expects a lady to be the ultimate boss is reflected only in two spots, the royal court after the Queen shows up from out of nowhere and Malty’s feelings of entitlement, and even then, it’s mostly for plot convenience.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 6 (One for the less-politically-central half of the royal couple having the regnal number, one for this society being a matriarchy that doesn’t have different gender roles than Standard Pseudo-European Fantasy Patriarchal.)
Anne: So. Uh, that loudly ignored accidental good girl power idea aside, let’s see our main heroes, and the LN archetypes they are allegedly satires of? …Quick reminder, this is the Japanese sub, family names come first.
Wanderer2691: Ren here, as one might guess if one has seen Sword Art Online, is a riff on the Kirito archetype; a dark-haired, loner stoic who comes off out-of-universe as trying too hard. He is honestly the white sheep of the Three Heroes not Naofumi, as his issues come from being bad at communicating and a loner complex. He’s still a jerk, but he’s a jerk who, in a better story, would probably become Naofumi’s “worthy opponent” rival. How badly Naofumi treats him for being asocial and slightly clueless will be a huge issue later on.
Leliel: Motoyasu, on the other hand, is a riff on the Pure of Heart, Dumb of Ass chivalrous pervert type; someone who actively wants a large amount of girls who he genuinely cares for and whose IQ is cranked low when trying to impress them. Except he goes way too far in the other direction and becomes the show’s Scary Stu; a character who exists to be dunked on by Naofumi and really, really wants the audience to join in on kicking him. He often deserves it, but the level of sheer superhuman gullibility he shows, combined with Concentrated Incel Energy, makes it amazing he is able to walk and chew gum at the same time without exploding into a cloud of fedoras.
Luz, Who Is Pure of Heart And Slightly Dumb of Ass: [Eyes narrow.] Uh…huh.
Wanderer2691: Also in that better show, Itsuki would be the main antagonist or a direct lieutenant of the same, because he’s a riff on the Humble Hero idea - namely, what happens when it’s a complete affectation and in fact he’s an utter narcissist who will regularly let a situation get worse so he can look cooler when he invokes his full power - and refuses to involve himself in the boring work of heroic logistics or to have actual moral boundaries when doing ‘the right thing’.
Iana: [Hisses] …screw Champara, this boy is like the unholy lustchild of Peleps Deled and Oxemnes of the Subtle Fire. For the record, that is one of the most infamous leaders of the Wyld Hunt, a crusade force of the Scarlet Realm meant effectively as a pogrom against Celestial Exalted like me, and the effective wizard-king of an expansionist state not far from Champoor where if you are not a sorcerer yourself, you are legally property of the people who are. Please tell me he dies?
Leliel: I wish. This show thinks he’s a better person than Motoyasu.
Anne: This show is wrong. But, there’s early signs of just how bad a hand Naofumi was dealt when Aultcray starts blatantly ignoring him from before he’s even introduced, and instead launches into the premise of why the Heroes are needed, which Naofumi sums up after the fact, which I…don’t really have an issue with, realistic dialogue’s gonna have the Two And A Half Entitled Chatterboxes over there interrupting constantly. As a side note, there’s a scene of the various gathered nobles giving uncomfortable looks, which I like for the ambiguity of whether they’re wondering what Aultcray is doing, or distaste for Naofumi as the Shield Hero.
[NAOFUMI] I'm still kinda pissed about how crappy the king's treating me, but here's the story in a nutshell. There's an old apocalyptic prophecy on this world{, which mentions “Waves” that will lead the world to ruin},
Anne: Literally everyone else missed that. Maybe he could have been more polite, but he’s literally trying to help, and you needed, dude. Don’t be so whiny about someone being actively helpful just because he rubs you the wrong way!
Leliel: Ah, but as we’ll see, “how nice someone is to Naofumi” is the only worthy moral metric. Just ask the showrunners - and yeah, if Ren became the only other Hero Naofumi respected, this would be excellent foreshadowing for his strengths over Naofumi’s. But that’d ruin the edgelord power fantasy for the cool kid to actually earn it, so…
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 1
Leliel: In any case, when the Heroes focus on it, it expands out into a holographic display of their statistics - like so:
Iana: …what in the name of the Many-Faced Moon is that?
Luz: It’s a stat screen! Basically, as a LitRPG, the Cardinal Heroes have “Status Magic”, the ability to see their abilities, and those of others, as RPG mechanic stats. [Pauses] Which has an entirely deserved reputation as a cheat for lazy writers, as they often assume that “number bigger = character development/win”, and often ends up not actually being the hard system it promises, because the writers aren’t actually that creative to color in the lines of the system, and removes a lot of mystery of figuring it out. And thanks to my newly developed “Foresight of Crud” Divination ability, I can tell this is going to be an endless source of WORLDBUILDING points in the future.
Wanderer2691: Summarizing a lot, everyone’s Level 1 and the weapons need upgrading and unlocking, every Cardinal Hero needs to be separate and get their own party lest some mysterious “adverse reaction” happens, nobody answers an entirely valid question from Motoyasu about whether they can use other weapons until their Hero ones are useful-hold a second, that’s a really good question everyone needs to know now…
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 7 (Even if it’s answered, why not here?)
..and then everyone retires for the night to quarters on the dime of the King - and chatter reveals that everyone is especially ambivalent about the Shield Hero.
[MOTOYASU] I guess when you're "heroes of legend" you get special treatment. The girl who showed us here was cute, too.
Iana: [Groan] No point, but I can already tell that the Spear Guy is indeed kin to Champara. That is not a compliment - Ravatri deserves more than just the throne for the hell he put her through…
Anne: …uh, can I ask why you keep on acting like you masterminded a coup and you don’t think anyone would blame you? ‘Cause when you did that villainess laugh earlier, I kinda got my skepticism of ‘friendly royals’ acting up…
Iana: Three things: One, good instinct, two - Ravatri is my cousin. And, in fact, she might be more considered my stepsister, because we grew up regularly playing together. Finally, Champara slept with literally everyone but her - including the spouses of other Sanjhar seeking an audience with him as the price of admission. In their alleged shared bed.
Anne: [Blushing profusely, but nods, clearly relaxing.] Okay, yeah, that’s definitely a red line that I give you permission to get the backstabbing knife out if I ever cross it. What a dick.
Iana: Thank you. I consider myself a rather sensual person, but there is a difference between enjoying one-night trysts and dragging others indulging your own adultery, as well as forcing others to commit it with you, for political favors; it’s absolutely repugnant on a personal level and poor governance. [Sarcastic tone] I’m entirely sure absolutely nobody is going to show such qualities to a degree that makes a violent pro-democratic revolution’s case for it.
[ITSUKI] And though it did taste unusual, our dinner was quite sumptuous.
[NAOFUMI] Doesn't this seem kinda like a video game?
Leliel: Yeah, and that’s gonna be a problem, because it’ll seem like a single-player, badly balanced game.
{MOTOYASU} That's 'cause it is a video game. It's exactly like Emerald Online.
[NAOFUMI] Uh, never heard of it.
{MOTOYASU} Huh? Seriously? It's huge!
[ITSUKI] What are you talking about? This isn't some online game. It's a new console game I'm playing. Called Dimension Web .
{REN} You're both wrong. Everything about this place is identical to a VRMMO called Brave Star Online.
Anne: …and now I get how Iana feels, a what?
Luz: Science fiction thing, basically a virtual reality used for an MMORPG, a vast online game with many player. Uh, for the sphinx devil’s benefit, that’s-
Iana: Not unlike the Identity Game of Tzakal, that I can catch on to, though I suspect the stakes aren’t quite as high. But, I can also surmise this isn’t a typical thing in contemporary Japan?
Wanderer2691: Despite the best efforts of some techbros, it’s not a thing in contemporary anywhere. It’s at that point Motoyasu realizes something:
{Motoyasu}: Now to be sure, let's compare general knowledge. Whose face is on the thousand-yen bill? Ready, and…
Luz: …oh, I get it! They’re from alternate timelines! Cool, we get to learn about alternate histories and cultures, how they interface with the world, what kind of values they bring with them, and absolutely none of this will be followed up on, will it?
Leliel: Not at all - as far as this franchise is concerned, they might as well be from different places in one Japan. Despite the fact that one of the confirming questions Ren (I think) asks is “Who won World War II?” - which is kind of a big deal, politically and culturally. Depending on the circumstances, Ren might be from an outright futuristic cyberpunk dystopia, and the potential for the viewpoint of someone who has suddenly lost the terror of being surveilled his whole life and is actually allowed self-expression without any chance to adapt to a world where he doesn’t have to be a smiling fearful drone is completely missed!
Luz: Speaking of, there. That’s the issue with not naming Raphtalia’s World properly - there’s four entire Earths at least! How are you not going to be confused without even a guidepost moniker when dealing with a freaking many-worlds multiverse!? This isn’t a point, as it’s not directly an issue yet, and it’s more just confusing, but for real, it’s one proper name.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 8
Wanderer2691: So, Naofumi realizes he’s the only guy who thinks of this world as a book he just found instead of a game he likes, at which point the others suddenly go into awkward silences, before admitting they kinda saw that coming, because as Motoyasu puts it about the equivalent Emerald Online class…
[Silence in the Sporking Chamber]
Anne: And one apparently owes you money - what the heck?! That was a sudden shift! You don’t have to be mean about it!
Leliel: And here we start to see Motoyasu’s true purpose in this franchise, to be the Scary Stu - someone the writers really, really want us to hate in place of Naofumi, largely because it hides the fact a lot of Naofumi’s own future behaviors are kinda amoral at best. And that means acting like a jerk for no good reason; to his credit, Motoyasu is kind of a genuine jackass and borderline incel even at the start of his character arc, but as we will see, it goes beyond just being kind of a jerk and into outright pitiful given how very, very little he has going on upstairs except spite and horny.
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 8
Iana: Both Ren and Itsuki confirm that Shielders are a notoriously poor class in both their worlds’ iterations of the game, which already starts tickling my whiskers suspiciously - if it is a playable role, there has to be some amount of appeal, yes? And as huge fans of it, they would know that the one who is simply amused by dragonfire is the one who can draw the dragon’s breath away from the more fragile members of the circle, yes? Do not disrespect healers nor hoplites, and even if you cannot work with him directly normally, I would at least give him pointers for backing you up during this thing, I do not believe you have heard of it recently, called a Wave.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 9
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 2 (Because the plot needs for Naofumi and the Three Noble Stooges to already dislike each other for the upcoming story to work.)
Iana: I digress, Naofumi realizes this and understands that his strength is indeed as a protector for his party, and also that he may find love among the female members, being a bit lonely back in the college. I…really do not have much disagreement with this, after I realized what had happened and had a moment to soberly consider my Exaltation, I realized I could find a respectable lover as well to adventure and assist the interests of Champoor with; The Kadhar caste are seen as on a spectrum between courageous warriors and sweet-natured medics, and now I had every excuse to train with them - perk of the caste change - and Naofumi is both a young man, and thematically, this is attempting to make a point about how one becomes vulnerable to manipulation. So he goes to bed with an enthusiastic heart and an eager smile, and in the morning, Aultcray brings out a selection of highly adept adventurers and knights for the Cardinal Heroes to select their companions from, and-
Iana: [Frowns, scrolls up to the book] …Ah. The infamous Princess Malty, I presume?
Wanderer2691: Yeah, this show is not subtle about her, particularly when she flashes Naofumi a slight smile and giggle…and the fact that she happens to resemble a certain ponytailed princess exactly who he knows to be a femme fatale in the light novel grimoire, including how “flashing smokey glances” is how she operates, and something that completely escaped Naofumi Iwatani, Lover of Books, in spite of him having read it a day-at-most ago.
RED MENACE: 2 (Yes, this is a continuation of the book point, but given how she acts exactly like how the wicked Princess is said to act from square one, we’re not feeling charitable to Naofumi’s memory capacity.)
Leliel: Side note, Malty uses the name Myne Suphia here - while we will be using her true name in the spork, the script calls her Myne, and so we will keep her dialogue tags as Myne. But, speaking of, Aultcray bids that “their journey begins”...and the adventurers start walking to Heroes on their own.
Anne: [Flat look] Yes, that’s what happens when volunteers are involved, Naofumi. Volunteers already chose to be here and are generally more prepared about where their skills are, so they choose where their talents are. They could probably confer with the Cardinal Heroes and figure out who needs what first, but frankly, they’re here because they want to be - they kinda should be asked where they think they’re best.
Wanderer2691: This would be a nitpick, except it’s outright hypocritical given other context later on - namely, Naofumi here is showing exactly what, in the other Heroes, is viewed as the reason they’re so incompetent. So, apparently, It’s Okay If You’re The Shielder.
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 2
Leliel: But, all of that aside, that’s when Naofumi notices something important:
Luz: [Winces] Been there. But as Aultcray reveals, this has more to do with the events the night before than anything.
[AULTCRAY] The rumor that is quickly spreading around town is that the so-called Shield Hero is ignorant of this world.
[NAOFUMI] What?!
[AULTCRAY] Legend tells us the heroes arrive with a firm understanding of our lands. And the townspeople seem to think he doesn't meet that criteria.
Leliel: As we’ll see, this is a load of bupkis; as we hinted at before, the Shield Hero is not exactly a well-loved figure in Melromarc. And for once, I’m not that down on it - because as we’ll later see, the Church of the Three Heroes think of the Shield Hero as a demon who will destroy the world.
Iana: …Wait. He’s their equivalent of an inherent Anathema? Like me, in other words? With an even more blatant visual signifier?
Leliel: …okay now I’m down on it. Complexity addiction, thy name is Melromarc. [Facepalm]
Anne: Uh, deep lore please? ‘Cause I don’t know at all.
Iana: [Hums, as an interesting design on the center of her forehead appears, and her tattoos shine]
(Source: White Wolf Wiki - do not invoke for Exalted lore, it’s out of date.)
What you see on my head is a Caste Mark; a signet mark from Luna that shows I am one of their Chosen. If I really got going, you’d see my anima - a glowing field of light and shadow, which I am informed is also called a battle aura more generally. Thing is, the silver Mark is unique to Lunars like me, as is an anima of shadow and moonlight - and Lunars like me are one major part of what the Immaculate Order that the very powers of a Lunar Exaltation, and our cousins and partners the Solars, drive us to madness and becoming enemies of the natural world that corrupt others with dangerous thoughts - Anathema. The only solution to an Anathema, due to Celestial corruption or just being a grand heretic, is to send a cadre of the Wyld Hunt to ‘mercifully’ kill us for redemption in the next life.
Luz: [Instant suspicion] …does the Immaculate Order brand people brands that restrict them to singular schools of magic or roughly equivalent? Asking for a friend and myself.
Iana: Not quite that blatant, but the Order happens to be the state religion of the Scarlet Realm. Completely coincidentally, Lunars have long been champions of people who were regularly oppressed by the Realm and its vassals, and the Order preaches that all mortals should be subservient to Dragon-Blooded, who rule the Realm. But the point is - simply by having this, I’m showing I’m an outright living blasphemy against the Order and a high enemy of the Realm. So if not hiding this makes me a symbol of a monster that will destroy the natural order…
(https://shield-hero.fandom.com/wiki/The_Shield_Hero)
Methinks they might be slacking a bit, given how the shield was visibly present in the summoning circle!
Wanderer2691: Seriously. Good news is, all the idiot balls the Church is holding are good insulation for fire, as Naofumi should have been burned at the stake long ago, or at least as soon as the other three Cardinal Heroes stopped looking.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 10
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 3 (There will be a plot later, but it notably does not involve “actually killing the Shield Hero but letting him molder, now with actual desire to destroy the world).
{NAOFUMI} Regardless, you don't need five, Ren! How 'bout you give a couple of them to me?
{REN} I'm a loner; you're right. I don't "need" them. Whoever cannot cut it gets left in the dust.
Luz: *Naofumi* “...so, uh, that means you’ll let go right? You’d just be dragged down with excess party members.”
Anne: *Ren* “Yeah, and it’s a real asshole move of the script to say that I can’t cut them free for the ‘necessity of the plot’. Pricks.”
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 4
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 9
{NAOFUMI} Motoyasu, help me out. Don't you think this is unfair?
{MOTOYASU} Uh, yeah. I'm surprised my party is all girls, too.
[NAOFUMI] Clearly you're super broken up about it, jerk.
Wanderer2691: Spoken like a man who completely remembers he was hoping for dates among his party last night instead of deep envy of the Spear Guy. Dude, you’re making me like the moronic pervert for his honesty, and I feel skeevy. Stop doing that.
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 3
Iana: Itsuki suggests even division, but worries that doing so against the will of the parties will play havoc with morale, in a tone that makes it clear he isn’t actually considering it in good faith (a fact with his party agrees with silently but enthusiastically, which is rather good foreshadowing for the Anathema of the Shield issue, so I don’t quibble). But that is when Malty steps in, changing affiliation from Motoyasu to Naofumi, apparently seeking to support…I’m sorry, isn’t she Princess Malty? As in, the king’s daughter and heir? And even if he’s accepted her being a schemer, he’s literally letting her team up with a local version of an outright religious bogeyman?
Anne: …wow. I wonder how she got that way when it comes to being heartless and callous. It’s so…mysterious.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 11
RED MENACE: 3 (Why doesn’t he intervene here - oh yeah, because she needs to “toughen” Naofumi by screwing him over.)
Luz: Thankfully the rest can be skipped through - all Heroes get an initial war chest, and promise of monthly allowances, Naofumi’s initial budget is bigger because he’s only partnered with one person (and it isn’t worse lore violation than just leaving him alive and keeps his suspicions low, so…eh), and the next bit is thankfully able to be summarized; the Heroes go their separate ways, Naofumi is taken on a tour of the market, which showcases…
…well, it’s not exactly the Boiling Isles, but there’s not a point for ‘you consider a cat-eared guy and a big lizard’ another world’, so moving on, Malty takes Naofumi to meet a blacksmith she trusts for weapons, Erhard (Erhardt, in the transcript being used), who seems…pretty okay with the devil of his religion being in there-
Leliel: Gonna cut in - Erhard thinks the Church of the Three Heroes business is bullshit, and he is open to trusting Naofumi later on because of it. Is it a bit of a contrivance? Yeah, but it also shows this world isn’t a hive mind and by the end Naofumi was at the end of his rope, he needed a balm in comparison to everyone else to stay alive. So, I’m fine with him. Not so much with how he doesn’t recognize, or given how she’s a frequent customer, warn Naofumi of the freaking princess and likely heir to the throne, mind!
RED MENACE: 4
Wanderer2691: And it is here that Naofumi makes a very important discovery:
Wanderer2691: The Cardinal Heroes cannot wield any weapon apart from their assigned Legendary one, as helpfully explained in a Status Magic tooltip, except when transporting it to someone else. And now we know why everyone across three universes think Shielders suck - it doesn’t explain why anyone in any of the game-verses uses the Shielder class at all, but eh, here it’s a weakness he didn’t ask for, along with how the Shield is stuck on him and can’t easily be hidden.
Anne: So, in other words, he has to rely on his friends and possibly summons - and can’t fight directly! I like it, he’s gotta be clever and social and - how is it screwed up?
Leliel: Oh, we will see. But until then, this is just a cool idea and deserves to be in a better series with an actual pacifist or non-violent hero. But, Naofumi gets some chain mail on the cheap, and goes off to fight the “cute trash mobs” of this world, Balloons.
(https://shield-hero.fandom.com/wiki/Balloon )
Luz: D’aww. They’re angry widdle Jack o’ Lanterns. Do they bite if I scratch their chins?
Leliel: So, in one of the few manipulations Malty does I think works on a smart level, Naofumi fistfights them to show off to her - and discovers his Defense stat makes it so that biting Balloons might as well be jewelry:
Luz: …aww, I don’t care! C’mere little bitey guys! Mama’s chewy!
Wanderer2691: Meanwhile, Ren is off to the side just kinda swatting them like mad, while it takes a few punches per Balloon to pop them, leading to one measly experience point per angry orange, each of which sells for one copper, and if fed to the Shield’s gem used to empower it…
…isn’t getting anywhere fast. Also, the stats show the Shield can change forms when upgraded, so we will get to see other designs than the generic buckler, which is good.
Iana: We then cut to another less-moronic manipulation of Malty’s when she interrupts Naofumi haggling on a price for new armor with Erhard to buy some of the most expensive armor there with his stipend but manages to woo him into forgiving it as an attempt to become stronger it via, well…
Feminine wiles. I am too self aware about how my pleating pouty expression makes Suspire more willing than normal to allow me more of the budget for a casual shopping trip to snipe at her for it, and as the next line shows, Naofumi is not thinking with the head that contains neurons and gila:
[NAOFUMI] There's the otherworld trope I've been waiting for!
Luz: …and you look down on Motoyasu being a horny idiot…why?
Leliel: I’m a little more willing to accept that her charm offensive combined with his desperation has made him a bit dumber and he’s joking about the trope - but yeah, it’s kinda rich that he disdains Malty for being too sex-crazed to be a heroine in the intro, and the moment she squeezes her breasts against him he becomes a wind-up doll.
RED MENACE: 5
Wanderer2691: Which means we come up to…oh hell.
Anne: …So, Iana, speaking as the resident expert on treacherous royal court politics, how much poison per drop is in the average murder wine glass?
Iana: Don’t be silly. From context clues, she’s trying to drug him, not kill him. If I need someone to sleep long enough for me or my agents to rifle through their things, I just switch out the alcohol served for something stronger than expected, maybe slip chamomile extract, melatonin, crystallized dream or other soporifics into their food if I really need them out of it or they don’t drink; there’s enough of a substance abuse problem in Champoor that everyone assumes they just fell off the wagon or someone made a mix-up in the kitchen, and if I or someone I like accidentally drink some we just need to sleep it off ourselves. But given how she is going to accuse him of sexual assault, well I really don’t want to reveal that chemical cocktail, but believe you me, there are plenty of ways to render someone completely without agency for a bit.
Luz: Ho-kay, not thinking on those implications, Malty plays helpful guide still, revealing there’s a low-level dungeon near the relatively distant Lafan Village to grind in…and now I’m wondering how dungeons form here, because presumably monsters are natural animals. Do they just breed fast, or is this a cursed ground situation? …now I’m thinking about how cool it’d be if there was an isekai about being reincarnated as the mind of a living dungeon that generates monsters on its own and wishing I could watch that series. If only so I could marvel at how the harem works there.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 12
Luz: After that pep talk, that’s when Malty starts getting a little impatient about her poison, and gets a bit pushy…
[MYNE] No problem.
Uh, by the way, Sir Hero...we have all this wine here, aren't you going to drink some?
[NAOFUMI] Uh...I'm not into alcohol.
{MYNE} Oh, that's too bad. This is a really fantastic vintage.
Iana: …she’s laying it on a bit thick, isn’t she? I mean, not more so than earlier, but frankly, even me in my wild teenage days would get a bit uncomfortable around this. But while our hosts didn’t capture it, she did down the flute of wine she had completely, so it’s not drugged, at least not her glass. I don’t see why, if she’s held to be that horrible unless…[Sudden realization] You oathbreaking, Dis-kin snake.
Luz: …Uh. Her pupils are turning slitted. I think she’s actually mad for the first time, and it’s kinda scary.
Wanderer2691: Read on, but first, after Naofumi reveals he doesn’t drink, Malty claims to be amused at his naivete.
[NAOFUMI] Uh, what do you mean?
[MYNE] This country is a matriarchy. No man who's from here would ever dare turn down a drink offered by a woman.
[NAOFUMI] Really? Guess I'm not very good at picking up on this kinda stuff.
Anne: …understandably, given the existence of King Aultcray, his men-at-arms, his male team of advisors, he not wondering at the existence of boys alone in the Cardinal Heroes - are we sure this is a kingdom with a queen at all? You weren’t pulling my leg earlier?
Leliel: I have a standing theory; in the web novel, Malty was lying, as she tends to do, as she wanted proof that Naofumi was drunk that night and she decided that if she couldn’t kissy-face him into it, she’d claim it was only polite to play along, since Naofumi is obviously someone who puts value in etiquette. The thing is, that was the case at the time, but then the novelist decided both to shovel yet more shit on her, and moreover, realized they couldn’t do much with how badly they boxed Naofumi in with her, so they suddenly decided she was serious to pull an authority figure over Aultcray. But nothing else actually changed, and so the idea that Melromarc is a queendom was hurriedly patched into the most generic-ass patriarchal monarchy, because the writer decided to cover for their laziness with other laziness that escalated previous laziness. Lazily.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 13
Wanderer2691: But, Naofumi checks in, stores his armor and money, sleeps in spite of the Itsuki and Motoyasu being loud in a level-related pissing match in the next room, and wakes up to discover…pretty much everything is gone, even his old Japanese clothes, and when he goes to wake up “Myne,” he’s surrounded by knights who reveal he has been given a summons by the king - and will attend in chains. There, he finds Malty, who is…well, she’s acting scared of him, for reasons that will become very clear:
Leliel: Burn this image into your mind. It’s one half of what will define Motoyasu’s entire character going forward.
Iana: [Clenching teeth together, hissing] I see where this is going, wretch.
Anne: Okay, is this the kind of standard procedure for reacting to eating orphans raw in Champoor, because you’re getting really scary, real fast-
Wanderer2691: That’s when King Aultcray chimes in:
{AULTCRAY} Myne, I'm sorry to ask, my dear, but would you mind repeating your testimony for us again?
Luz: … Myne? Uh, why are you calling her by something you know is an alias, wouldn’t pointing out she’s your daughter illustrate how much Naofumi’s alleged to have screwed up-
[MYNE] It-It happened last night. The Shield Hero forced his way into my room; he was stinking drunk! He grabbed me and pinned me down!
[Dead silence.]
Anne: She is not.
Iana: She is. Having alcohol on your target’s breath and a hangover helps sell the story…
{NAOFUMI }Huh?!
[MYNE] He said something like, "The night is still young." And then the next thing I knew,
[Longer silence.]
Luz: [Deadly calm] …Excuse me.
[NAOFUMI] What?
[MYNE] Somehow, I managed to escape! I ran down the hall for help. I found Sir Motoyasu, who happened to be staying at the same inn!
Iana: Creation of a witness…
[growls]
[NAOFUMI] What the hell?
[MOTOYASU] If she hadn't asked me to wait until dawn
and call the knights, I would've gladly cut you down myself!
Iana: …establishing a time window…
{NAOFUMI} What are you talking about?! I went straight to bed after dinner last night, and I don't drink!
You thieving bastard, give it back!
{MOTOYASU} Ha. Who are you calling a thief?
Iana: …and forging of circumstantial evidence. I wish to offer Malty my congratulations, she has stooped to one of about three kinds of scam that, even in the Court of Secrets, mark you as scum not worthy of divine patronage, for it is lower than even the literal gods of crime - and the other two involve war crimes and kinslaying. Your specially prepared prize will be in the mail.
Leliel: It gets worse! Look!
[NAOFUMI gasps]
[AULTCRAY] To think the Cardinal Shield Hero would commit the greatest sin in this country.
Wanderer2691: Wait, the Devil did something EVIL?! THE FUCK YOU SAY?!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 14 (This is a shock…why? Church of Three Heroes, dude.)
[NAOFUMI] Sin?
{AULTCRAY} In Melromarc, even attempted sexual assault on a woman is punishable by death!
Luz: Oh, so that means no trial for the Shield Hero, who is utterly evil, and all the women in this matriarchy have to be protected like the poor, sweet little flowers we are. With all apologies to my mom: fuck off.
[Somewhere, Camila Noceda is suddenly somehow aghast her daughter isn’t able to use stronger profanity.]
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 15
Leliel: Not gonna lie, the next bit is so uncomfortable I don’t want to cover it - basically the guards find a torn bit of underclothes that somehow ended up on Naofumi’s bed after he left despite Malty being nowhere near there, and as Naofumi reels from the betrayal, Malty realizes nobody else is looking, and can’t resist the urge to taunt Naofumi:
Anne: Actually, keep doing that. That’s right. Now, where’s a good handful of the most uncomfortable sand…
Iana: You’re respectably merciful. [Grins madly as she unsheathes her claws and makes a poking motion.]
Wanderer2691: See, this the most insidious thing about Malty as a character - because she was made to be hated. She’s effectively a classic psychopath, someone who hurts and manipulates others for the fun of it with a royal pedigree, and that’s both despicable and terrifying. However, as we said before, this also suspiciously resembles an archetype that originated in the colon of incels - the EEEEEbil Woman Who Is Looking For Any Excuse To Accuse Poor, Good Menz of Rape.
And quite unintentionally, reveals the enormous hole in this, because most false rape accusations are fucking obvious, and this one is not an exception.
(https://zensan.medium.com/bull-shit-now-what-is-that-51c7efa481e)
Iana: Let us start with the obvious - the wine. Because as might be obvious - the attempt to get him drunk did not work. Which, besides kind of making it impossible for him to be obviously hungover or whatever poisons she might have used to further frame him, also means that everyone in the room saw him leave for his room, and later Malty alone before the alleged drunken assault. And the staff likely have records of who bought what wine, and if any was left so that Malty was sober for the rest of her plan. Failure point 1.
Anne: Then, Malty had to not only sneak into Naofumi’s room to steal his armor and money, but had to do so when he was in a state of perfectly normal sleep and could be woken up if she stepped on a creaky floorboard - or more to the point, dropped the armor or coins. Fail point 2.
Luz: Then, Motoyasu has to be awake, and not notice her sneaking in Naofumi’s room, to receive the chain mail - now, he’s a horny idiot and that chain mail could have gotten to him as “thanks” for saving her, but he’s probably not so dumb that, if he saw Naofumi before he was staying in the same inn, he’d likely recognize the design and might get suspicious. Fail point 3.
Leliel: Then, not only that, but given how Motoyasu was rooming with Itsuki, she has to convince both of them to wait until morning, but also the guards to not stab Naofumi already when she just escaped and could be escorted, in spite of attempted rape being a capital offense and he being the Shield Devil. Fail point 4, and also, completely unnecessary of her to do.
Wanderer2691: And finally, she has to do all this, and somehow find the time to plant those bedclothes or a bribe a guard to help her forge the evidence, all in the course of less than a day at most. Fail point 5, get a new plan!
Iana: And all of that, plus she has to somehow hide the fact that she is, in fact, the crown princess, even getting her own father to call her Myne in spite of the ‘proof’ of how dangerous her adventure hobby is. Fail point 6 + however many persons in this room know who you are.
Leliel: And before you ask, no, Aultcray is not in on this; he is pathologically gullible when it comes to Malty, so yes, we are meant to expect she did this entire plan on her lonesome, on the fly. Fail point YES, and all you dinguses get 50 on the first spork count I’m gonna raise for the fact that the only way this plot ever started was that Malty’s real power is to lower the IQ of everyone in the room to its temperature! Including Naofumi’s!
RED MENACE: 55
Wanderer2691: As for the other scores…look. There is so, so much we could say about this, that also happens to violate the comm rules and we probably aren’t the best people to overview it. But, leaving aside that Malty’s very character role is a checklist for what misogynists think any rape accuser is like, no matter how valid - she is not a character with goals. She’s literally just someone who exists to do things that make her convenient to hang bad experiences with women off of and confirm to the intended audience “oooh, it’s not your fault, it’s that everyone who decided they didn’t like you is just an evil hag!” That makes her a worse villain!
Leliel: We get it. Malty is played as a genuine narcissist, someone for whom if she decides you’re an enemy, you deserve to be toyed with and thrown away. The problem is, nothing’s shown that might actually make Naofumi her enemy - like, rejecting a drink? To the narcissist brain, that’s just a challenge to work on, especially because he keeps praising her and giving her ego validation - they can deal with someone they’re still mining for praise not acting exactly like they want to for a bit. Just having a teetotaler isn’t going to send them into instant rage mode, and even if it did, they try to string along their victims for a bit to find better ways to kill their egos utterly, make them think they’re the bad guys. And as we’ll see, Malty’s ambitions are things that don’t necessarily involve the Cardinal Heroes at all - all she’s doing on a purely pragmatic level is making her life more difficult, as she will whenever she decides to pick on Naofumi!
Luz: Which doesn’t even get into an even bigger issue - as noted, Naofumi is the Shield Hero - a religious bogeyman. But, as Aultcray says:
[AULTCRAY] If you weren't a hero, you'd be executed at once!
Anne: Except for how he’s not a hero at all, you mean? According to the religion you’re a part of? Forget execution - why aren’t you making it a holiday that you get an excuse to finally rid yourself of the menace!?
(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComplexityAddiction)
Iana: The level of ridiculous self-destructive circuitousness was passed somewhere along the lines that you didn’t just stab Naofumi the moment he showed up with a buckler on his arm. At this point, I can’t help but wonder if the Church of the Three Heroes is secretly run by the Shield Hero that became the source of “shields r evil” and he is trying to see if Naofumi can be warped into a minion by making him loathe the world just as much.
Leliel: And oh, what waste of potential that it isn’t. But as corollary to my “schrodinger’s matriarchy” theory - which is looking an awful lot like a future spork count - I’m not entirely sure that in the web novel, the Church existed until the author needed to pull shit out of their ass to justify the totes realistic oppression of the Stu. Which, if anything, means I’m being merciful when I jack these other scores up by 50!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 65
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 54
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 59 (because the other Heroes need to completely blindly follow this whole thing to work at all.)
Luz: [Facepalming] Please tell me we don’t get to see a grand tour of how vapid and selfish everyone but Naofumi is…?
Leliel: How did Iana put it? The seal’s claw curls? Because while we get that…
…we’re about to get a front row seat to how vapid and selfish Naofumi is!
Anne: [Frown] Uh…he was kind of screwed over by Motoyasu, and he doesn’t know he got the wool pulled over his eyes too - nor would we, really, if you didn’t spoil us. He’s mad and lashing out, I don’t really blame him.
Wanderer2691: That’s true, which is why we’re not scoring this. And the fact the Melromarc court chews out the Shield for being weak rather than a sign of Super Lucifer was covered by Leliel’s fifty score count, and still ties into how it’s reasonable Naofumi feels the world is against him - it is, even if it’s for really fucking dumb reasons. But then he drops this line:
{NAOFUMI} Disgusting. These people are all filthy, disgusting trash! This country's people don't believe in me, either. Why should I raise a finger to help them?
[Silence]
Iana: [Smiling broadly enough to show her fangs] Why yes. Yes we are. You make it so easy, given how your immediate reaction to discovering that your arm candy is using the same exact tactics on others is to decide that literally everyone else in this room is in on it, instead of, I don’t know, the fact you apparently nearly raped a woman? Truly, a masterful grasp of logic and detective work not seen since the Lintha clans decided the real issue with low population was blood purity, to the point it is considered noble by them to self-castrate after having a couple approved children.
[Everyone else except Leliel promptly winces and covers their groins]
Leliel: [Apologetic grin] Yeah, unfortunately “the planet is flat” jokes don’t quite work when Creation is actually a flat world bobbing gently on the Wyld like a continent on the sea. But I think it fits how horny and skeevy this show gets.
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 4
Anne: That fit of paranoid self-pity aside, Naofumi understandably wants to go home, to which the other Heroes are either eager to kick him out (Motoyasu) or add “coward” to the list of things they hate about him (Ren and Itsuki). That’s when Aultcray reveals something - as much as he’d like to…
Luz: *Aultcray* “And because we think you’re inherently evil, we’re gonna get started on that.” [Mimes ax to neck, makes death gurgle] The end!
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 55
Iana: As Aultcray declares, the only way out is fighting the Waves, much to Motoyasu’s dismay, as he is understandably reluctant to fight alongside an accused rapist (why is he supposed to be the, er, “Scary Stu” again?). Naofumi spits back he will do it on his own, his way, and-
Anne: Whoa whoa whoa! Wait. “Fight the Waves”? Not “go home”, or “let the kingdom he thinks betrayed him rot” or even “I’ll only do it if you let me message my brother?”
Wanderer2691: Plot twist time! In spite of Naofumi clearly not having died, or appeared to die, in his world, meaning as far as anyone knows he just vanishes into thin air, leaving a Naofumi-shaped hole behind that doesn’t even leave a body for closure - Naofumi does not think about the world he left at all, ever again, in this franchise. Not his brother, not his parents, not his school, not his light novels, not anything. The brother he saved from allegedly becoming a broke punk. He plans to get back, but even after discovering the potential of hopping worlds, he never even entertains the idea of just leaving this awful place to rot, and instead just lets himself be thrown into monster invasions. He certainly doesn’t worry about what his parents think or talk about them at all.
Anne: [Air suddenly chills] …oh. I get it. [Long pause] So, uh, how key would you say this is to the overall plot? Completely weird and not related question, I know.
Leliel: Given how he’s just getting involved in slice of life stuff when calm instead of constantly looking for a way back? A pillar of the setting.
Anne: Ah. Got it. [Pulls over the spork point button]
[Accurate simulation below]
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/5b9c600433acea0a67795d33097dbeda/b17797fe3c09e983-08/s540x810/8e6a4bbe8a7d3eb2da47574b576a82288b43ae22.gif)
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 54
Anne: Fuck. You. Fuck you. Fuck you, forever. Fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. You fuck. [Long inhale] Do you know what my parents were doing when I got back? Staring at nothing. Because I had vanished for five months. I was almost afraid they’d lock me in the house forever, because they were that terrified I would vanish again. And you…you aren’t even stuck here in a world that you consider generally full of tolerable people, asked to save their lives, after they deliberately kidnapped you, and you have not only parents, but a brother? And you just kind of fart around?! …I’d be lying if I said I’d be rooting for Malty, but I think I get the Church of Three Heroes now!
Luz: …what she said. Even leaving aside the fact that it is the most asshole move I’ve seen yet…it’s not even smart. If they want you to help save the kingdom, after this, you should push for an escape strategy! Because otherwise they might kill you! At least Motoyasu’s brain shorts out for obvious reasons! Unlike yours, due to apparently having some kind of weird persecution complex!
Leliel: In fact…while I hold that the light novels, and thus the anime, really improved on the web serials as a general rule, here I need to pause and point out that a change from the web novel makes it worse! Remember that little wiki page on Naofumi’s younger brother?
Iana: Ah yes, salvation from hair dye and foul language. Truly worthy of being honored by the Unconquered Sun, God of Justice and King of Heaven, himself. Please applaud.
Leliel: Well, a lot of that was taken from the web novel - which the wiki itself says should not really be considered canon, but there’s no other source on Younger Iwatani - but in the light novel and anime, it’s left vague as to how he “broke bad”, or how Naofumi saved him so much that he is supported by his parents to the point of not needing a job in college. And it’s that specific phrase: “broke bad”. Now, Luz, Anne - you’re old enough, American and the show is considered classic enough, to the point where the phrase “breaking bad” makes you think of what?
Anne and Luz: [Think, then sudden horrified realization]
(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/)
Wanderer2691: Is this a stretch? Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch to go from “vague idea of going wrong” to “Jesse Pinkman: Yakuza/Hangure Edition”, but it does underscore how being vague here makes it seem worse - in the web novel Younger Iwatani is capable of supporting himself. We don’t know if that’s the case here, and that makes Naofumi seem exactly as prone to the responsibility dodge that Ren and Itsuki accuse him of! No points, because it’s a fan theory, but great going, adaptation!
Leliel: Current headcanon: Iwatani the Younger actually did fall pretty bad but retained enough morals to be picked up by Ichiban Kasuga as a party member or Poundmate summon. The Like a Dragon series has had weirder characters.
Iana: Urgh…so anyway, Naofumi uses a wave of force from his Shield to push the guards off him, and asks if he’s going to be imprisoned before the next Wave to be let out then-
Iana: -excuse me what the fuck?
Iana: [Confused, enraged sputtering]
Luz: I…how does that follow, your Highness?
{AULTCRAY} Scum or not, you're still a hero, and one of the only beings left who can fight them all off. But news of your crime is already spreading among the people. That is your punishment. You should never expect to be allowed to lead a decent life in this country.
[Long silence.]
Anne: So. His punishment…as opposed to prison…is to allow him to run free.
Iana: Possibly gather a group of mercenaries who don’t care, or start a bandit clan.
Luz: Or even flee to another country. Instead of forcing him to train up under armed guard, like another one of the Cardinal Heroes, as two out of three of them are inclined to force him to do.
[Long silence]
Leliel: [Cocks ear] What is that theme? Is it…oh no. It’s the key of B flat minor…
Wanderer2691: Goddammit anime, you summoned the Voodoo Shark! Or, in non-Tropese, make sure the thing you use to patch over a plot hole does not create another plot hole!
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 56
Luz: [Nervously watching the dorsal fin getting closer despite there being no water] Uh, yeah, that’s nice and all, but, uh, maybe we should deal with the hungry eldritch narrative fish first?
Iana: [Caste Mark flares] I have this.
(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RelaxOVision)
Iana: [Wiping off blood] Woo, that got out some aggression! Didn’t even need to draw too deep on my necromancy for that, and I get some excellent raw materials for later.
Anne: [Stares at remains]
(https://magazine.scienceconnected.org/2015/12/preserving-soft-skeleton-backs-without-bones/)
…they have skeletons…?
Leliel: Everything except the jaw is cartilage, but yeah - they just decay fast. And that has been your Shark Trivia for today! Now…ugh, back to the main event…
Anne: So, in a fit of frustration, and still thinking Motoyasu was in on it, Naofumi chucks the pocket change he had left on him and Malty to “shove it up [his] ass”, which causes Motoyasu to try and stop him from leaving to try and buoy up his stats. I have no idea if this is a worse insult to Japanese people than others, and it is enough of an insult to cause retaliation, but…didn’t you want him to buzz off anyway? Not point-worthy, but still kind of a ‘huh?’ moment.
Iana: And with that, he storms off, reduced to nothing but his shield, and with people…reacting as they should to an Anathema in an area that believes in them. Though I will give credit to them not attacking, as everyone also likely knows it’s just going to annoy the Defensive Hero. I must give even more credit to Erhard, who even knowing that, corners Naofumi:
As much as I despise the Anathema reputation some days, I don’t really blame common Prasadi or Realm commoners for not knowing any better. Immaculates do fund education, and I blame nobody for using the provided service or believing the monks teaching what they themselves believe. So, all I see is courage in how Erhard corners him, enraged his good faith was taken advantage of by a sex criminal, and-
…lets him go after looking in his eyes? What?
Wanderer2691: The Watsonian reasoning is that Erhard has a really good sense of character by looking someone in the eyes, which given the magical style he knows is based around appraisal is not the worst stretch. The Doylist, probably more genuine, reasoning is that promptly loans Naofumi an outfit - his distinct one from later in the series - and asks him to pay it off later, at a discount. Even after Naofumi, in a fit of grumpiness, says he could totally take the twice-his-size blacksmith in a fight to the death. In other words, even at the darkest moment, this franchise chickens out of actually making Naofumi friendless and maybe actually resort to crime due to having nothing else left and needing to be warm, because how dare we consider that criminals might possibly be sympathetic or had no choice in the matter? …The original author probably really hates the Like a Dragon franchise…
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 57
Luz: Now be-caped, Naofumi goes full berserker rage on the Balloons for a full night, ending up with a bunch of skins and a new level at last:
Notice that MAG, or Magic, is a middling stat, along with DEX, or Dexterity. While obviously, the Shield Hero is something that is going to win mostly by outlasting the enemy, there’s actually a hint that Naofumi has some options, in the form of Magical attacks, if he’s all by his lonesome. I like it, it means the Shield isn’t completely up a creek in need of a paddle if alone, and it explains why anyone plays it in any of the video game worlds; it requires patience and fortitude to do more than out-tank your enemy, as well as probably some cleverness; still low-tier, but more because of skill difficulty than having a harsh ceiling. That’s a good thing in LitRPGs, because it brings the focus to things you don’t have as numbers.
Anne: And next up, we come to an amoral action I’m not mad at, when a merchant tries to cheat him by paying for twenty Balloon skins with a single copper, in spite of the going rate being one for two - at which point Naofumi reveals a benefit the Shield Hero has, namely his ability to be just fine with being gnawed on when everyone around him isn’t:
Luz: See, even he thinks they’re cute, he’s using them as his ambassadors!
Iana: And this is honestly something respectable - while he does threaten to hold the stingy merchant’s head under his cape with his unknowing and highly aggressive pets unless he has a fair price, it isn’t like he could have gotten a fair price otherwise, what with being the Shield Devil and an accused rapist and all. Really, the only thing I would do differently is just to extort the shopkeeper for a one-time bonus in return for organizing a protection racket of being his and his peers’ Shield for fair prices and letting him be. Amoral? Yes, but as noted, he is not allowed to be anything else at this point and he isn’t even asking for a forced cut, just to treat with him fairly. This is a somewhat proportional response that allows him to actually get enough money to deal with people who know he has no other options and attempt to price gouge (and Erhard, who he leaves payment for the clothes for). And the Balloons serve as backup to actually damage enemies a bit before he wades in, so even without a party he has some offense.
Luz: And even out in the wilderness, he’s still making discoveries, like the unlocking of his Shield Upgrade system:
By feeding the Shield some herbs, Naofumi finally gets access to different forms of it, and learns his shield forms can share skills, which is a bit OP, not gonna lie - but he’s the Chosen One, or at least One of Four, as annoying at it is, I can accept some buffs. And the Leaf Shield buffs Foraging as a skill, which causes any herbs he picks to be remade into higher quality ones, which sell better - and that’s a neat thing! It’s actually a good utility skill, one that isn’t based on ‘the awesome’ but is just as important for later.
Leliel: But, of course, the good worldbuilding and interesting quirks can’t last, as we get this bit:
Anne: …oh, boo hoo. Can’t enjoy your perfectly good quality meal out, which you were allowed to eat at a legal pub? In spite of needing to threaten merchants just to be treated fairly? Dude, be thankful you haven’t been kicked out to protect its reputation! … why haven’t you been kicked out in this alleged matriarchy that puts attempted rapists to death?!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 66
Iana: Given what happens next, would not be surprised if this pub caters to a criminal set (though I am not searching especially hard for a justifying reason at this point), given how a group of rather suspiciously-bandit-esque men come up to offer to party up.
Having learned the adage of trust-but-verify very well, and I cannot blame him, Naofumi hits them with a payment plan first - he gets 40 percent of treasure, at minimum, distributed to the others based on what they did, which he fully admits also means that he may decide to keep payment, and they must bring their own weapons. Which would be something I score him for, except how they are, indeed, acting largely like Malty with being overly friendly and seemingly very eager to help him in a place where he is the Shield Devil - it is a good way to see who haggles to a more sane contract versus whoever explodes in frustration at how they have to actually work towards robbing him. Which they do!
Anne: Yeah, not gonna knock him for pattern recognition. But after some Balloon-assisted violence making this a failed mugging, he realizes that without any offensive ability, he can’t farm for EXP to get an offensive ability worth spit - and I’m sensing some bad vibes from our hosts. What fresh hell is this now?
Wanderer2691: Because now, we meet…him.
[Long silence]
Iana: [Sharply] Who let the living caricature of a Nexus Guild merchant in here, and how do we put it back? With prejudice?
Luz: Yeah, this man is a walking Stranger Danger ad, and now I know what Tibbles would look like as a human. But, apart from him being a top competitor for Fiend Weekly’s Champion Mustache Twirler, I don’t see why he’s bad beyond being an obvious baddie-
Leliel: This isn’t a bad guy. At least, not according to this franchise.
Anne: …wha…?
Wanderer2691: People of the comm, allow me to introduce you to Beloukas, one of Naofumi’s first real allies, monster rancher…and slave trader.
[Long pause]
The Girls:
(https://spongebob.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000000311895/r/4400000000001109612)
Leliel: Yeppers. Remember how we were talking about slave harems? This guy is the source of the found family you buy.
Anne: …please tell me it’s something he hates…
Wanderer2691: No, even that rationalization’s not here - because Beloukas approaches Naofumi on purpose to have ‘party members’ that can’t betray him, realizing he’s got a potential customer, so he leads him to his cages in his tent.
Luz: [Wordlessly mouths ‘literal cages?’]
Leliel: Oh yeah, did we mention that it’s heavily implied this is a reasonable precaution? Because when the camera pans up…
You obviously can’t hear them, but beyond just having the red angry eyes visible, we hear nothing but a bunch of animalistic snarling and hissing. Because we need to see these people as animals…
Iana: [Starts hissing herself] Showing the most inhuman mutants first, to lower them to a level of ferocious livestock…
{NAOFUMI} What would make you think I'd want to own slaves?
Anne: Good question, so obviously, you’re going to murder the bastard and-
{BELOUKAS} Oh, I don't know, the fact that they can neither lie nor betray their master?
Anne: [Dread] …how?
{BELOUKAS} We keep all our slaves in line by placing them under the effects of a curse.
Luz: …this can’t be lifted. This curse can’t be lifted without hurting the slave-
Leliel: No. It can and is. It isn’t even that hard…
Luz: Th-then, Naofumi refuses to let his fear of betrayal win, and he comes back later-
Luz: [Dead, open-mouth silence]
Wanderer2691: It gets worse. Because, as Beloukas is leading Naofumi on a tour of the ‘inventory.”
{BELOUKAS} I can assure you they still are, technically.
Iana: Of course. Technically. I suppose there is a reason they cannot technically be considered people? Or at least, not anymore, my dear Guildsman?
{BELOUKAS} [In response to Naofumi asking for more detail] Creatures that look mostly human but aren't are what we refer to as "demi-humans." They're mostly used as servants or for manual labor. "Beastmen" are demi-humans whose appearance lean more toward the animal side. They're often used as bodyguards or gambled on as participants in death matches.
Anne: [Hard, building rage] And it doesn’t. Fucking. MATTER! THEY’RE PEOPLE, EVEN IF THEY HAVE A TADPOLE STAGE!
[NAOFUMI] I see. But they both fall under the same category?
{BELOUKAS} Indeed. And since this country practices human supremacy, and demi-humans are thought to be closer to monsters, life can be quite hard for them here. As such, they're treated as slaves.
Luz: [Forced, bitter laughter] Oh, so that’s why everything seems so fucked up! This kingdom is under the control of Belos! BURN IT TO THE GROUND! LEAVE NO-
Leliel: Save it. There’s worse coming.
Luz: [Insane cackling] Worse?! WORSE?! HOW COULD IT BE WORSE?! THERE’S CIRCLES OF HELL BELOW THE NINTH!? WHAT’S ON THE TENTH, HUH, SATAN’S WEIRD PORN ARCHIVE?!
Wanderer2691: [Nauseous] Why’d you have to mention weird porn and the number ten…basically, Naofumi hears a young girl coughing, and draws back a curtain to reveal…
Leliel: Everyone, meet Raphtalia. Tanuki demihuman. Slave. Female lead, and implied love interest of Naofumi, even if he verbally tries to avoid that. Ten years old.
The Girls:
(https://onepiece.fandom.com/wiki/Enel)
Iana: I..buh…ebbwh…tall, and… [looks at picture of Raphtalia from intro and makes wordless gestures of ‘nearly as tall as me, a grown-ass woman.’]
Wanderer2691: Yeah, uh, here’s where the whole demi-human growth thing comes into play - their levels are linked to their age. Since she is chronologically ten, she is level 1, and looks it.
Anne: Bwuh…but tadpole…grow out. Same…young child…just no legs…she baby…?
Leliel: Ah, but you see, not for long, because over the course of the next episode, Naofumi will force her to power-level by throwing her into combat with increasingly dangerous monsters, which will also turbo-charge her growth to about nineteen, which the series claims is also mental. Given how this is over the course of a week, and a later arc has her revert to ten when she has her level reset, I respectfully disagree.
[Long silence]
The Girls: [Inhale]
[Feed resumes, with both Leliel and Wanderer on the ground, hands in ears, bleeding from said ears]
Iana: [Glowing with moonlight and shadow, breathing heavily] …sorry…
Luz: [Hoarsely] I think I was louder. My larynx hurts…
Anne: Well, now I know - Calamity powers aren’t here. I think I’m gonna lie down now…
Leliel: …WHAT?
Wanderer2691: CAN YOU FINISH UP? WE CAN’T HEAR OURSELVES!
Iana: Okay…so, in summation, we covered all the problems with this as we rustled through it, but…beyond all that slavery apologia, and the reason one of my only requests of my sister upon her ascension to the throne is that she help abolish the trade in Champoor, along with beginning motions towards a constitutional monarchy? Because slavery, even beyond being a cruel, heartless, and utterly corrupt system, is utterly inefficient.
Luz: When it comes down to it, slavery, even indentured servitude, spends more time on watching slaves for inevitable revolt. Those seals won’t mean much if the last thing the slave plans on doing is wringing your neck, or even if they let someone else kill you. Like you deserve, for willingly trading slaves.
Anne: And of course, Naofumi, the man who has been specifically screwed over by this world and has every reason to hate all of it…changes his tune completely when he learns he can give a child a shock collar. Because it’s convenient. And we’re supposed to like him for it, or even to pity him, and to think it’s lucky he and Raphtalia found each other. Because he bought her and has a mystic shock collar on her.
All Three: FUCK. THIS. FRANCHISE.
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 104
PROPERTY OF COP-OUT: 50
Leliel: [Slowly gets up] Ugh…as you can imagine, this thing deserves a spitefic…but later. It was a hell of a couple weeks even beyond this shit…
Wanderer2691: True dat. Join us next time, as our alleged hero buys a slave, treats her as a weapon, said slave develops romanticized Stockholm Syndrome and hopefully we actually manage to avoid getting so bogged down we cover the first Wave!
Iana: Given the prominence of a certain name, this is Raphtalia, I presume? I admit, I was pleasantly surprised to see a beastfolk protagonist, much less a…is she a racoonwoman or a tanukiwoman? I can never tell…
Wanderer2691: Tanuki, but you’re assuming that this world’s beastmen are like Creation’s beastfolk. We’ll get into the exact mechanics later, but Raphtalia is not a beastman, she is a demi-human, and there’s…honestly something we’ll save for the end where we reveal how they met that gives a permanent dark cloud over what should be a mildly heartwarming scene…but for now? For now it’s fine. We will say the wiki makes it clear the franchise is a bit confused as to what she is as well, but that’s not really an issue for the window of the franchise we’re covering.
Leliel: In any case, Naofumi looks over at her, and after Raphtalia comes over, he gets out of his brood pose to hand her ball over as sunlight shines through a ruined stone archway above and…
Luz: …are you kidding me right now. This wasn’t starting in media res as Naofumi reflected on how he got to that cliff…?
Luz: …it was a psychic premonition. Of course. In this dark, deconstructive isekai, our first moment is a vision of the female lead under a portal that looks like it’s gonna be important. Is this remembered at all?
Wanderer2691: Nope! Not even Raphtalia is recalled!
Luz: Great. Just great. It might be a nitpick, but if you’re going to deconstruct something, play it for a unique spin that shows people acting more realistically and cleverly, why not make it a motive to get to know Raphtalia and what the archway is? If Naofumi’s that miserable, it gives him a goal!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 2
Anne: I mean - I had no idea my friends were warped to Amphibia with me, not at first. One of my major priorities after escaping from the horror that is a monster-bug infested cave was at least confirming if they were there with me, and the idea my phone would run out of battery and leave me without even a picture caused a panic attack. Like, if I didn’t have anyone, I’d become obsessed with some image in my dreams of someone I apparently liked! To say nothing of other heroes! We’re not asking for much, just actually deconstruct a common trope!
[NAOFUMI] (Internal narration) My name is Naofumi Iwatani. I'm a {somewhat otaku-leaning second-year college student}.
Iana: [Hand raises]
Wanderer2691: “Otaku” is the Japanese word for “nerd” - and really, this is establishing him as an audience stand-in, as a lot of fans are going to be otaku types.
Iana: Ah. [Pauses, then hand raises again - then giggles as she watches everyone around her sigh] Don’t worry, I know what a nerd is, there are similar concepts in Champoor. But, yeah, it’s good to see him admit to being one up front.
Luz: Hmm…hypocritical as it is, I can’t help but wonder if making Naofumi a nerd is an early sign of how unserious this is about doing a real deconstruction…but that’s in the big “keep in mind” folder. Anyway, Naofumi accidentally invokes light damage on his eyes when he opens the curtains and…
[NAOFUMI] I'd brought my kid brother back in line when he started breaking bad,
Anne: …I’m sorry, what?
Iana: [Ears up] Did he just say…
so I had earned the privilege of living at home, allowance included. With no need for a part-time job, I got to indulge my otaku side.
Iana: Yeah, he did. He has family back home?! And he won’t be planning on going back?!
Anne: Not just that, but - he’s actively held as responsible for said brother’s welfare?! Because, you don’t get enough of a pay for you to live on your parents’ dime alone without having pulled out some serious stops there!
Leliel: And this is where the wiki comes in handy, because…this is said brother’s entire page beyond his introduction.
Leliel: You may also have noticed a distinct lack of…citations. Because he’s so minor, the wiki editors aren’t bothering to chase down mentions of him.
Iana: …so, to recap, his great salvation of his brother was…getting a new hobby. And moreover, that said brother is so irrelevant to the main plot that, in spite of being a huge tie to Naofumi’s own native life, he isn’t even given a name. Uh…huh.
Anne: …okay, yeah, unless Naofumi has a breakdown about dying alone and his brother isn’t going to know what happened, yeah. Gonna call some bullshit here - Sprig’s entire family got over here, and they were still kinda disoriented and homesick! I mean, they adapted fast, but come on, guys!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 3
Luz: Yeah, gonna be honest - I was pretty eager to stay in the Boiling Isles, but mostly because I was sure I could always head back home to Mami whenever I wanted. The angst came fast after the portal got blown up. Also, side note; ‘colored hair’ and ‘swearing around the house’? Really? That’s a punk phase, not ‘breaking bad’!
Wanderer2691: We’re not scoring it yet, but this series has some…interesting ideas about social harmony, that disturbing the status quo of ideals is worse than the status quo having bad things in it. This will become relevant later.
Anne: [Cringe] Well…that’s nice. But, basically, Naofumi’s not the kind of geek allergic to grass, so when he runs out of money, he pulls up a seat at the local library and reads his light novels there, but apart from that, he thinks of himself as a normal guy with geeky hobbies, until one day when he’s taking down some novels and a particular book falls on his head:
[NAOFUMI] “{T}he Waves of Apocalyptic Catastrophe,
{To save the world from them}, four heroes will be summoned from another world." {How very like an LN.}
Luz: Wait, that’s how he gets in? Not saved by some knight on dragonback, he has a manual?
Iana: Technically, that’s a grimoire! But I find it most intriguing - to have the basics explained in a book sounds like a valid premise in and of itself, especially as the lore found within proves treacherous! As we see when we cover the four weapons in question, the sword, bow, spear, and shield - though Naofumi points out the majority of shields are not meant as weapons, and-
[NAOFUMI]: Anyway, where's the heroine in this thing?
Iana: [Sudden lowering temperature around her] …”Slutty”. That’s what disqualifies her as the heroine - or the romantic lead, as it were. She has had lovers before you and enjoys the carnal aspects of affection. Really. Really?
Leliel: Linguistic note - the literal translation of the word here, ビッチ (“bicchi”), literally means “female dog”, but while in English the term “bitch” is a somewhat misogynistic way to refer to an asshole who is also female, and has been owned somewhat, in Japanese the term is exclusively meant for a promiscuous woman. Which besides being eyebrow-raising given that no, a tendency to enjoy sex and flirtatiousness does not a villainess make, is also something that really shows just how much this franchise wants you to hate Malty (because of course it’s her) - we haven’t even seen her full profile yet and the first thing we know of her is that she’s loose and that disqualifies her from being the main LI!
RED MENACE: 1 (Her tendency to manipulate people through sex is the first thing we, and our hero, know about her through a literal guide to her world, and she still pulls it off?)
Luz: In any case, Naofumi’s impressed by how each of the four Heroes get a chance to show off in the intro, including the Shield, but when he turns the page..
Luz: Well, dang. If the rest of the pages are blank, that means Naofumi has to learn it the hard way. Neat thematic that he is “pulled inside” to write the rest of it, but still. Oh well, at least it’s with him to be a basic guide and-
Wanderer2691: It’s never mentioned, nor seen again.
Luz: Uh?
Wanderer2691: It completely vanished from the story and will never be seen, mentioned, or even its contents remembered. Including the parts about Malty, which leave Naofumi open to being screwed over by her.
[Long pause]
Luz: [Long, frustrated groan] Because Titan forbid that this deconstruction actually look at the mechanism by which it took Naofumi here, huh? Including, but not limited to, how that book got there in the first place and maybe make it a plot hook.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 4
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 1 (There is no given reason why Naofumi wouldn’t remember “stay the fuck away from the Princess or anyone like her” - as shown in the light novel, the book outright says she’s a cruel manipulator.)
Leliel: One extremely useful book having fallen into the void later, Naofumi crashes into a summoning circle, a distinct small shield attached to his arm, and overseen by a group of people in robes who don’t beat around the bush - they recognize the summoning spell worked and plead with the heroes to save their world - and then he realizes he’s not the only voice going WTF to that. Since they’re in shadow there, I’ll skip ahead to show all four lit up:
Wanderer2691: Not pictured: Competence.
Leliel: We get the proper opening, and the robed people, who we later learn are representatives of the local dominant religion of the continent, explain they summoned the Four Cardinal Heroes to their world through an ancient ritual as their world teeters on the brink of destruction. To his credit, Naofumi believes them and the evidence of his own senses, only a little confused at being seen as a Cardinal Hero when he’s a random college geek, but he decides to hear their plea out. As for the others…
[REN {Sword Guy}] Forget it.
{ITSUKI - Bow} I also refuse.
{MOTOYASU - Spear} You can send us back to our homeworld, right? Do that and maybe we'll talk.
Anne: [Flat stare] Well. You three are for sure hero material. You just got pulled into an alternate world, and you’re already demanding to go back, despite them pleading? That’s…honestly kinda understandable, but I get the sense that “panicked demands to be put back after being abducted” isn’t the intended take on this.
Wanderer2691: Nope. At first, it seems like Ren’s just understandably pissed but playing it abnormally cool, but then Itsuki chimes in…
[MOTOYASU] How willing are you to accommodate our requests? Depending on your answer, we may end up as your enemies instead of your allies.
Luz: …wow. I’m not sure whether to be impressed with your ability to haggle in the middle of otherworldly abduction or wonder exactly who carved out your souls and replaced them with raw elemental greed. I, just…
[NAOFUMI] What's with these guys? They're not only taking all this in stride, they've already started demanding respect and rewards.
Luz: That. Who acts like this?!
Iana: Ugh. It’s like someone took Emperor Champara and cloned him…and even he was mostly dealing with us poor courtiers who had to smile and nod. In the safety of the palace. With people he had no need to make a good first impression on what the hell?
Anne: …this is framed so that we can’t help but hate the other heroes. As in, if it wasn’t for this being a supposed third-person viewpoint…this’d be something I’d look for the hologram projectors in. They sound like robots programmed to be jerks.
Leliel: Rest assured, first impressions are accurate…even if those first impressions are specifically made for Naofumi and more importantly the audience to despise these three, even though “overly saccharine or seemingly gung-ho” would be both more realistic and lead to a better reveal later.
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 2 (One for Itsuki and Motoyasu both, Ren’s just being cold but raising good points - ones Naofumi seems to be missing, such as “life back home you ripped us from”.)
Anne: In any case, the lead priest quickly makes a save and starts appealing to their selfishness, promising them an audience with the king of the country, Melromarc, and rewards from there, to which Itsuki and Motoyasu continue to act like they’re stubborn salesmen. Yeesh, I think pre-Amphibia Sasha would find them annoyingly entitled…
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 4 (Same two jerks, same two Greed actions in case we missed it).
Anne: They make their way up, with Naofumi taking in the sights of the medieval capital and the climate, though Itsuki and Ren ruin it when the first realizes Naofumi has never been outside Japan and chides him, and Ren makes it awkward when he points out it’s technically called a Mediterranean climate without much visible appreciation for the world - yeah, Marcy would be Foot-in-Mouth buddies with him, even if he’s a bit too serious.
Wanderer2691: And here’s where I need to pause for a second and bring up a really important point: Naofumi says this is a different world, but…
Wanderer2691: If I wanted this kind of “different world”, I’d be able to do a good simulation by looking at the RTP assets for RPGMaker. The deliberately standard and generic assets:
(https://rpgmakerunite.com/en/)
Anne: …that isn’t a cheap Super Nintendo game?
Wanderer2691: Honestly, it’d be better if it were; while I’m perfectly happy to understand why my buddy Leliel greatly enjoys them (a big part in life is realizing others may just not like what you like, and that’s totally okay; only bad thing in my mind when it comes to subjective taste is trying to supersede some “objective” consensus on what’s supposed to be the “correct” way to look at a story, as I’ve suffered for a long time with certain communities… *wordlessly glares at FE Fates discourse between 2016-2019*), a big reason I dislike most isekai, even cream-of-the-crop like Konosuba and Re:Zero, is that it feels that in place of actual settings you have copy-pastes of a bunch of various fantasy anime and classic JRPGs. Without even the barest hint of subversion or even some deconstruction. As a result, everything comes off as so… so… samey.
Luz: …yeah. Compare, say, Vision of Escaflowne, which has this as official art:
(https://escaflowne.fandom.com/wiki/The_Vision_of_Escaflowne)
Iana: I see the variance in dress, but - wait, is that a warstrider?!
Anne: [Raises hand]
Leliel: Creation’s term for a magitech mecha. They’re not as much of a game changer as that sounds, as they are mostly in the Real Robot genre of “needs actual infrastructure”, and most infrastructure that can maintain warstriders was lost in the one-two punch of apocalypses that was the Great Contagion (a super-pandemic made to destroy all life) and the Balorian Crusade (a massive offensive by raksha who wished to absorb Creation back into the Wyld). But yeah, there’s a reason Exalted very loudly ignores post-boom isekai in the face of wilder things like Escaflowne when looking for visual inspiration. And thematic as well; while I don’t want to turn this into “A Summary of Escaflowne And Also A Spork Of Rising Of The Shield Hero”, Escaflowne is a child of how Japan really does not see why there should be a border between science fiction and fantasy, if you ask me correctly. Escaflowne is a series where Hitomi, our main protagonist, becomes the center of a mass of political intrigue because her hobby of Tarot suddenly becomes actual prophetic ability, mecha were developed to fight dragons, there’s a race of angels that were deeply prosecuted for the actions of their ancestors, and this is the capital of the antagonistic Zaibach Empire:
(https://www.cbr.com/best-anime-blade-runner-inspired/#the-vision-of-escaflowne-1996)
Leliel: *Brave Sir Bender* “It’s too cyberpunk, you say? Bite my fantasy-mecha’s shiny metal ass.”
Luz: Ahh…classic anime memories. I’m more into plain high fantasy, but frankly, if the Boiling Isles had weird science instead of actual magic, I’d just strap on some gears on a witch hat and call myself Good Mystic Engineer Luzura - heck, magic as it is over there is pretty much a combination of language and chemistry! One is allowed to make their magic a science, and exploit that to show variant technology - the witches do it all the time, and it’s visually interesting! It’s not a point yet, but…to quote the transcript:
{NAOFUMI}: It's like how you'd expect to see it described in some kind of travel brochure.
Wanderer2691: And the thing is - it’s like any travel brochure. This comes off as the franchise tipping its hand for how shallow the world is, especially when we discover what beasts of burden are for this world. But, I digress. So we go up higher, and meet the king himself:
Wanderer2691: And I’m gonna pause again here and spoil later developments to say Aultcray having a regnal number (you know, the XXXII bit) will be, uh, a bit fucky. Because there’s no real-world historical reason for him to be the 23rd of his name, as we’ll discover - spoilers from later in the anime, but Melromarc practices matrilineal primogeniture; power is inherited from mother to firstborn daughter, with the King-Consort ruling in his wife’s absence.
Iana: …and this is a problem…how? Champoor practices absolute primogeniture, parent to firstborn of any gender, but I was able to ensure Empress Ravatri inherited from her sadly indisposed husband as she and Champara had no child and his illegitimate offspring weren’t of age anyway, so it makes sense to adopt a name in case he has to pick up the slack, as it were.
Leliel: His wife does not have a regnal number, despite the very idea of being named after, or renaming yourself after, your ancestors is to enforce a feeling of generational stability. Moreover, notice how not a single one of the Heroes is a woman, and how nobody notes how the gender everyone expects to run things is present.
Iana: …Oh. Well…that’s just silly, then.
Luz: …Just had a bad thought. What if this was going to be what was assumed to be the more Earth-normal patriarchy, but the writer retconned it in so that suddenly Malty wasn’t the only female royal with importance when they realized they wrote themselves into a corner?
Leliel: Hold on to that. Suffice to say, the fact that everyone expects a lady to be the ultimate boss is reflected only in two spots, the royal court after the Queen shows up from out of nowhere and Malty’s feelings of entitlement, and even then, it’s mostly for plot convenience.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 6 (One for the less-politically-central half of the royal couple having the regnal number, one for this society being a matriarchy that doesn’t have different gender roles than Standard Pseudo-European Fantasy Patriarchal.)
Anne: So. Uh, that loudly ignored accidental good girl power idea aside, let’s see our main heroes, and the LN archetypes they are allegedly satires of? …Quick reminder, this is the Japanese sub, family names come first.
Wanderer2691: Ren here, as one might guess if one has seen Sword Art Online, is a riff on the Kirito archetype; a dark-haired, loner stoic who comes off out-of-universe as trying too hard. He is honestly the white sheep of the Three Heroes not Naofumi, as his issues come from being bad at communicating and a loner complex. He’s still a jerk, but he’s a jerk who, in a better story, would probably become Naofumi’s “worthy opponent” rival. How badly Naofumi treats him for being asocial and slightly clueless will be a huge issue later on.
Leliel: Motoyasu, on the other hand, is a riff on the Pure of Heart, Dumb of Ass chivalrous pervert type; someone who actively wants a large amount of girls who he genuinely cares for and whose IQ is cranked low when trying to impress them. Except he goes way too far in the other direction and becomes the show’s Scary Stu; a character who exists to be dunked on by Naofumi and really, really wants the audience to join in on kicking him. He often deserves it, but the level of sheer superhuman gullibility he shows, combined with Concentrated Incel Energy, makes it amazing he is able to walk and chew gum at the same time without exploding into a cloud of fedoras.
Luz, Who Is Pure of Heart And Slightly Dumb of Ass: [Eyes narrow.] Uh…huh.
Wanderer2691: Also in that better show, Itsuki would be the main antagonist or a direct lieutenant of the same, because he’s a riff on the Humble Hero idea - namely, what happens when it’s a complete affectation and in fact he’s an utter narcissist who will regularly let a situation get worse so he can look cooler when he invokes his full power - and refuses to involve himself in the boring work of heroic logistics or to have actual moral boundaries when doing ‘the right thing’.
Iana: [Hisses] …screw Champara, this boy is like the unholy lustchild of Peleps Deled and Oxemnes of the Subtle Fire. For the record, that is one of the most infamous leaders of the Wyld Hunt, a crusade force of the Scarlet Realm meant effectively as a pogrom against Celestial Exalted like me, and the effective wizard-king of an expansionist state not far from Champoor where if you are not a sorcerer yourself, you are legally property of the people who are. Please tell me he dies?
Leliel: I wish. This show thinks he’s a better person than Motoyasu.
Anne: This show is wrong. But, there’s early signs of just how bad a hand Naofumi was dealt when Aultcray starts blatantly ignoring him from before he’s even introduced, and instead launches into the premise of why the Heroes are needed, which Naofumi sums up after the fact, which I…don’t really have an issue with, realistic dialogue’s gonna have the Two And A Half Entitled Chatterboxes over there interrupting constantly. As a side note, there’s a scene of the various gathered nobles giving uncomfortable looks, which I like for the ambiguity of whether they’re wondering what Aultcray is doing, or distaste for Naofumi as the Shield Hero.
[NAOFUMI] I'm still kinda pissed about how crappy the king's treating me, but here's the story in a nutshell. There's an old apocalyptic prophecy on this world{, which mentions “Waves” that will lead the world to ruin},
Anne: …Uh…those kind of look like portals, not waves. I get that there’s waves of invaders, but is it petty to expect them to surf in rather than drop in?
Leliel: Honestly, that is a nitpick. They’re waves of invaders, a la tower defense, and this is good for the LitRPG undertone. Continuing with Naofumi’s summary…
If the calamities wrought by the Waves are not stopped, the world will meet its end.
These devices can predict each Wave's arrival.
Luz: Ticking clock you can organize Wave Defense around, sounds good, depending on how long until the next there could be plenty of time for life, so, this part isn’t raising any hackles…yet.
The first Wave washed over this country not long before we were summoned. Between the local knights and traveling adventurers, they somehow managed to fend it off.
However, the subsequent Waves will become increasingly powerful. The sands in the hourglasses will trickle as long as the Waves keep coming. The second will arrive in less than a month.
Iana: And we have stakes! As well as both a legitimate reason as to why the Cardinal Heroes were called in so early, because I get get the sense that the victory over the first Wave was a narrow thing at best; however, if the Heroes are skilled at all, then they’ll be able to cut their teeth on a moderately easier Wave, rewarding the summoning being sooner rather than later. This is intriguing and shows some good strategy! …I am already prepared for disappointment!
Anne: But yeah, Aultcray put out the interdimensional help ad and really wants them to get to it ASAP, which Naofumi recognizes from the book…which means he knows what Malty’s like and probably her appearance, going by the outline, so he has no excuse. That’d be a double point if I scored - and besides, we have worse things to chew out!
{REN} Okay, I think we get the gist of it. Anyway, I'm sure you didn't bring us here thinking we'd save you for free.
Luz: [Disgusted look, then raised eyebrow at Wanderer.]
Wanderer2691: I did say he was a jerk, just less of one than the others, and basically every one of the Three Not Shield Heroes is like this. They only become really interested after promises of a reward…and somehow, this didn’t result on Aultcray looking into whether he can summon different Heroes who aren’t completely self-interested mercenaries who might run like hell the moment they’re in actual danger…
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 7 (All three of them this time…)
Luz: So, yeah, they get on Naofumi’s nerves as much as the audience, at which point Aultcray tells them to “check their statuses”, which only Ren catches onto shortly before he asks the others how they didn’t notice.
[NAOFUMI] Oh, put a sock in it. Stop acting like you know everything.
Anne: …uh, yeah, about that…
If the calamities wrought by the Waves are not stopped, the world will meet its end.
These devices can predict each Wave's arrival.
Luz: Ticking clock you can organize Wave Defense around, sounds good, depending on how long until the next there could be plenty of time for life, so, this part isn’t raising any hackles…yet.
The first Wave washed over this country not long before we were summoned. Between the local knights and traveling adventurers, they somehow managed to fend it off.
However, the subsequent Waves will become increasingly powerful. The sands in the hourglasses will trickle as long as the Waves keep coming. The second will arrive in less than a month.
Iana: And we have stakes! As well as both a legitimate reason as to why the Cardinal Heroes were called in so early, because I get get the sense that the victory over the first Wave was a narrow thing at best; however, if the Heroes are skilled at all, then they’ll be able to cut their teeth on a moderately easier Wave, rewarding the summoning being sooner rather than later. This is intriguing and shows some good strategy! …I am already prepared for disappointment!
Anne: But yeah, Aultcray put out the interdimensional help ad and really wants them to get to it ASAP, which Naofumi recognizes from the book…which means he knows what Malty’s like and probably her appearance, going by the outline, so he has no excuse. That’d be a double point if I scored - and besides, we have worse things to chew out!
{REN} Okay, I think we get the gist of it. Anyway, I'm sure you didn't bring us here thinking we'd save you for free.
Luz: [Disgusted look, then raised eyebrow at Wanderer.]
Wanderer2691: I did say he was a jerk, just less of one than the others, and basically every one of the Three Not Shield Heroes is like this. They only become really interested after promises of a reward…and somehow, this didn’t result on Aultcray looking into whether he can summon different Heroes who aren’t completely self-interested mercenaries who might run like hell the moment they’re in actual danger…
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 7 (All three of them this time…)
Luz: So, yeah, they get on Naofumi’s nerves as much as the audience, at which point Aultcray tells them to “check their statuses”, which only Ren catches onto shortly before he asks the others how they didn’t notice.
[NAOFUMI] Oh, put a sock in it. Stop acting like you know everything.
Anne: …uh, yeah, about that…
Anne: Literally everyone else missed that. Maybe he could have been more polite, but he’s literally trying to help, and you needed, dude. Don’t be so whiny about someone being actively helpful just because he rubs you the wrong way!
Leliel: Ah, but as we’ll see, “how nice someone is to Naofumi” is the only worthy moral metric. Just ask the showrunners - and yeah, if Ren became the only other Hero Naofumi respected, this would be excellent foreshadowing for his strengths over Naofumi’s. But that’d ruin the edgelord power fantasy for the cool kid to actually earn it, so…
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 1
Leliel: In any case, when the Heroes focus on it, it expands out into a holographic display of their statistics - like so:
Iana: …what in the name of the Many-Faced Moon is that?
Luz: It’s a stat screen! Basically, as a LitRPG, the Cardinal Heroes have “Status Magic”, the ability to see their abilities, and those of others, as RPG mechanic stats. [Pauses] Which has an entirely deserved reputation as a cheat for lazy writers, as they often assume that “number bigger = character development/win”, and often ends up not actually being the hard system it promises, because the writers aren’t actually that creative to color in the lines of the system, and removes a lot of mystery of figuring it out. And thanks to my newly developed “Foresight of Crud” Divination ability, I can tell this is going to be an endless source of WORLDBUILDING points in the future.
Wanderer2691: Summarizing a lot, everyone’s Level 1 and the weapons need upgrading and unlocking, every Cardinal Hero needs to be separate and get their own party lest some mysterious “adverse reaction” happens, nobody answers an entirely valid question from Motoyasu about whether they can use other weapons until their Hero ones are useful-hold a second, that’s a really good question everyone needs to know now…
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 7 (Even if it’s answered, why not here?)
..and then everyone retires for the night to quarters on the dime of the King - and chatter reveals that everyone is especially ambivalent about the Shield Hero.
[MOTOYASU] I guess when you're "heroes of legend" you get special treatment. The girl who showed us here was cute, too.
Iana: [Groan] No point, but I can already tell that the Spear Guy is indeed kin to Champara. That is not a compliment - Ravatri deserves more than just the throne for the hell he put her through…
Anne: …uh, can I ask why you keep on acting like you masterminded a coup and you don’t think anyone would blame you? ‘Cause when you did that villainess laugh earlier, I kinda got my skepticism of ‘friendly royals’ acting up…
Iana: Three things: One, good instinct, two - Ravatri is my cousin. And, in fact, she might be more considered my stepsister, because we grew up regularly playing together. Finally, Champara slept with literally everyone but her - including the spouses of other Sanjhar seeking an audience with him as the price of admission. In their alleged shared bed.
Anne: [Blushing profusely, but nods, clearly relaxing.] Okay, yeah, that’s definitely a red line that I give you permission to get the backstabbing knife out if I ever cross it. What a dick.
Iana: Thank you. I consider myself a rather sensual person, but there is a difference between enjoying one-night trysts and dragging others indulging your own adultery, as well as forcing others to commit it with you, for political favors; it’s absolutely repugnant on a personal level and poor governance. [Sarcastic tone] I’m entirely sure absolutely nobody is going to show such qualities to a degree that makes a violent pro-democratic revolution’s case for it.
[ITSUKI] And though it did taste unusual, our dinner was quite sumptuous.
[NAOFUMI] Doesn't this seem kinda like a video game?
Leliel: Yeah, and that’s gonna be a problem, because it’ll seem like a single-player, badly balanced game.
{MOTOYASU} That's 'cause it is a video game. It's exactly like Emerald Online.
[NAOFUMI] Uh, never heard of it.
{MOTOYASU} Huh? Seriously? It's huge!
[ITSUKI] What are you talking about? This isn't some online game. It's a new console game I'm playing. Called Dimension Web .
{REN} You're both wrong. Everything about this place is identical to a VRMMO called Brave Star Online.
Anne: …and now I get how Iana feels, a what?
Luz: Science fiction thing, basically a virtual reality used for an MMORPG, a vast online game with many player. Uh, for the sphinx devil’s benefit, that’s-
Iana: Not unlike the Identity Game of Tzakal, that I can catch on to, though I suspect the stakes aren’t quite as high. But, I can also surmise this isn’t a typical thing in contemporary Japan?
Wanderer2691: Despite the best efforts of some techbros, it’s not a thing in contemporary anywhere. It’s at that point Motoyasu realizes something:
{Motoyasu}: Now to be sure, let's compare general knowledge. Whose face is on the thousand-yen bill? Ready, and…
Luz: …oh, I get it! They’re from alternate timelines! Cool, we get to learn about alternate histories and cultures, how they interface with the world, what kind of values they bring with them, and absolutely none of this will be followed up on, will it?
Leliel: Not at all - as far as this franchise is concerned, they might as well be from different places in one Japan. Despite the fact that one of the confirming questions Ren (I think) asks is “Who won World War II?” - which is kind of a big deal, politically and culturally. Depending on the circumstances, Ren might be from an outright futuristic cyberpunk dystopia, and the potential for the viewpoint of someone who has suddenly lost the terror of being surveilled his whole life and is actually allowed self-expression without any chance to adapt to a world where he doesn’t have to be a smiling fearful drone is completely missed!
Luz: Speaking of, there. That’s the issue with not naming Raphtalia’s World properly - there’s four entire Earths at least! How are you not going to be confused without even a guidepost moniker when dealing with a freaking many-worlds multiverse!? This isn’t a point, as it’s not directly an issue yet, and it’s more just confusing, but for real, it’s one proper name.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 8
Wanderer2691: So, Naofumi realizes he’s the only guy who thinks of this world as a book he just found instead of a game he likes, at which point the others suddenly go into awkward silences, before admitting they kinda saw that coming, because as Motoyasu puts it about the equivalent Emerald Online class…
[Silence in the Sporking Chamber]
Anne: And one apparently owes you money - what the heck?! That was a sudden shift! You don’t have to be mean about it!
Leliel: And here we start to see Motoyasu’s true purpose in this franchise, to be the Scary Stu - someone the writers really, really want us to hate in place of Naofumi, largely because it hides the fact a lot of Naofumi’s own future behaviors are kinda amoral at best. And that means acting like a jerk for no good reason; to his credit, Motoyasu is kind of a genuine jackass and borderline incel even at the start of his character arc, but as we will see, it goes beyond just being kind of a jerk and into outright pitiful given how very, very little he has going on upstairs except spite and horny.
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 8
Iana: Both Ren and Itsuki confirm that Shielders are a notoriously poor class in both their worlds’ iterations of the game, which already starts tickling my whiskers suspiciously - if it is a playable role, there has to be some amount of appeal, yes? And as huge fans of it, they would know that the one who is simply amused by dragonfire is the one who can draw the dragon’s breath away from the more fragile members of the circle, yes? Do not disrespect healers nor hoplites, and even if you cannot work with him directly normally, I would at least give him pointers for backing you up during this thing, I do not believe you have heard of it recently, called a Wave.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 9
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 2 (Because the plot needs for Naofumi and the Three Noble Stooges to already dislike each other for the upcoming story to work.)
Iana: I digress, Naofumi realizes this and understands that his strength is indeed as a protector for his party, and also that he may find love among the female members, being a bit lonely back in the college. I…really do not have much disagreement with this, after I realized what had happened and had a moment to soberly consider my Exaltation, I realized I could find a respectable lover as well to adventure and assist the interests of Champoor with; The Kadhar caste are seen as on a spectrum between courageous warriors and sweet-natured medics, and now I had every excuse to train with them - perk of the caste change - and Naofumi is both a young man, and thematically, this is attempting to make a point about how one becomes vulnerable to manipulation. So he goes to bed with an enthusiastic heart and an eager smile, and in the morning, Aultcray brings out a selection of highly adept adventurers and knights for the Cardinal Heroes to select their companions from, and-
Iana: [Frowns, scrolls up to the book] …Ah. The infamous Princess Malty, I presume?
Wanderer2691: Yeah, this show is not subtle about her, particularly when she flashes Naofumi a slight smile and giggle…and the fact that she happens to resemble a certain ponytailed princess exactly who he knows to be a femme fatale in the light novel grimoire, including how “flashing smokey glances” is how she operates, and something that completely escaped Naofumi Iwatani, Lover of Books, in spite of him having read it a day-at-most ago.
RED MENACE: 2 (Yes, this is a continuation of the book point, but given how she acts exactly like how the wicked Princess is said to act from square one, we’re not feeling charitable to Naofumi’s memory capacity.)
Leliel: Side note, Malty uses the name Myne Suphia here - while we will be using her true name in the spork, the script calls her Myne, and so we will keep her dialogue tags as Myne. But, speaking of, Aultcray bids that “their journey begins”...and the adventurers start walking to Heroes on their own.
Anne: [Flat look] Yes, that’s what happens when volunteers are involved, Naofumi. Volunteers already chose to be here and are generally more prepared about where their skills are, so they choose where their talents are. They could probably confer with the Cardinal Heroes and figure out who needs what first, but frankly, they’re here because they want to be - they kinda should be asked where they think they’re best.
Wanderer2691: This would be a nitpick, except it’s outright hypocritical given other context later on - namely, Naofumi here is showing exactly what, in the other Heroes, is viewed as the reason they’re so incompetent. So, apparently, It’s Okay If You’re The Shielder.
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 2
Leliel: But, all of that aside, that’s when Naofumi notices something important:
Luz: [Winces] Been there. But as Aultcray reveals, this has more to do with the events the night before than anything.
[AULTCRAY] The rumor that is quickly spreading around town is that the so-called Shield Hero is ignorant of this world.
[NAOFUMI] What?!
[AULTCRAY] Legend tells us the heroes arrive with a firm understanding of our lands. And the townspeople seem to think he doesn't meet that criteria.
Leliel: As we’ll see, this is a load of bupkis; as we hinted at before, the Shield Hero is not exactly a well-loved figure in Melromarc. And for once, I’m not that down on it - because as we’ll later see, the Church of the Three Heroes think of the Shield Hero as a demon who will destroy the world.
Iana: …Wait. He’s their equivalent of an inherent Anathema? Like me, in other words? With an even more blatant visual signifier?
Leliel: …okay now I’m down on it. Complexity addiction, thy name is Melromarc. [Facepalm]
Anne: Uh, deep lore please? ‘Cause I don’t know at all.
Iana: [Hums, as an interesting design on the center of her forehead appears, and her tattoos shine]
(Source: White Wolf Wiki - do not invoke for Exalted lore, it’s out of date.)
What you see on my head is a Caste Mark; a signet mark from Luna that shows I am one of their Chosen. If I really got going, you’d see my anima - a glowing field of light and shadow, which I am informed is also called a battle aura more generally. Thing is, the silver Mark is unique to Lunars like me, as is an anima of shadow and moonlight - and Lunars like me are one major part of what the Immaculate Order that the very powers of a Lunar Exaltation, and our cousins and partners the Solars, drive us to madness and becoming enemies of the natural world that corrupt others with dangerous thoughts - Anathema. The only solution to an Anathema, due to Celestial corruption or just being a grand heretic, is to send a cadre of the Wyld Hunt to ‘mercifully’ kill us for redemption in the next life.
Luz: [Instant suspicion] …does the Immaculate Order brand people brands that restrict them to singular schools of magic or roughly equivalent? Asking for a friend and myself.
Iana: Not quite that blatant, but the Order happens to be the state religion of the Scarlet Realm. Completely coincidentally, Lunars have long been champions of people who were regularly oppressed by the Realm and its vassals, and the Order preaches that all mortals should be subservient to Dragon-Blooded, who rule the Realm. But the point is - simply by having this, I’m showing I’m an outright living blasphemy against the Order and a high enemy of the Realm. So if not hiding this makes me a symbol of a monster that will destroy the natural order…
(https://shield-hero.fandom.com/wiki/The_Shield_Hero)
Methinks they might be slacking a bit, given how the shield was visibly present in the summoning circle!
Wanderer2691: Seriously. Good news is, all the idiot balls the Church is holding are good insulation for fire, as Naofumi should have been burned at the stake long ago, or at least as soon as the other three Cardinal Heroes stopped looking.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 10
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 3 (There will be a plot later, but it notably does not involve “actually killing the Shield Hero but letting him molder, now with actual desire to destroy the world).
{NAOFUMI} Regardless, you don't need five, Ren! How 'bout you give a couple of them to me?
{REN} I'm a loner; you're right. I don't "need" them. Whoever cannot cut it gets left in the dust.
Luz: *Naofumi* “...so, uh, that means you’ll let go right? You’d just be dragged down with excess party members.”
Anne: *Ren* “Yeah, and it’s a real asshole move of the script to say that I can’t cut them free for the ‘necessity of the plot’. Pricks.”
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 4
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 9
{NAOFUMI} Motoyasu, help me out. Don't you think this is unfair?
{MOTOYASU} Uh, yeah. I'm surprised my party is all girls, too.
[NAOFUMI] Clearly you're super broken up about it, jerk.
Wanderer2691: Spoken like a man who completely remembers he was hoping for dates among his party last night instead of deep envy of the Spear Guy. Dude, you’re making me like the moronic pervert for his honesty, and I feel skeevy. Stop doing that.
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 3
Iana: Itsuki suggests even division, but worries that doing so against the will of the parties will play havoc with morale, in a tone that makes it clear he isn’t actually considering it in good faith (a fact with his party agrees with silently but enthusiastically, which is rather good foreshadowing for the Anathema of the Shield issue, so I don’t quibble). But that is when Malty steps in, changing affiliation from Motoyasu to Naofumi, apparently seeking to support…I’m sorry, isn’t she Princess Malty? As in, the king’s daughter and heir? And even if he’s accepted her being a schemer, he’s literally letting her team up with a local version of an outright religious bogeyman?
Anne: …wow. I wonder how she got that way when it comes to being heartless and callous. It’s so…mysterious.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 11
RED MENACE: 3 (Why doesn’t he intervene here - oh yeah, because she needs to “toughen” Naofumi by screwing him over.)
Luz: Thankfully the rest can be skipped through - all Heroes get an initial war chest, and promise of monthly allowances, Naofumi’s initial budget is bigger because he’s only partnered with one person (and it isn’t worse lore violation than just leaving him alive and keeps his suspicions low, so…eh), and the next bit is thankfully able to be summarized; the Heroes go their separate ways, Naofumi is taken on a tour of the market, which showcases…
…well, it’s not exactly the Boiling Isles, but there’s not a point for ‘you consider a cat-eared guy and a big lizard’ another world’, so moving on, Malty takes Naofumi to meet a blacksmith she trusts for weapons, Erhard (Erhardt, in the transcript being used), who seems…pretty okay with the devil of his religion being in there-
Leliel: Gonna cut in - Erhard thinks the Church of the Three Heroes business is bullshit, and he is open to trusting Naofumi later on because of it. Is it a bit of a contrivance? Yeah, but it also shows this world isn’t a hive mind and by the end Naofumi was at the end of his rope, he needed a balm in comparison to everyone else to stay alive. So, I’m fine with him. Not so much with how he doesn’t recognize, or given how she’s a frequent customer, warn Naofumi of the freaking princess and likely heir to the throne, mind!
RED MENACE: 4
Wanderer2691: And it is here that Naofumi makes a very important discovery:
Wanderer2691: The Cardinal Heroes cannot wield any weapon apart from their assigned Legendary one, as helpfully explained in a Status Magic tooltip, except when transporting it to someone else. And now we know why everyone across three universes think Shielders suck - it doesn’t explain why anyone in any of the game-verses uses the Shielder class at all, but eh, here it’s a weakness he didn’t ask for, along with how the Shield is stuck on him and can’t easily be hidden.
Anne: So, in other words, he has to rely on his friends and possibly summons - and can’t fight directly! I like it, he’s gotta be clever and social and - how is it screwed up?
Leliel: Oh, we will see. But until then, this is just a cool idea and deserves to be in a better series with an actual pacifist or non-violent hero. But, Naofumi gets some chain mail on the cheap, and goes off to fight the “cute trash mobs” of this world, Balloons.
(https://shield-hero.fandom.com/wiki/Balloon )
Luz: D’aww. They’re angry widdle Jack o’ Lanterns. Do they bite if I scratch their chins?
Leliel: So, in one of the few manipulations Malty does I think works on a smart level, Naofumi fistfights them to show off to her - and discovers his Defense stat makes it so that biting Balloons might as well be jewelry:
Luz: …aww, I don’t care! C’mere little bitey guys! Mama’s chewy!
Wanderer2691: Meanwhile, Ren is off to the side just kinda swatting them like mad, while it takes a few punches per Balloon to pop them, leading to one measly experience point per angry orange, each of which sells for one copper, and if fed to the Shield’s gem used to empower it…
…isn’t getting anywhere fast. Also, the stats show the Shield can change forms when upgraded, so we will get to see other designs than the generic buckler, which is good.
Iana: We then cut to another less-moronic manipulation of Malty’s when she interrupts Naofumi haggling on a price for new armor with Erhard to buy some of the most expensive armor there with his stipend but manages to woo him into forgiving it as an attempt to become stronger it via, well…
Feminine wiles. I am too self aware about how my pleating pouty expression makes Suspire more willing than normal to allow me more of the budget for a casual shopping trip to snipe at her for it, and as the next line shows, Naofumi is not thinking with the head that contains neurons and gila:
[NAOFUMI] There's the otherworld trope I've been waiting for!
Luz: …and you look down on Motoyasu being a horny idiot…why?
Leliel: I’m a little more willing to accept that her charm offensive combined with his desperation has made him a bit dumber and he’s joking about the trope - but yeah, it’s kinda rich that he disdains Malty for being too sex-crazed to be a heroine in the intro, and the moment she squeezes her breasts against him he becomes a wind-up doll.
RED MENACE: 5
Wanderer2691: Which means we come up to…oh hell.
Anne: …So, Iana, speaking as the resident expert on treacherous royal court politics, how much poison per drop is in the average murder wine glass?
Iana: Don’t be silly. From context clues, she’s trying to drug him, not kill him. If I need someone to sleep long enough for me or my agents to rifle through their things, I just switch out the alcohol served for something stronger than expected, maybe slip chamomile extract, melatonin, crystallized dream or other soporifics into their food if I really need them out of it or they don’t drink; there’s enough of a substance abuse problem in Champoor that everyone assumes they just fell off the wagon or someone made a mix-up in the kitchen, and if I or someone I like accidentally drink some we just need to sleep it off ourselves. But given how she is going to accuse him of sexual assault, well I really don’t want to reveal that chemical cocktail, but believe you me, there are plenty of ways to render someone completely without agency for a bit.
Luz: Ho-kay, not thinking on those implications, Malty plays helpful guide still, revealing there’s a low-level dungeon near the relatively distant Lafan Village to grind in…and now I’m wondering how dungeons form here, because presumably monsters are natural animals. Do they just breed fast, or is this a cursed ground situation? …now I’m thinking about how cool it’d be if there was an isekai about being reincarnated as the mind of a living dungeon that generates monsters on its own and wishing I could watch that series. If only so I could marvel at how the harem works there.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 12
Luz: After that pep talk, that’s when Malty starts getting a little impatient about her poison, and gets a bit pushy…
[MYNE] No problem.
Uh, by the way, Sir Hero...we have all this wine here, aren't you going to drink some?
[NAOFUMI] Uh...I'm not into alcohol.
{MYNE} Oh, that's too bad. This is a really fantastic vintage.
Iana: …she’s laying it on a bit thick, isn’t she? I mean, not more so than earlier, but frankly, even me in my wild teenage days would get a bit uncomfortable around this. But while our hosts didn’t capture it, she did down the flute of wine she had completely, so it’s not drugged, at least not her glass. I don’t see why, if she’s held to be that horrible unless…[Sudden realization] You oathbreaking, Dis-kin snake.
Luz: …Uh. Her pupils are turning slitted. I think she’s actually mad for the first time, and it’s kinda scary.
Wanderer2691: Read on, but first, after Naofumi reveals he doesn’t drink, Malty claims to be amused at his naivete.
[NAOFUMI] Uh, what do you mean?
[MYNE] This country is a matriarchy. No man who's from here would ever dare turn down a drink offered by a woman.
[NAOFUMI] Really? Guess I'm not very good at picking up on this kinda stuff.
Anne: …understandably, given the existence of King Aultcray, his men-at-arms, his male team of advisors, he not wondering at the existence of boys alone in the Cardinal Heroes - are we sure this is a kingdom with a queen at all? You weren’t pulling my leg earlier?
Leliel: I have a standing theory; in the web novel, Malty was lying, as she tends to do, as she wanted proof that Naofumi was drunk that night and she decided that if she couldn’t kissy-face him into it, she’d claim it was only polite to play along, since Naofumi is obviously someone who puts value in etiquette. The thing is, that was the case at the time, but then the novelist decided both to shovel yet more shit on her, and moreover, realized they couldn’t do much with how badly they boxed Naofumi in with her, so they suddenly decided she was serious to pull an authority figure over Aultcray. But nothing else actually changed, and so the idea that Melromarc is a queendom was hurriedly patched into the most generic-ass patriarchal monarchy, because the writer decided to cover for their laziness with other laziness that escalated previous laziness. Lazily.
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 13
Wanderer2691: But, Naofumi checks in, stores his armor and money, sleeps in spite of the Itsuki and Motoyasu being loud in a level-related pissing match in the next room, and wakes up to discover…pretty much everything is gone, even his old Japanese clothes, and when he goes to wake up “Myne,” he’s surrounded by knights who reveal he has been given a summons by the king - and will attend in chains. There, he finds Malty, who is…well, she’s acting scared of him, for reasons that will become very clear:
Leliel: Burn this image into your mind. It’s one half of what will define Motoyasu’s entire character going forward.
Iana: [Clenching teeth together, hissing] I see where this is going, wretch.
Anne: Okay, is this the kind of standard procedure for reacting to eating orphans raw in Champoor, because you’re getting really scary, real fast-
Wanderer2691: That’s when King Aultcray chimes in:
{AULTCRAY} Myne, I'm sorry to ask, my dear, but would you mind repeating your testimony for us again?
Luz: … Myne? Uh, why are you calling her by something you know is an alias, wouldn’t pointing out she’s your daughter illustrate how much Naofumi’s alleged to have screwed up-
[MYNE] It-It happened last night. The Shield Hero forced his way into my room; he was stinking drunk! He grabbed me and pinned me down!
[Dead silence.]
Anne: She is not.
Iana: She is. Having alcohol on your target’s breath and a hangover helps sell the story…
{NAOFUMI }Huh?!
[MYNE] He said something like, "The night is still young." And then the next thing I knew,
[Longer silence.]
Luz: [Deadly calm] …Excuse me.
[NAOFUMI] What?
[MYNE] Somehow, I managed to escape! I ran down the hall for help. I found Sir Motoyasu, who happened to be staying at the same inn!
Iana: Creation of a witness…
[growls]
[NAOFUMI] What the hell?
[MOTOYASU] If she hadn't asked me to wait until dawn
and call the knights, I would've gladly cut you down myself!
Iana: …establishing a time window…
{NAOFUMI} What are you talking about?! I went straight to bed after dinner last night, and I don't drink!
You thieving bastard, give it back!
{MOTOYASU} Ha. Who are you calling a thief?
Iana: …and forging of circumstantial evidence. I wish to offer Malty my congratulations, she has stooped to one of about three kinds of scam that, even in the Court of Secrets, mark you as scum not worthy of divine patronage, for it is lower than even the literal gods of crime - and the other two involve war crimes and kinslaying. Your specially prepared prize will be in the mail.
Leliel: It gets worse! Look!
[NAOFUMI gasps]
[AULTCRAY] To think the Cardinal Shield Hero would commit the greatest sin in this country.
Wanderer2691: Wait, the Devil did something EVIL?! THE FUCK YOU SAY?!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 14 (This is a shock…why? Church of Three Heroes, dude.)
[NAOFUMI] Sin?
{AULTCRAY} In Melromarc, even attempted sexual assault on a woman is punishable by death!
Luz: Oh, so that means no trial for the Shield Hero, who is utterly evil, and all the women in this matriarchy have to be protected like the poor, sweet little flowers we are. With all apologies to my mom: fuck off.
[Somewhere, Camila Noceda is suddenly somehow aghast her daughter isn’t able to use stronger profanity.]
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 15
Leliel: Not gonna lie, the next bit is so uncomfortable I don’t want to cover it - basically the guards find a torn bit of underclothes that somehow ended up on Naofumi’s bed after he left despite Malty being nowhere near there, and as Naofumi reels from the betrayal, Malty realizes nobody else is looking, and can’t resist the urge to taunt Naofumi:
Anne: Actually, keep doing that. That’s right. Now, where’s a good handful of the most uncomfortable sand…
Iana: You’re respectably merciful. [Grins madly as she unsheathes her claws and makes a poking motion.]
Wanderer2691: See, this the most insidious thing about Malty as a character - because she was made to be hated. She’s effectively a classic psychopath, someone who hurts and manipulates others for the fun of it with a royal pedigree, and that’s both despicable and terrifying. However, as we said before, this also suspiciously resembles an archetype that originated in the colon of incels - the EEEEEbil Woman Who Is Looking For Any Excuse To Accuse Poor, Good Menz of Rape.
And quite unintentionally, reveals the enormous hole in this, because most false rape accusations are fucking obvious, and this one is not an exception.
(https://zensan.medium.com/bull-shit-now-what-is-that-51c7efa481e)
Iana: Let us start with the obvious - the wine. Because as might be obvious - the attempt to get him drunk did not work. Which, besides kind of making it impossible for him to be obviously hungover or whatever poisons she might have used to further frame him, also means that everyone in the room saw him leave for his room, and later Malty alone before the alleged drunken assault. And the staff likely have records of who bought what wine, and if any was left so that Malty was sober for the rest of her plan. Failure point 1.
Anne: Then, Malty had to not only sneak into Naofumi’s room to steal his armor and money, but had to do so when he was in a state of perfectly normal sleep and could be woken up if she stepped on a creaky floorboard - or more to the point, dropped the armor or coins. Fail point 2.
Luz: Then, Motoyasu has to be awake, and not notice her sneaking in Naofumi’s room, to receive the chain mail - now, he’s a horny idiot and that chain mail could have gotten to him as “thanks” for saving her, but he’s probably not so dumb that, if he saw Naofumi before he was staying in the same inn, he’d likely recognize the design and might get suspicious. Fail point 3.
Leliel: Then, not only that, but given how Motoyasu was rooming with Itsuki, she has to convince both of them to wait until morning, but also the guards to not stab Naofumi already when she just escaped and could be escorted, in spite of attempted rape being a capital offense and he being the Shield Devil. Fail point 4, and also, completely unnecessary of her to do.
Wanderer2691: And finally, she has to do all this, and somehow find the time to plant those bedclothes or a bribe a guard to help her forge the evidence, all in the course of less than a day at most. Fail point 5, get a new plan!
Iana: And all of that, plus she has to somehow hide the fact that she is, in fact, the crown princess, even getting her own father to call her Myne in spite of the ‘proof’ of how dangerous her adventure hobby is. Fail point 6 + however many persons in this room know who you are.
Leliel: And before you ask, no, Aultcray is not in on this; he is pathologically gullible when it comes to Malty, so yes, we are meant to expect she did this entire plan on her lonesome, on the fly. Fail point YES, and all you dinguses get 50 on the first spork count I’m gonna raise for the fact that the only way this plot ever started was that Malty’s real power is to lower the IQ of everyone in the room to its temperature! Including Naofumi’s!
RED MENACE: 55
Wanderer2691: As for the other scores…look. There is so, so much we could say about this, that also happens to violate the comm rules and we probably aren’t the best people to overview it. But, leaving aside that Malty’s very character role is a checklist for what misogynists think any rape accuser is like, no matter how valid - she is not a character with goals. She’s literally just someone who exists to do things that make her convenient to hang bad experiences with women off of and confirm to the intended audience “oooh, it’s not your fault, it’s that everyone who decided they didn’t like you is just an evil hag!” That makes her a worse villain!
Leliel: We get it. Malty is played as a genuine narcissist, someone for whom if she decides you’re an enemy, you deserve to be toyed with and thrown away. The problem is, nothing’s shown that might actually make Naofumi her enemy - like, rejecting a drink? To the narcissist brain, that’s just a challenge to work on, especially because he keeps praising her and giving her ego validation - they can deal with someone they’re still mining for praise not acting exactly like they want to for a bit. Just having a teetotaler isn’t going to send them into instant rage mode, and even if it did, they try to string along their victims for a bit to find better ways to kill their egos utterly, make them think they’re the bad guys. And as we’ll see, Malty’s ambitions are things that don’t necessarily involve the Cardinal Heroes at all - all she’s doing on a purely pragmatic level is making her life more difficult, as she will whenever she decides to pick on Naofumi!
Luz: Which doesn’t even get into an even bigger issue - as noted, Naofumi is the Shield Hero - a religious bogeyman. But, as Aultcray says:
[AULTCRAY] If you weren't a hero, you'd be executed at once!
Anne: Except for how he’s not a hero at all, you mean? According to the religion you’re a part of? Forget execution - why aren’t you making it a holiday that you get an excuse to finally rid yourself of the menace!?
(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComplexityAddiction)
Iana: The level of ridiculous self-destructive circuitousness was passed somewhere along the lines that you didn’t just stab Naofumi the moment he showed up with a buckler on his arm. At this point, I can’t help but wonder if the Church of the Three Heroes is secretly run by the Shield Hero that became the source of “shields r evil” and he is trying to see if Naofumi can be warped into a minion by making him loathe the world just as much.
Leliel: And oh, what waste of potential that it isn’t. But as corollary to my “schrodinger’s matriarchy” theory - which is looking an awful lot like a future spork count - I’m not entirely sure that in the web novel, the Church existed until the author needed to pull shit out of their ass to justify the totes realistic oppression of the Stu. Which, if anything, means I’m being merciful when I jack these other scores up by 50!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 65
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 54
CHOSEN LESS THAN ZEROES: 59 (because the other Heroes need to completely blindly follow this whole thing to work at all.)
Luz: [Facepalming] Please tell me we don’t get to see a grand tour of how vapid and selfish everyone but Naofumi is…?
Leliel: How did Iana put it? The seal’s claw curls? Because while we get that…
…we’re about to get a front row seat to how vapid and selfish Naofumi is!
Anne: [Frown] Uh…he was kind of screwed over by Motoyasu, and he doesn’t know he got the wool pulled over his eyes too - nor would we, really, if you didn’t spoil us. He’s mad and lashing out, I don’t really blame him.
Wanderer2691: That’s true, which is why we’re not scoring this. And the fact the Melromarc court chews out the Shield for being weak rather than a sign of Super Lucifer was covered by Leliel’s fifty score count, and still ties into how it’s reasonable Naofumi feels the world is against him - it is, even if it’s for really fucking dumb reasons. But then he drops this line:
{NAOFUMI} Disgusting. These people are all filthy, disgusting trash! This country's people don't believe in me, either. Why should I raise a finger to help them?
[Silence]
Iana: [Smiling broadly enough to show her fangs] Why yes. Yes we are. You make it so easy, given how your immediate reaction to discovering that your arm candy is using the same exact tactics on others is to decide that literally everyone else in this room is in on it, instead of, I don’t know, the fact you apparently nearly raped a woman? Truly, a masterful grasp of logic and detective work not seen since the Lintha clans decided the real issue with low population was blood purity, to the point it is considered noble by them to self-castrate after having a couple approved children.
[Everyone else except Leliel promptly winces and covers their groins]
Leliel: [Apologetic grin] Yeah, unfortunately “the planet is flat” jokes don’t quite work when Creation is actually a flat world bobbing gently on the Wyld like a continent on the sea. But I think it fits how horny and skeevy this show gets.
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 4
Anne: That fit of paranoid self-pity aside, Naofumi understandably wants to go home, to which the other Heroes are either eager to kick him out (Motoyasu) or add “coward” to the list of things they hate about him (Ren and Itsuki). That’s when Aultcray reveals something - as much as he’d like to…
Luz: *Aultcray* “And because we think you’re inherently evil, we’re gonna get started on that.” [Mimes ax to neck, makes death gurgle] The end!
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 55
Iana: As Aultcray declares, the only way out is fighting the Waves, much to Motoyasu’s dismay, as he is understandably reluctant to fight alongside an accused rapist (why is he supposed to be the, er, “Scary Stu” again?). Naofumi spits back he will do it on his own, his way, and-
Anne: Whoa whoa whoa! Wait. “Fight the Waves”? Not “go home”, or “let the kingdom he thinks betrayed him rot” or even “I’ll only do it if you let me message my brother?”
Wanderer2691: Plot twist time! In spite of Naofumi clearly not having died, or appeared to die, in his world, meaning as far as anyone knows he just vanishes into thin air, leaving a Naofumi-shaped hole behind that doesn’t even leave a body for closure - Naofumi does not think about the world he left at all, ever again, in this franchise. Not his brother, not his parents, not his school, not his light novels, not anything. The brother he saved from allegedly becoming a broke punk. He plans to get back, but even after discovering the potential of hopping worlds, he never even entertains the idea of just leaving this awful place to rot, and instead just lets himself be thrown into monster invasions. He certainly doesn’t worry about what his parents think or talk about them at all.
Anne: [Air suddenly chills] …oh. I get it. [Long pause] So, uh, how key would you say this is to the overall plot? Completely weird and not related question, I know.
Leliel: Given how he’s just getting involved in slice of life stuff when calm instead of constantly looking for a way back? A pillar of the setting.
Anne: Ah. Got it. [Pulls over the spork point button]
[Accurate simulation below]
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/5b9c600433acea0a67795d33097dbeda/b17797fe3c09e983-08/s540x810/8e6a4bbe8a7d3eb2da47574b576a82288b43ae22.gif)
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 54
Anne: Fuck. You. Fuck you. Fuck you, forever. Fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. You fuck. [Long inhale] Do you know what my parents were doing when I got back? Staring at nothing. Because I had vanished for five months. I was almost afraid they’d lock me in the house forever, because they were that terrified I would vanish again. And you…you aren’t even stuck here in a world that you consider generally full of tolerable people, asked to save their lives, after they deliberately kidnapped you, and you have not only parents, but a brother? And you just kind of fart around?! …I’d be lying if I said I’d be rooting for Malty, but I think I get the Church of Three Heroes now!
Luz: …what she said. Even leaving aside the fact that it is the most asshole move I’ve seen yet…it’s not even smart. If they want you to help save the kingdom, after this, you should push for an escape strategy! Because otherwise they might kill you! At least Motoyasu’s brain shorts out for obvious reasons! Unlike yours, due to apparently having some kind of weird persecution complex!
Leliel: In fact…while I hold that the light novels, and thus the anime, really improved on the web serials as a general rule, here I need to pause and point out that a change from the web novel makes it worse! Remember that little wiki page on Naofumi’s younger brother?
Iana: Ah yes, salvation from hair dye and foul language. Truly worthy of being honored by the Unconquered Sun, God of Justice and King of Heaven, himself. Please applaud.
Leliel: Well, a lot of that was taken from the web novel - which the wiki itself says should not really be considered canon, but there’s no other source on Younger Iwatani - but in the light novel and anime, it’s left vague as to how he “broke bad”, or how Naofumi saved him so much that he is supported by his parents to the point of not needing a job in college. And it’s that specific phrase: “broke bad”. Now, Luz, Anne - you’re old enough, American and the show is considered classic enough, to the point where the phrase “breaking bad” makes you think of what?
Anne and Luz: [Think, then sudden horrified realization]
(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/)
Wanderer2691: Is this a stretch? Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch to go from “vague idea of going wrong” to “Jesse Pinkman: Yakuza/Hangure Edition”, but it does underscore how being vague here makes it seem worse - in the web novel Younger Iwatani is capable of supporting himself. We don’t know if that’s the case here, and that makes Naofumi seem exactly as prone to the responsibility dodge that Ren and Itsuki accuse him of! No points, because it’s a fan theory, but great going, adaptation!
Leliel: Current headcanon: Iwatani the Younger actually did fall pretty bad but retained enough morals to be picked up by Ichiban Kasuga as a party member or Poundmate summon. The Like a Dragon series has had weirder characters.
Iana: Urgh…so anyway, Naofumi uses a wave of force from his Shield to push the guards off him, and asks if he’s going to be imprisoned before the next Wave to be let out then-
Iana: -excuse me what the fuck?
Iana: [Confused, enraged sputtering]
Luz: I…how does that follow, your Highness?
{AULTCRAY} Scum or not, you're still a hero, and one of the only beings left who can fight them all off. But news of your crime is already spreading among the people. That is your punishment. You should never expect to be allowed to lead a decent life in this country.
[Long silence.]
Anne: So. His punishment…as opposed to prison…is to allow him to run free.
Iana: Possibly gather a group of mercenaries who don’t care, or start a bandit clan.
Luz: Or even flee to another country. Instead of forcing him to train up under armed guard, like another one of the Cardinal Heroes, as two out of three of them are inclined to force him to do.
[Long silence]
Leliel: [Cocks ear] What is that theme? Is it…oh no. It’s the key of B flat minor…
Wanderer2691: Goddammit anime, you summoned the Voodoo Shark! Or, in non-Tropese, make sure the thing you use to patch over a plot hole does not create another plot hole!
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 56
Luz: [Nervously watching the dorsal fin getting closer despite there being no water] Uh, yeah, that’s nice and all, but, uh, maybe we should deal with the hungry eldritch narrative fish first?
Iana: [Caste Mark flares] I have this.
(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RelaxOVision)
Iana: [Wiping off blood] Woo, that got out some aggression! Didn’t even need to draw too deep on my necromancy for that, and I get some excellent raw materials for later.
Anne: [Stares at remains]
(https://magazine.scienceconnected.org/2015/12/preserving-soft-skeleton-backs-without-bones/)
…they have skeletons…?
Leliel: Everything except the jaw is cartilage, but yeah - they just decay fast. And that has been your Shark Trivia for today! Now…ugh, back to the main event…
Anne: So, in a fit of frustration, and still thinking Motoyasu was in on it, Naofumi chucks the pocket change he had left on him and Malty to “shove it up [his] ass”, which causes Motoyasu to try and stop him from leaving to try and buoy up his stats. I have no idea if this is a worse insult to Japanese people than others, and it is enough of an insult to cause retaliation, but…didn’t you want him to buzz off anyway? Not point-worthy, but still kind of a ‘huh?’ moment.
Iana: And with that, he storms off, reduced to nothing but his shield, and with people…reacting as they should to an Anathema in an area that believes in them. Though I will give credit to them not attacking, as everyone also likely knows it’s just going to annoy the Defensive Hero. I must give even more credit to Erhard, who even knowing that, corners Naofumi:
As much as I despise the Anathema reputation some days, I don’t really blame common Prasadi or Realm commoners for not knowing any better. Immaculates do fund education, and I blame nobody for using the provided service or believing the monks teaching what they themselves believe. So, all I see is courage in how Erhard corners him, enraged his good faith was taken advantage of by a sex criminal, and-
…lets him go after looking in his eyes? What?
Wanderer2691: The Watsonian reasoning is that Erhard has a really good sense of character by looking someone in the eyes, which given the magical style he knows is based around appraisal is not the worst stretch. The Doylist, probably more genuine, reasoning is that promptly loans Naofumi an outfit - his distinct one from later in the series - and asks him to pay it off later, at a discount. Even after Naofumi, in a fit of grumpiness, says he could totally take the twice-his-size blacksmith in a fight to the death. In other words, even at the darkest moment, this franchise chickens out of actually making Naofumi friendless and maybe actually resort to crime due to having nothing else left and needing to be warm, because how dare we consider that criminals might possibly be sympathetic or had no choice in the matter? …The original author probably really hates the Like a Dragon franchise…
RISING OF THE CONTRIVANCE LEVELS: 57
Luz: Now be-caped, Naofumi goes full berserker rage on the Balloons for a full night, ending up with a bunch of skins and a new level at last:
Notice that MAG, or Magic, is a middling stat, along with DEX, or Dexterity. While obviously, the Shield Hero is something that is going to win mostly by outlasting the enemy, there’s actually a hint that Naofumi has some options, in the form of Magical attacks, if he’s all by his lonesome. I like it, it means the Shield isn’t completely up a creek in need of a paddle if alone, and it explains why anyone plays it in any of the video game worlds; it requires patience and fortitude to do more than out-tank your enemy, as well as probably some cleverness; still low-tier, but more because of skill difficulty than having a harsh ceiling. That’s a good thing in LitRPGs, because it brings the focus to things you don’t have as numbers.
Anne: And next up, we come to an amoral action I’m not mad at, when a merchant tries to cheat him by paying for twenty Balloon skins with a single copper, in spite of the going rate being one for two - at which point Naofumi reveals a benefit the Shield Hero has, namely his ability to be just fine with being gnawed on when everyone around him isn’t:
Luz: See, even he thinks they’re cute, he’s using them as his ambassadors!
Iana: And this is honestly something respectable - while he does threaten to hold the stingy merchant’s head under his cape with his unknowing and highly aggressive pets unless he has a fair price, it isn’t like he could have gotten a fair price otherwise, what with being the Shield Devil and an accused rapist and all. Really, the only thing I would do differently is just to extort the shopkeeper for a one-time bonus in return for organizing a protection racket of being his and his peers’ Shield for fair prices and letting him be. Amoral? Yes, but as noted, he is not allowed to be anything else at this point and he isn’t even asking for a forced cut, just to treat with him fairly. This is a somewhat proportional response that allows him to actually get enough money to deal with people who know he has no other options and attempt to price gouge (and Erhard, who he leaves payment for the clothes for). And the Balloons serve as backup to actually damage enemies a bit before he wades in, so even without a party he has some offense.
Luz: And even out in the wilderness, he’s still making discoveries, like the unlocking of his Shield Upgrade system:
By feeding the Shield some herbs, Naofumi finally gets access to different forms of it, and learns his shield forms can share skills, which is a bit OP, not gonna lie - but he’s the Chosen One, or at least One of Four, as annoying at it is, I can accept some buffs. And the Leaf Shield buffs Foraging as a skill, which causes any herbs he picks to be remade into higher quality ones, which sell better - and that’s a neat thing! It’s actually a good utility skill, one that isn’t based on ‘the awesome’ but is just as important for later.
Leliel: But, of course, the good worldbuilding and interesting quirks can’t last, as we get this bit:
Anne: …oh, boo hoo. Can’t enjoy your perfectly good quality meal out, which you were allowed to eat at a legal pub? In spite of needing to threaten merchants just to be treated fairly? Dude, be thankful you haven’t been kicked out to protect its reputation! … why haven’t you been kicked out in this alleged matriarchy that puts attempted rapists to death?!
WORLDBUILDING OF CARDBOARD: 66
Iana: Given what happens next, would not be surprised if this pub caters to a criminal set (though I am not searching especially hard for a justifying reason at this point), given how a group of rather suspiciously-bandit-esque men come up to offer to party up.
Having learned the adage of trust-but-verify very well, and I cannot blame him, Naofumi hits them with a payment plan first - he gets 40 percent of treasure, at minimum, distributed to the others based on what they did, which he fully admits also means that he may decide to keep payment, and they must bring their own weapons. Which would be something I score him for, except how they are, indeed, acting largely like Malty with being overly friendly and seemingly very eager to help him in a place where he is the Shield Devil - it is a good way to see who haggles to a more sane contract versus whoever explodes in frustration at how they have to actually work towards robbing him. Which they do!
Anne: Yeah, not gonna knock him for pattern recognition. But after some Balloon-assisted violence making this a failed mugging, he realizes that without any offensive ability, he can’t farm for EXP to get an offensive ability worth spit - and I’m sensing some bad vibes from our hosts. What fresh hell is this now?
Wanderer2691: Because now, we meet…him.
[Long silence]
Iana: [Sharply] Who let the living caricature of a Nexus Guild merchant in here, and how do we put it back? With prejudice?
Luz: Yeah, this man is a walking Stranger Danger ad, and now I know what Tibbles would look like as a human. But, apart from him being a top competitor for Fiend Weekly’s Champion Mustache Twirler, I don’t see why he’s bad beyond being an obvious baddie-
Leliel: This isn’t a bad guy. At least, not according to this franchise.
Anne: …wha…?
Wanderer2691: People of the comm, allow me to introduce you to Beloukas, one of Naofumi’s first real allies, monster rancher…and slave trader.
[Long pause]
The Girls:
(https://spongebob.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000000311895/r/4400000000001109612)
Leliel: Yeppers. Remember how we were talking about slave harems? This guy is the source of the found family you buy.
Anne: …please tell me it’s something he hates…
Wanderer2691: No, even that rationalization’s not here - because Beloukas approaches Naofumi on purpose to have ‘party members’ that can’t betray him, realizing he’s got a potential customer, so he leads him to his cages in his tent.
Luz: [Wordlessly mouths ‘literal cages?’]
Leliel: Oh yeah, did we mention that it’s heavily implied this is a reasonable precaution? Because when the camera pans up…
You obviously can’t hear them, but beyond just having the red angry eyes visible, we hear nothing but a bunch of animalistic snarling and hissing. Because we need to see these people as animals…
Iana: [Starts hissing herself] Showing the most inhuman mutants first, to lower them to a level of ferocious livestock…
{NAOFUMI} What would make you think I'd want to own slaves?
Anne: Good question, so obviously, you’re going to murder the bastard and-
{BELOUKAS} Oh, I don't know, the fact that they can neither lie nor betray their master?
Anne: [Dread] …how?
{BELOUKAS} We keep all our slaves in line by placing them under the effects of a curse.
Luz: …this can’t be lifted. This curse can’t be lifted without hurting the slave-
Leliel: No. It can and is. It isn’t even that hard…
Luz: Th-then, Naofumi refuses to let his fear of betrayal win, and he comes back later-
Luz: [Dead, open-mouth silence]
Wanderer2691: It gets worse. Because, as Beloukas is leading Naofumi on a tour of the ‘inventory.”
{BELOUKAS} I can assure you they still are, technically.
Iana: Of course. Technically. I suppose there is a reason they cannot technically be considered people? Or at least, not anymore, my dear Guildsman?
{BELOUKAS} [In response to Naofumi asking for more detail] Creatures that look mostly human but aren't are what we refer to as "demi-humans." They're mostly used as servants or for manual labor. "Beastmen" are demi-humans whose appearance lean more toward the animal side. They're often used as bodyguards or gambled on as participants in death matches.
Anne: [Hard, building rage] And it doesn’t. Fucking. MATTER! THEY’RE PEOPLE, EVEN IF THEY HAVE A TADPOLE STAGE!
[NAOFUMI] I see. But they both fall under the same category?
{BELOUKAS} Indeed. And since this country practices human supremacy, and demi-humans are thought to be closer to monsters, life can be quite hard for them here. As such, they're treated as slaves.
Luz: [Forced, bitter laughter] Oh, so that’s why everything seems so fucked up! This kingdom is under the control of Belos! BURN IT TO THE GROUND! LEAVE NO-
Leliel: Save it. There’s worse coming.
Luz: [Insane cackling] Worse?! WORSE?! HOW COULD IT BE WORSE?! THERE’S CIRCLES OF HELL BELOW THE NINTH!? WHAT’S ON THE TENTH, HUH, SATAN’S WEIRD PORN ARCHIVE?!
Wanderer2691: [Nauseous] Why’d you have to mention weird porn and the number ten…basically, Naofumi hears a young girl coughing, and draws back a curtain to reveal…
Leliel: Everyone, meet Raphtalia. Tanuki demihuman. Slave. Female lead, and implied love interest of Naofumi, even if he verbally tries to avoid that. Ten years old.
The Girls:
(https://onepiece.fandom.com/wiki/Enel)
Iana: I..buh…ebbwh…tall, and… [looks at picture of Raphtalia from intro and makes wordless gestures of ‘nearly as tall as me, a grown-ass woman.’]
Wanderer2691: Yeah, uh, here’s where the whole demi-human growth thing comes into play - their levels are linked to their age. Since she is chronologically ten, she is level 1, and looks it.
Anne: Bwuh…but tadpole…grow out. Same…young child…just no legs…she baby…?
Leliel: Ah, but you see, not for long, because over the course of the next episode, Naofumi will force her to power-level by throwing her into combat with increasingly dangerous monsters, which will also turbo-charge her growth to about nineteen, which the series claims is also mental. Given how this is over the course of a week, and a later arc has her revert to ten when she has her level reset, I respectfully disagree.
[Long silence]
The Girls: [Inhale]
[Feed resumes, with both Leliel and Wanderer on the ground, hands in ears, bleeding from said ears]
Iana: [Glowing with moonlight and shadow, breathing heavily] …sorry…
Luz: [Hoarsely] I think I was louder. My larynx hurts…
Anne: Well, now I know - Calamity powers aren’t here. I think I’m gonna lie down now…
Leliel: …WHAT?
Wanderer2691: CAN YOU FINISH UP? WE CAN’T HEAR OURSELVES!
Iana: Okay…so, in summation, we covered all the problems with this as we rustled through it, but…beyond all that slavery apologia, and the reason one of my only requests of my sister upon her ascension to the throne is that she help abolish the trade in Champoor, along with beginning motions towards a constitutional monarchy? Because slavery, even beyond being a cruel, heartless, and utterly corrupt system, is utterly inefficient.
Luz: When it comes down to it, slavery, even indentured servitude, spends more time on watching slaves for inevitable revolt. Those seals won’t mean much if the last thing the slave plans on doing is wringing your neck, or even if they let someone else kill you. Like you deserve, for willingly trading slaves.
Anne: And of course, Naofumi, the man who has been specifically screwed over by this world and has every reason to hate all of it…changes his tune completely when he learns he can give a child a shock collar. Because it’s convenient. And we’re supposed to like him for it, or even to pity him, and to think it’s lucky he and Raphtalia found each other. Because he bought her and has a mystic shock collar on her.
All Three: FUCK. THIS. FRANCHISE.
I HATE YOU SHIELD GUY: 104
PROPERTY OF COP-OUT: 50
Leliel: [Slowly gets up] Ugh…as you can imagine, this thing deserves a spitefic…but later. It was a hell of a couple weeks even beyond this shit…
Wanderer2691: True dat. Join us next time, as our alleged hero buys a slave, treats her as a weapon, said slave develops romanticized Stockholm Syndrome and hopefully we actually manage to avoid getting so bogged down we cover the first Wave!
