After hearing of a village in the East that’s being ravaged by an epidemic in The Rising of the Shield Hero Episode 8, Naofumi and his party head there to deliver medicine in order to help them out. We soon learned that the epidemic was caused by the corpse of a dragon that had been killed a month before and left there to rot. Naofumi’s party accepts a job request to clean the corpse and head to the mountains where it lies. This is when we see shit got down.
I kind of find it amusing that Naofumi is basically solving and fixing the mess that the other heroes are creating. I guess that’s going to be the theme going forward, so we can at least expect to finally learn what Itsuki has been up to in next weeks episode and what kind of damage he’s done ti the world. So anyways, I knew after that lighthearted episode from last week, we were gonna get some epic moments in Episode 8 and I was not disappointed. After seeing Filo die in front of him, Naofumi gives in to the hatred he’s been carrying in his heart and it manifested into something called a Curse shield.
It’s the first time his shield has been able to do actual damage, but in doing so he loses control over himself. Very typical anime trope that never gets old. On top of that, the damage that his Curse shield does to a person or monster cannot be healed by Naofumi. So when Rapthalia was burned by those flames, she became cursed and the wounds she received can’t even be healed with basic holy water. With this Curse shield coming into light, it makes you wonder just what exactly is a shield hero and can the same effect be found with the other heroes as well?
Also, in the first episode, everyone hated the Shield hero and thought of that class to be useless, but with how much potential this class has when it comes to protecting and healing, it kinda begs the question, what did the previous Shield Hero do to gain such an infamous reputation? Could it have something to do with the curse shield? I’m starting to think that might be the case. Maybe the previous Hero went through the same BS that Naofumi did, but unlike Naofumi, he lost his way and really went crazy on the kingdom. Just a theory.
We knew that Naofumi has been acting all negative and mean to push people away from him so that he doesn’t get hurt again, but in doing so, all he did was bottle up all that hatred and suffering and it ended up hurting himself those around him. If he learns how to harness that power, that would be awesome, but I get the feeling that once he finally learns to forgive and let go of his hatred for the world, that curse will disappear along with it. Besides, he made up his mind to
Overall, it was a great episode with a lot of context about the Shield. Looking forward to seeing the next episode.
