Rising of the Shield Hero
The Rising of the Shield Hero starts off like any other Isekai anime (a genre where the main protagonist is transported to another world as a hero, or something like that). But as Naofumi Iwatani is transported to another world as the Shield Hero, one of the four cardinal heroes of legend he quickly realizes that the world that is supposed to depend on him for protection wants nothing more than for him to disappear. He is quickly outcast and forced to survive by any means necessary after being falsely accused of raping a party member. Throughout the first arc of the story Naofumi struggles to clear his name and protect the few people that he has come to care about in the new world.
Japanese manga has always been more interesting to me than western comic books. Western comic books tend to stick to having all of the content within panels, which in its own right can make for a very good story. But in manga they don’t rely on paneling as much. This gives manga a much more natural flow in my eyes compared to the rigidity of western comics. I feel like I’m watching a story unfold on the pages of a book when I’m reading manga, but I feel like I’m just reading a story of images when I’m reading a comic book. Shield Hero fits this flow very well while still having some semblance of paneling. There are pages where everything seems to bleed together, as well as pages where there is much more structure. This paired with the art style and the Japanese practices of portraying things like motion and impact are a big part of what draws me to them.
Now, I know this doesn’t really matter. But obviously:
— Spoilers Ahead —
This first panel is from chapter 27 of the manga. I found this page to be particularly striking art wise because it’s like you can feel the impact of the spear on the shield. The blurring of the lines around the spear in the first panel really shows that there is a tremendous amount of force being put behind it, and the lines meant to show the vibrations of the shield and Naofumi shaking help show just how powerful the impact is. One thing that I came to appreciate, especially after reading much of this manga, is the Japanese style of utilizing onomatopeias. I can’t read what it says at all, but my eyes weren’t drawn to the sound words as if they were meant to be the center of attention. Something that tends to happen whenever I’m reading comic books.
This next panel is from chapter 30. This page is a single image that is almost entirely black. Given the context of the story around this page. Where Naofumi uses a variation of his shield that feeds off of his rage against everything and everyone who has done wrong by him in the world (pretty average edgy anime trope). Given that and how the rage and self imposed loneliness threaten to consume him the full page panel works perfectly. The way that he is isolated in the center of a black panel shows how he thinks he’s all alone, the fact that he appears far away from the viewer only adds to this feeling. The blackness and the white smoke, tendril things coming in from the corners of the page create a threatening aura, almost like the darkness is reaching out to possess him.
This panel is only a couple pages after the previous one. And following the classic anime tropes this is a panel where the main protagonist (Naofumi) is being brought back from the darkness by the people they have grown close to, that have become true friends. The main part of this panel that I like so much is how the artist uses the background, a simple balck and white gradient, to amplify the meaning of each panel. In the first panel The ethereal glow behind Naofumi’s vision. How in the second panel it’s almost as if this is waking him up and chasing the darkness away. Seen in how it looks like the white in the background is chasing away the black. And in the final panel the pillar of white that goes between the two characters almost looks like a beam of light illuminating the darkness that had threatened to consume Naofumi.
