The Rising of the Shield Hero is a grim but popular isekai anime series that is due to return in the Spring 2022 anime season for another round of adventure. In some ways, Shield Hero is a fairly conventional fantasy anime series that checks off all the boxes, but it does find ways to refresh the ideas, conventions, and even cliches that it explores.
Not only did Shield Hero subvert the isekai harem concept with a more wholesome adventuring party for Naofumi, but Episode 23 of the first season also featured a token beach scene without resorting to worn-out cliches. Some anime series have a superficial approach to their beach episodes, but not Shield Hero. Here's how the series continued to set itself apart from its contemporaries.
Naofumi's Productive Adventure To Cal Mira's Beach In Shield Hero
Late in Shield Hero's first season, the hero Iwatani Naofumi got his name cleared at last in the Melromarc royal court. This meant he got invited along for an XP-grinding vacation to the pleasant Cal Mira archipelago with the other Cardinal Heroes and their allies. Naofumi was overdue for a change of scenery by now, and Shield Hero smartly blended the well-worn "beach episode" concept with a bonus adventure filled with action, adventure, and even a few new characters, namely L'Arc and his ally Therese. The Cal Mira archipelago had a pleasant Pacific vibe, complete with a tourist-friendly coastal town and sunny beaches, and Naofumi's party made the most of it.
During this story sequence, Shield Hero allowed Naofumi to catch up to the other three heroes and share what he knew with them. It gave the beach sequence a sense of purpose and progress. Best of all, there was a plot twist in store for the heroes. Not long after Naofumi, Filo and the tanuki-girl Raphtalia arrived at the beach in their swimwear, Filo mentioned an underwater temple, so the group dove under the waves to check it out. Inside the abandoned temple, Naofumi discovered another dragon hourglass counting down to the next Wave, with barely 48 hours remaining until the next wave. This led to an exciting battle scene on the open sea near the archipelago, with the Cardinal Heroes, the queen, and a few galleons battling the aquatic Wave to conclude the season on a high note. All this gave Shield Hero's beach sequence a great deal of relevance to the plot, rather than feeling like an obligatory detour, and that makes all the difference.
How Other Anime Series Handle Their Beach Episodes
It's a running joke in the anime community that every anime series, no matter its tone or genre, has a token beach episode, and that's not far from the truth. Many slice-of-life series taking place in Japan, have a beach episode, such as Don't Toy With Me, Ms. Nagatoro!. They also appear in more action-oriented series such as My Hero Academia or even DARLING in the FRANXX, both of which have their own beach episodes, not to mention countless rom-com anime series. The question isn't whether a certain genre has the right context for a beach episode -- the question is whether the episode contributes to the plot and feels like an organic part of the story, rather than an obligatory side quest. That can give Shield Hero's own beach episode some context.
An example of beach episodes done wrong is the token beach sequence in My Hero Academia season 5, featuring Ochaco, Tsuyu, Nejire, and Sirius filling an uneventful afternoon at the beach just because they could, and the entire scene was widely recognized as the filler that it was. In fact, the entire episode was filler, but at least some of it served as an on-ramp to the World Heroes' Mission movie, while the beach sequence stuck out for being totally unnecessary.
Slice-of-life and rom-com anime series make moderate use of beach episodes, such as My Senpai is Annoying and Nisekoi, advancing character relationships and personal arcs by token amounts at a sunny beach. The character progression could have happened in any setting, but at the beach, characters may feel relaxed and uninhibited, which can help them open up and move the plot along. Still, some series might go too far out of their way to visit the beach just because they can.
In that context, Shield Hero's own beach scene stands out as one of anime's best in recent years, since it spent little to no time on gratuitous fan service or beach cliches such as burying someone up to their neck or playing beach volleyball. Instead, Shield Hero's beach sequence e soon became a fresh and exciting battlefield for the next Wave, and the good times lasted just long enough to give Naofumi a much-needed break before diving back into the action. More anime series could stand to follow this example.
