The Rising of the Shield Hero, Volume 10

By: Aneko Yusagi

Narrated by: Shea Taylor

Finishing the battle with Kyo, Naofumi and his friends return safely to their world. The queen of Melromarc wishes to reward Naofumi for saving the world from the Spirit Tortoise.

"Then can I have my own land?"

After thinking about what he could do for his friend and partner, Raphtalia, Naofumi decides the best thing for their future would be the establishment of their own settlement–and he decides to build it on the ruins of Raphtalia's old hometown! The start of a whole new chapter in our hero's life begins here, in volume ten of this otherworld revenge fantasy!

©2017 One Peace Books (P)2024 One Peace Books

performance

I didn't like shea Taylor's narration. he didn't really put in a lot of feeling in his reading of the characters to me. rather have Kurt kanazawa or Matthew bridges doing the narration for the rise of the shield hero

Story is Good, But Say It With Me, KA-TA-NA

So I stand by my opinion that Kurt Kanazawa was the absolute worst narrator when this series first started and that Matthew Bridges was a slight improvement when he took over, but still had his shortcomings. Shea Taylor is once again a slight improvement over both of them, but like the others before him, has his own quirks that pull you out of the story whenever they pop up. It makes me wonder, doesn't One Peace Books have an editor who listens to the recordings before giving the final approval to publish to the public?

For the first hour or so of this book, Shea Taylor talks like William Shatner's Captain Kirk from Star Trek, emphasizing and stressing words at weird moments while also having a kind of over-confident sounding bravado that's cringey and does not match up with Naofumi's character at all. But like I said, this only lasts for the first hour or so of the book and then he starts to talk normally. Beyond this, my major complaint is that he pronounces certain names and words weirdly (mainly Japanese words), which can take you out of the story when he does. The word he pronounces the worst to me is katana (he pronounces it kut-oh-nuh/kut-uh-nuh) and it's super grating and immediately pulls me out of the story whenever he says it. Another example is him pronouncing Sadina's name as Saw-dih-nuh instead of Sa-dee-na. This issue could have been resolved if whomever reviews/edits the recordings brought it up to the narrator and had him re-record the certain lines/paragraphs, calling attention to his weird pronunciations, having him correct them and thus resolving the issue.

BUT, other than his pronunciation issues, Shea Taylor does a surprisingly great job out of all the previous narrators when it comes to voicing other characters. He actually puts in the effort to make the characters sound distinct and like they should (unlike Kurt Kanazawa's absolutely HORRENDOUS attempt at voicing female characters and Matthew Bridges getting the tones of many of the characters flat out wrong; like making the weapons shop owner sound like a feeble and decrepit old man when he's only in his 40's etc...). He does a particularly awesome job at voicing Sadina/Nadia, Murder Pierrot and Filo (though he could tone it down a bit with Filo as it does become obnoxious sometimes).

Story-wise, it progresses along very well in this volume with the premise being Naofumi is awarded land for defeating the Spirit Turtle. Naofumi requests the be lord over the site of Raphtalia's former home village Lurolona. He wants to rebuild her village, but realizes he will need residents to make that happen. He decides he will buy all of the slaves who were former inhabitants of the village, but soon finds out that because of the rumor that the slaves from Lurolona are able to become super powerful (like the one who belongs to the Shield Hero aka Raphtalia), the price for Lurolona slaves has risen exponentially. Now, Naofumi has to figure out a way to earn enough money to buy them all. He travels to Zeltoble, where he learns of an underground fighting tournament where he can possibly earn the money he needs. We get introduced to the country of Zeltoble, the coliseum and a few new characters.

Overall this volume has good pacing with enough action to keep the story moving along nicely. The intro/recap isn't extremely long for once (honestly, the 30+ minute recaps at the beginning of each volume are really unnecessary. If you've reached to up volume 10, I'm pretty sure you don't need an intro to who Naofumi, Raphtalia or Filo are). Overall, I give this volume a 7.5/10, only deducting a point because of Shea Taylor's narration quirks.

Time to enter the Tournament in Zeltoble

I appreciate the narrator that did well with the characters such as Naofumi who had been great and consistent, with his personality at least with last two narrators throughout audiobook series of The Rising of the Shield Hero. Raphtalia had been solid her personality that she is overbearing, strict, and sincere to her character. Filo personality had been boisterous, energetic, and obnoxious at times. Sadeena is flirtatious, sweet, and mischievous that is true the character. Murder Pierrot had been soft-spoken, whimsical, and bit mysterious that voice often distorts which is interesting detail. Overall this narrator had done his research with the characters that been well been done. I grateful for the narrator performing and his time doing this audiobook thank you.

After returning from the world of Kinzuna and hard earned victory against Kyo which finally avenged Ost the Spirit Tortoise that returned to the world of Naofumi and his party originally came from. Thinking that they would have a break after taking of Kyo, just have more oppressing matters. Such as coming of the Four Beast Guardians and Wave of Disaster to prepare for and must recuperate and regain their levels once more. It been two weeks since they had been gone and return the Melromarc to report to the Queen. Things had been bad enough the three heroes had disappeared especially that psycho redhead nowhere to found.
Naofumi is exasperated with this report there no telling what disaster them roaming about. Must return to see how the restoration of Lurolona where Raphtalia was from before it demolished by the waves of disaster. Eclair who been governing while the absences of Naofumi and his party, The progress had been slow finding the original habitats of the villagers that Naofumi will need go buy the slaves back from Slave Merchant. Also with Raphtalia help to identifying because of the reputation of the Naofumi and his party of defeat the Spirit Tortoise had skyrocket the market demand of the original villagers of Lurolona. This was going be pain finding out expense it was going to be. Coliseum Tournament was the most effiect way to get money fast to obtain the Slaves of Lurolona villagers. Little to know he would be facing dangers of strong enemies and also facing the one strongest Nadia.

An improvement for the narrator,

This is a rough part of the story to adapt from everything that I understand, but I swear we literally just got out of the frying pan into the fire when it comes to narrators. The first guy that you had was absolutely terrible, literally the worst narrator for any audiobook I’ve ever listened to. This new guy is currently the second worst. Still has very weird pronunciations for words, stressing things in very awkward places, mispronounces Japanese words that are normal in the English language such as katana and overall still has a very similar cadence to the first guy. The voice is less grating, so that’s a step up, but not so much so that I really will need to give the performance more than two stars. If the next book doesn’t get any better, I’ll probably give you giving the performance one star for that one.

It really feels like y’all just use the first take on recording and don’t bother asking for redo for pronunciation and just send it.

Edit: i’ve made my way much further along in the book and the performance does get better as the book goes on. That being said there are still some weird archaic pronunciations for some words and it feels really out of place but otherwise the performance is a much smoother delivery than the previous narrator. I was planning on not buying these audiobooks anymore if this narrator was just as bad as the previous one, but I’ll be honest that there was a marked improvement and I really hope that they don’t bring the other guy back again. He was genuinely terrible. I really hope that he never narrates another audiobook again. I can be fairly critical while still admitting that I may not be able to do a better job myself on many different topics, but I honestly think I could do a better performance of book one through nine with zero training and zero skill. If it wasn’t for copyright reasons, I’d probably go out and buy the books to record them and upload it to YouTube specifically because I do think I could do a better job than the previous aside from some bizarre pronunciations of words with the new guy, I don’t think I could do a better job and I am willing to get the next book contingent upon Shea being the narrator again. It would be nice if y’all did more than one take and provided feedback about his pronunciation. He puts a weird emphasis on the word katana and it sounds very unnatural and it’s a very archaic pronunciation. That’s not at all how even modern Japanese pronounces it, let alone how it’s been englicized

Edit: after having a little time to sit and think about this, this narrator did a significantly better job and despite some bizarre pronunciations, overall managed to capture the characters far better and portray the story more accurately