Trivia / The Rising of the Shield Hero

• Adapted Out: A couple key story arcs from the web novel centering on the Ren, Itsuki, and Motoyasu's development as well as their party members were not put into the light novel series.
  • During the Cal Mira Islands Arc, the Queen ordered the Heroes to swap party members with each other to get a better sense of unity amongst everyone. This gave some background to mostly Ren and Itsuki's party members given their interactions with Naofumi instead of having their habits mentioned once and then never brought up again.
  • During the hunt for Itsuki, Malty leads a rebellion with the remnants of the Three Heroes Church, using technology and drugs she learned to use in Faubley to trigger Itsuki into activating his Cursed Series and uses the same drugs to poison and brainwash the inhabitants of Naofumi's lands. This gave Rishia and Raphtalia time to shine with their new fighting skills, Ren and Motoyasu a chance to fight and get over the more negative effects of their Curse Series, have Malty show off some planning skills, and start Aultcray's path into returning to his position as the Staff Hero.
  • While comical, Naofumi unlocks a Curse Series based on a new set of the Seven Deadly Sins and turns him into a Mad Scientist. This causes the other three heroes to team up with the rest of Naofumi's villagers that did not side with the Shield Hero in order to save Naofumi from himself in return for him saving them. On the flip side, many of the demi-humans ended up with power-ups that proved to be beneficial in later fights that they could not have unlocked otherwise.
• Creator Backlash: Faye Mata liked working on the English dub as the voice of Malty, but she admitted the character was her toughest role to this day, and expressed concern that people would forever see her as the character despite being nothing like her. She did however clarify that she enjoyed being able to play the character.
• Creator Couple: In the English dub, Katelyn Gault voiced Mirelia Q. Melromarc and her husband Kyle McCarley was the ADR writer.
• Creator's Pest: Among the detractors of Malty/Myne is her own English voice actress, Faye Mata, who shares the fandom's hatred for the character.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Kiel, a female Demi-Human, is voiced by the male Emilio Rafael Treviño.
• Follow the Leader: Following the web novel's premiere, several other web novels such as Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest copied the starting premise: multiple characters in an isekai, with the protagonist being the weakest and betrayed as a result.
• I Am Not Spock: Malty's English voice actress, Faye Mata, has found herself needing to go uncredited for most of her later appearances due to harassment from overzealous fans acting as if she's truly as despicable as the character she plays.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Everyone from the 2017 drama CD was recast for the anime, which was released three years later. For example, Naofumi, voiced by Tatsuhisa Suzuki in the drama CD, is now voiced by Kaito Ishikawa.
  • Billy Kametz was unable to reprise his role as Naofumi for the second season's English dub due to his colon cancer diagnosis; he died in June 2022. The role was recast with Stephen Fu, who has been continuing to voice him ever since.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Sarah Emi Bridcutt, who has often played heroic characters, plays Malty both in the anime and on stage. Same with Faye Mata who is known for voicing characters such as Astolfo and Aqua.
  • In the dub, Sean Chiplock voices Kyo Ethnina, a Mad Scientist who gleefully rubs salts in the wound and lets out evil laughs very unlike his roles as Subaru Natsuki and Rean Schwarzer.
• Role Reprise: Sarah Emi Bridcutt reprises her anime role as Malty/Myne for the stage adaptation.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Word of God is that chapter 356 was originally the ending of the story. Large numbers of fan complaints changed that.
  • The English dub was supposed to premiere on Funimation the same day the anime was broadcasted in Japan, but it took over a month to be released due to unknown reasons. The English dub did premiere on Crunchyroll on the same day as in Japan until episode 16, when a week was skipped and episodes 17 and 18 were released at the same time with no explanation. Starting with episode 19 the dub was delayed two weeks also with no explanation.

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