The Rising of the Shield Hero, Volume 1

By: Aneko Yusagi

Narrated by: Kurt Kanazawa

Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Naofumi Iwatani, an uncharismatic Otaku who spends his days on games and manga, suddenly finds himself summoned to a parallel universe! He discovers he is one of four heroes equipped with legendary weapons and tasked with saving the world from its prophesied destruction. As the Shield Hero, the weakest of the heroes, all is not as it seems. Naofumi is soon alone, penniless, and betrayed. With no one to turn to, and nowhere to run, he is left with only his shield. Now, Naofumi must rise to become the legendary Shield Hero and save the world!

©2015 One Peace Books (P)2021 One Peace Books

Great storyline limited by horrible narration

The storyline is exactly what fans of the anime want, but the narrator is just awful. They almost no range of voices, can't do any female voices, and displays no emotion depth.
Listen to only if your invested in the story

needs duo narrator

love the book great story and characters. I wish it had a female narrator for the female characters. it would have been a knock out.

Great Story... but

The narrator can not do a variety of realistic voices. As for the writing I don't think it portrayed the correct depth of rage for the audience to feel it; when the protagonist angry I want to feel empathetic anger, that's the sign of great storytelling.

Great story with the absolute worst female voices!

Its Shield Hero. It is amazing!! We finally have a chance to listen to the story in audiobook form!! This is a dream come true. Unfortunately, Ken Kanazawa's performance is really disappointing. There are a great number of performers who can do wonderful female voices but Mr. Kenazawa is not one of them. While most of the female voices he uses are barely passable, for Raphtalia the female lead, she sounds like a man doing a drag voice. Her voice is so jarring and forced it absolutely takes you out of the story and causes you to wince repeatedly. I had hoped against hope that once Raphtalia grew up her voice would change but nope! Her adult voice is exactly the same as her child voice. I can not overstate my horror and disappointment with this.

If this is the best we are going to get then I'll deal with it. I want to listen to every book in the Shield Hero story and will do so gladly. I can only hope that before the next installment gets recorded, Mr. Kanazawa does a little voice work before he records it. He really needs to fix his horrific rendition of Raphtalia's voice, or, even better, they need to find enough money to hire a woman to play her and Filo. I am actually only 85% of the way through the book right now. I am absolutely dreading what nightmarish things Mr. Kanazawa is going to do to Filo's voice. I have my tissues ready.

Great book and great story but a female voice actor is so very desperately needed.

7/12/21 EDIT: I have reached the end of the book. Thankfully, Raphtalia's voice did change right at the very end. It went from gob-awful to only barely listenable. An improvement to be sure. No Filo in book one but we are just about to meet her. Hopefully Mr. Kanazawa doesn't reuse Raphtalia's kid voice on Filo. Otherwise, there is going to be a lot of misery as a listener over the next 15 or so books.

Additionally, Mr. Kanazawa needs to watch Shield Hero before reading any more of the books. When Naofumi is so soul crushingly depressed his "other" shield activates I was really disappointed that Mr. Kanazawa didn't express those emotions clearly in his reading. He was using a neutral voice for that sequence. Really took all of the pain and emotion out of it.

Adding one star for Performance for a total of 3. I still hope One Piece Books gets a better performer or a woman to read the female parts going forward.

So Close!

The only real negative about this is any time the narrator tries to do a female voice. It took me out of the experience. I know I couldn’t do one myself so I don’t blame him for this at all. He’s great as Naofumi & Erhard the shopkeeper though. And I do enjoy his Naofumi much more then his dubbed counterpart.

Copy vertical’s genius approach to light novel audio books and do a version with a partial cast. Even if it’s only two people the experience with be a thousand fold better.

enjoyed it

love it hope they translate the other books and other light novels they will have faithful customer

To the future

I picked up this book for the express purpose of showing there is a market for light novels to be made into audio books.

I hope the narrator gets some more practice, the female line came out really rough.

Needs one more voice

Story is good and I will buy more IF they get a female to voice the parts of the girls. Right now they kind of sound like Ms Piggy

good light novel but terrible narrator

narrator cannot express emotions or do female voices. great story line just needs a better narrator

great story but needs something else

I have read the manga of this and have seen the anime and both I absolutely loved. this however felt flat compared to those two the narrator was great for male characters but when it came to portraying any female character young or adult I just didn't feel the narrator could get the voice to sound female enough. It needs a female voice actor for the female parts I think. Though that would cost them more money but I think for fans of this series and fans of any books that are in audio form that would just make the audio version of the book better and maybe get people to buy the books.

Please give us a female narrator too!

Great story, but narrator can't do female voices. Was honestly super painful and grating to hear his attempts, made me put down the book multiple times. I love the Shield Hero series, and I'm so happy they're being adapted like this, but the narration really ruined this experience. Given that future books are going to feature a lot of other major female characters, I desperately hope the producers listen to the feedback and get a female narrator to read those parts. Otherwise I definitely won't be able to listen to future parts as that Raphtalia book is like nails on a chalkboard. Otherwise the performance is pretty much OK, could definitely be more emotional with Naofumi at times, but it works well enough that I don't have any major complaints.

needs a female voice actor

love the story and the male voice actor is good but really can't pull off a good female's voice. this really takes you out of the story

Overhaul a great listen with just a few problems

It was a great story with an interesting world and characters, but the biggest problem was the narrator can't do female voices.

It was down right painful to listen to Raphtalia parts but other than the performance is generally good not the best as you don't really feel much emotion but otherwise a good listen.

Looking forward to hearing from the rest of the shield hero series.

Great Book, it's let down by Narrator

Feel in love with the anime, so need the book, great pace and details are amazing, sadly the Narrator, let it down,

its okay.

narrator really cannot do a girls voice and its really bad when he does

Overall very good

The narrator wasn't the best at points, but was still very enjoyable and suited the main character.

What a rollercoaster

I love the anime but felt like I was missing a lot of the story and wanted to Get the full story through the light novels, really enjoyed the audiobook until the female voices started. I was listening to it while driving on the highway and when the female characters entered I literally just wanted to run myself off the road and just end it. The giggles and crying and sobbing etc. Took a part of my soul but after an hour or two I got used to it. Pretty bummed it was such a short audiobook and that there’s only 2 volumes out so far.

great but unlistenable story

I actually had the light novel already, but enjoyed it so much that when I saw it on here I bought it anyway, as I've been loving the Overlord adaptation too. the delivery on this is just shocking though. lifeless monotone throughout. this is a story told through the eyes of a character who's a volcano of emotion in his mind despite what he tries to show outwardly and it sounds so full and flat, the "voices" of characters I found grating and couldn't get through a couple chapters. if there's not a narrator change up I won't be revisiting this series.

Great story, but needs a female VA

Kurt's performance was good, especially for the MC, however the female parts especially raphtallia and maine were very difficult to listen to. Looking forward to the next release though and will be purchasing it immediately either way

Love the anime, disappointed by the book

Really couldn't get on with the narration, very stilted in places, almost as though he was stumbling over the words.
I did find that there were a lot of phrases repeated, particularly in the last chapter. (This is possibly to do with the translation).
I struggled to finish it and if it was the same narrator, I don't think I could listen to any more of the series.