Character · Shield Hero
Naofumi Iwatani
Four heroes get summoned, three of them get weapons, and one gets a shield and a criminal record by morning.
In Otakana the clue reads: Summoned hero given only a shield
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Shield Hero
- Letters
- 7 · Hard
Naofumi Iwatani arrives in another world as the Shield Hero, holder of the one legendary weapon that cannot attack. That would be bad enough. On the first night the party member who volunteered to help him robs him, accuses him of assault, and the kingdom believes her immediately, which leaves him broke, hated and unable to hit anything back.
What follows is the reason the series stood out in a crowded genre. Nobody who wronged him offers an apology and he does not go looking for one. He buys a slave, a young demi-human girl named Raphtalia, because she is the only fighter he can afford, and the story is largely about that arrangement turning into something else as she grows up and starts arguing with him.
The shield turns out to be a strong build. It absorbs materials to unlock new forms, it makes him close to unkillable, and his anger feeds a version of it he cannot fully control. Aneko Yusagi posted the web novel from 2012, Media Factory printed it from 2013, and Kinema Citrus animated it in 2019 into an argument that has not stopped since.
Spelling NAOFUMI
NAOFUMI is seven letters and the game wants the given name rather than IWATANI. The AO near the front is two separate vowels, na-o, and not a diphthong, which is where English speakers slip and type NOAFUMI. Four vowels across seven tiles, so once the O and the U are placed the rest of the row falls quickly.