But the uninitiated may not have heard how cloudy with a chance of meatballs is a prequel to rising of the shield hero:

The anime “rising of the shield hero” is a sequel to “cloudy with a chance of meatballs”

I saw “batbirds” in the finale, and started thinking about how this frankly ridiculous assertion fits uncannily well. I know this sounds retarded but hear me out, at least you’ll probably find this decently funny.

For those who don’t know, Cloudy with a chance of meatballs is a 1978 children’s book, which was adapted into an animated movie in 2009, and followed by a sequel. I’ll be referring to the movies instead of the book because the movies are full of “mindless padding”, aka extremely valuable evidence. In these movies, the protagonist, a “Flint Lockwood”, invents a machine (called the FLDSMDFR) which turns water into food. The machine eventually goes haywire and becomes the eye of a deadly food-storm which threatens to destroy the world, but they shut it down in the nick of time. Afterwards they abandon the now-inhospitable island town where the machine originated, and later, in the sequel, they return to find a vibrant ecosystem of sentient food animals.

Rising of the shield hero is an anime which released from 2018 to 2019. It’s an “isekai”, which is basically an entire genre of animes that follow the story of someone being somehow transported to an MMO-based fantasy kingdom, usually for the sake of an escapist power fantasy for the losers who watch it, but that’s a rant for another day. The only thing that sets this one apart from the cookie-cutter formula is that our protagonist, Naufumi, got transported along with 3 useless idiots to be the “4 cardinal heroes” instead of going alone, and there’s some bitch (which is her actual legal name by the end of it) trying to get everyone to hate him. Also he can only fight with the magical shield of game mechanics that’s permanently attached to him from the moment he shows up.

I propose that the universe in which Rising of the Shield Hero takes place is one where Flint Lockwood fails to stop the machine, and the food spreads to overrun the world, with the events of the anime occurring long enough after the food-pocalypse for the origin of it all to be lost to time.

Before I go any further, it’s important to point out that Lockwood’s machine is advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic; even the original function of turning water into food defies the laws of physics, let alone being able to create sentient life. Thus, it can be reasonably assumed that within the Cloudy with a chance of meatballs canon, the machine effectively possesses unlimited power, especially given time to develop (since that’s how food became life in the second movie in the first place). The Lockwood machine is basically god; there are no demonstrated limits of any kind to what it is capable of doing, and its motives (if it’s even conscious) are incomprehensible. Therefore, it is absolutely plausible that this machine would be able to access different dimensions in order to summon the cardinal heroes, as well as the heroes of the other world. Furthermore, the “magic” used extensively in shield hero can be reasonably assumed to be harnessing the machine’s power; after living in the new world for millennia, it’s completely plausible that what’s left of mankind would eventually figure out how to harness the immense power of the machine, which flows out to everything it has created (because how the fuck else could it make a strawberry that walks and talks).

As for the natural environment of shield hero, there are demi-humans which could easily be evolutions/mutations of humans, and most of the monsters could easily be evolutions/mutations of earth’s animals, all either influenced or directly created by the FLDSMDFR. The less-animalistic monsters (the “balloons” come to mind) actually make a lot of sense as being mutations or evolutions of the machine’s original sapient food; probably the balloons were once peas or something along those lines.

Going into further and specific detail, the machine is shown to gradually grow bigger and more developed foods as it gains power, which is quite similar to how Raphtalia , the main companion and love interest, Physically ages to adulthood as she “levels up”. (weird, I know, I didn’t make up any of this filth I’m just here to overanalyze it).

The first movie shows rotisserie chickens which walk and attack, and when a character (who is himself a “big baby” manchild) stuffs himself into one he finds he’s able to control it, an event which, as a whole, parallels the existence of the “filo”, the second addition to Naufumi’s party who is an oversized bird which can transform into – and possesses the intelligence of – a little girl, because anime.

As mentioned earlier, the “seagulls” seen in the show’s finale have bat fingers, and thus are best described as “batbirds”, which are themselves one of Lockwood’s inventions made before his infamous machine.

The very waves of catastrophe (the thing that drives the entire plot as being what the heroes need to stop) themselves resemble the FLDSMDFR’s “food storm” in general appearance, and in the fact that they are both identified by raining biomass-either in the form of foods or living creatures (which the machine is also demonstrated to be capable of creating).

Furthermore, it is repeatedly shown that Naufumi sees all of the magic attributes and shields and etc. through a HUD basically identical to that of an MMORPG game. If the “magic” in the shield hero universe is simply a force of nature, there’s no reason for it to have such a clear and concise GUI, however if it is artificial (that is, the product of the Lockwood machine), then it would be expected to present information about itself clearly on-screen in a manner similar to a computer game.

Looking deeper, the similarities extend past factual details to the actual themes involved:

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs is a story about a genius rejected by society whose inventions are considered worthless by his peers. He eventually finds he has to go out and save the world with the people who once laughed at him, which wind up being bumbling idiots when it counts, leaving him to use his unique abilities to stop the machine and save everyone. Along the way he hooks up with a girl who’s also ostracized by society, who winds up being a great help in the final fight.

Shield Hero is a story about a powerhouse rejected by society whose shield is considered worthless by his peers. He eventually realizes that it’s up to him to save the world by teaming up with the people who once laughed at him, who wind up being useless assholes when it counts, leaving him to use his unique abilities to stop the wave and save everyone. Along the way he hooks up with a girl who’s also ostracized by society, who winds up being a great help in the final fight.

Additionally, credit to some guy on reddit who actually read the Light Novel shield hero is based on, in the LN the shield hero encounters a monster called an “Eggug” which is literally just an animate egg, and he absorbs the shell to gain a cooking skill. That alone is too direct of a parallel to ignore, but it goes further than an Easter egg (haha); over the course of his journey the shield hero encounters more food-themed monsters, and gains more cooking skills. He then proceeds to make use of his cooking abilities to the point where people start calling him the cooking hero, which of course raises the question of why? Why would the legendary hero and his legendary weapon have so many skills and abilities related to cooking? What importance could cooking possibly have for the magical power of the legendary weapons? The logical explanation is that cooking is so significant because that is the original intended purpose of the Lockwood machine which forged the fantastical world, and so making outstanding use of the “magical” forces originating from the machine is intertwined with mastery of using that force for its original intended function.

That is all, thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Also Shield hero was announced to have a season 2 and 3 coming up, which basically never happens in anime, so clearly the anime industry recognizes the genius that I’ve unearthed.

Star Wars counts as an isekai anime because it’s a sequel to the isekai anime rising of the shield hero

Star Wars May be a part of the CWACOMCU, this part inspired by the realization that both the clone army and Raphtalia are 10 years old but have adult bodies.

This of course raises the question of which adult 10-year-old came first, and, when you consider Star Wars as a distant sequel to shield hero, after civilization had advanced far past the pseudo-medieval stage and into the stars, a lot of things about star wars start to make vastly more sense. Wildlife is extremely dangerous, even to an extremely advanced interstellar civilization, because the native fauna are actually related to the RPG-esque monsters of shield hero. Primitive weapons (like those used by the ewoks), and pseudo-primitive weapons (like those used by the wookiees and the gungans) are able to stand up to advanced mechanized forces for the same reason that guns in shield hero are no more powerful than bows. AI, despite being advanced enough that biological workers and soldiers should be useless, is held back because the power of the FLDSMDFR that flows through all biological life is absent for them. Most of the aliens are very similar to humans for the same reason demi-humans are; they evolved (or were forcibly mutated) out of the same base organism. This even provides an answer to the elusive question of stormtrooper aim; they suck because they’re simply low-level. The detail of Rey’s food ration expanding with water in episode 7 also supports this.

Naturally, this would have to mean that “the force” is the power of the FLDSMDFR, diluted by vast distances of space and time into something far less tangible than shield hero, but still omnipresent and powerful. This also raises the question of any relation between Bitch and the Sith, or even Raphtalia and the jedi (especially miko outfit Raphtalia, considering that the jedi order was themed after the samurai).

The main glaring problem here, though, would have to be that Star Wars is set “a long time ago, in a galaxy far away”. This would have to mean that the very similar earth that flint lockwood built the FLDSMDFR from actually once existed somewhere out in the cosmos: perhaps all life in the universe is fated to develop the way we have? Or, the FLDSMDFR could have brought the entire earth across vast distances of space and time before they grew into the star wars galaxy. Or, the “big crunch” hypothesis is true, and the events of cloudy with a chance of meatballs and shield hero and star wars all occurred a whole cycle of universal expansion and contraction before we existed. Perhaps the “multiverse” in shield hero is separated not by dimension, but merely by vast quantities of time between cycle after cycle of a similar earth coming into being.

With this, mankind draws ever closer to battle droid isekai.

Also, matpat made a theory that the Force in Star Wars is scientifically accurate, which would likely mean that by proxy, the power of the FLDSMDFR (which is what the force is) is scientifically accurate as well. Could this be the prophecy for a real-life FLDSMDFR? Are religions referring to a real food-pocalypse when they mention a day of reckoning? And more importantly, could we eventually see the mandalorian (or really anyone in star wars) delving into the depths of coruscant in search of the source of the force: the FLDSDMFR?