Review of The Rising of the Shield Hero

Shield Hero tries to convince its audience that it is definitely not going to be your standard isekai while simultaneously being one of the most generic isekais. It does this by truly being surprising and good for exactly the first four episodes before descending into a overall bad isekai fantasy adventure. The first four episodes are good. Having an isekai protaganist who is not able to attack and is betrayed by his party member are pretty novel concepts for an isekai. I thought the scene where he went to the slave market was very good, since it was both shocking and perfectly natural that he wouldturn to a slave as someone who wouldn't betray him. Having him use creative ways to deal damage to enemies in the wave (setting the tower on fire) and against Montoyasu during the duel was also interesting.

Unfortunately after this the anime completely goes off the deep end for various reasons.

-Raphtalia. Within the timespan of one week Raphtalia's entire appearance and personality change. They explain her appearance change as demihumans "aging as they level", until they look around 18. It is extremely obvious this entire rule was created solely so Raphtalia can start off as a loli and then transition into a waifu love interest, and is destroys so much immersion in the world because of how stupid it is that a core aspect of an entire race was created so that Raphtalia could be a waifu. Her personality change is entirely glossed over, how did someone who has been living as a slave for so long suddenly change that much in one week? Also, their relationship is definitely father-daughter, please don't be his love interest. And I'm not sure what the author reasoning was for having Raphtalia become a slave again after she is freed by Montayasu. Raphtalia explains it as she wants to show her devotion by being a slave, but my theory is the author has a thing for having a party of slave girls who love him and can't disobey him.

Raphtalia also promisingly starts out as Naofumi's "sword". It is interesting and works really well for the first few episodes, until the show completely breaks the rules set it up in the first few episodes where the shield cant attack. Because of this, Naofumi completely takes over in every single battle in both offense and defense since he can now shoot dogs, gas, another abilities out of his shield to attack, relegating Raphtalia to uselessness. This is probably my biggest problem with this anime. It set itself up well, but it feels like it just couldn't help but deteriorate into a bad isekai.

-Overpowered Isekai MC. Like explained above, the anime completely breaks it's own rules of having the shield hero not able to attack pretty early on, turning Naofumi from someone interesting to another OP MC. Having an OP isekai MC isn't a bad thing in itself, but it doesn't work in this show because of how hard it constantly tries to convince us the Naofumi isn't actually the most overpowered character in the entire series when he is. From as early as episode 5, where he wins the race with Filo for no other explanation other than he is the main character. In battle he's carrying a weapon that allows him to take no damage and also attack, so I'm not sure who is being convinced that he is not OP.

-Boring world. This fantasy world is as generic as it gets, and the places they visit are as well. They go to generic village one and heal their sick, then to generic village 2, etc. They don't really solve the problems in any noteworthy or interesting way either. They are trying to show the shield hero is the hero of the people, but these episodes feel like filler and are full of forgettable characters. The show tries to make a point the Naofumi picks up after the other heroes' mistakes, but the manner he does so is too uninteresting to have any merit. I think in one of them he just pours acid on a plant to save the day.

-Characters. Outside of the main party, the other heroes behaves in such unbelievably stupid ways that they might as well be rocks. For most of the show they believe circular reasoning like the shield hero is using his brainwashing shield to try to make you trust him. I think it's unbelievable that these guys were also summoned to this world like Naofumi, but just blindly trust people they met only a few days ago without question just because they are this world's royalty. They are set up well in the first few scenes of the anime where they actually question those who had summoned them into the world, but for some reason by episode 3 they randomly turn into complete morons who believe everything they're told. I believe the author did this so that when the only intelligent character, the queen, is able to return to she show from the plot contrivance she had been sent to do, it is supposed to be satisfying when they believe Naofumi. It does work in a way, but is also a cheap trick that forces us to suffer about 20 episodes of completely illogical and terrible character writing.

-Misc. Nothing in this anime shows any care for the world or characters. For instance, at one point Naofumi doesn't want Malty and the King to be executed (because killing is wrong!), even though in the last episode he killed the pope using the most gruesome method imaginable.

There is a sign outside the tavern they always go to that says "No Demihumans Allowed". But Raphtalia eats there for basically her entire life with no consequence. I guess they forgot about it? In fact, there are only 3 characters in the entire show who even participate in the supposed discrimination against demihumans. There is Malty who is shown to be the worst person imaginable, the lord who literally enslaves demihumans and keeps them in a basement, and some drunk soldier at the end that everyone thinks something off about. Basically, for saying demihumans are discriminated against, the show does a terrible job to convince us of that. Maybe it would have been interesting if in any of the generic villages they went to someone discriminated against demihumans, but this isn't the case because the world lacks any consistency.

I will stop here since this is getting long. The more you look into this show and its characters the more inconsistent and nonsense they turn out to be. I'm not sure why its rated so high, maybe this show convinced people from the first four episodes, but I'm not sure how they can explain everything that comes after.