Review of The Rising of the Shield Hero

somewhat spoilers but nothing too big. Cons: Terrible character development. Their stories are very well done. However their development is where they lack. They get stronger physically which is great, but they don't truly develop at all after the first few episodes. Raftalia, becomes a very capable sword fighter after overcoming her natural cowardice. Bad news is that she still believes in peace being the only option and will never kill even if it means saving other lives. She is constantly hesitating against defeating villains and hence she has not actually developed out of her initial state. Theworst event was when she actually allowed herself to be defeated by an untrained nobleman armed with a whip and sword. She won only by luck and lost when she spared him...I would not have been surprised had we lost a primary character in that episode.

Too many characters are brain dead:
The 2nd princess is oblivious of the fact of how much hatred the court and her family holds, She blindingly allows herself to be nearly assassinated on a couple of occasions.

Naofumi: not as many faults but he is constantly admitting defeat and tends to believe the people he hates most, at one point he wanted to abandon the ones closest to him and ignore everything they tried to tell him; ironically doing the exact same thing the kingdom did to him. He blames himself too often and also will accept any claim made against him. One instance is when he was accused of not wanting to try to work with others when he had actually done it a few times the least in the beginning and also on the 1st wave. He, like many other characters will occasionally not stand up for himself and he has been called out for that in the story.

The kingdom is naturally evil, they are a great villain and it really made me genuinely angry--they did their job well.

Spear, Bow, Sword hero: these men aren't too terribly bad but they have already made it clear that they will never listen to others outside of their party and kingdom. They do not have as many flaws because they also don't have much development. Also they are immature high schools while the shield hero is a college student, so their stupidity may be forgiven.

Filolian Queen: Has the same mentality as the 2nd princess and believes the kingdom has no evil and should be trusted. Though her motives are questionable, she believes in killing all four heroes is better than to spare and of the good heroes.

What I like about this anime:
Story is great.
Art is mediocre and the same as any other anime; I don't blame them since every time a studio does something different, they get a lot of hate from fans that can't comprehend something changing.

Naofumi also has one excellent scene where he finally gets a tiny shred of revenge; he insults the king and tells him to beg for the secret of becoming powerful. The King refuses.
I only wish he went further and had a similar reaction to red haired Malty
(https://shield-hero.fandom.com/wiki/Malty_S_Melromarc) this link shows you her name is also bitch--the anime is desperately in need of some adult language, blood, or name calling in general when you design character meant to take on this much hatred from the viewers. A moment of karma or justice is the final ingredient that never really showed up which would forced me to give a higher score.

He has done nothing to her except reinforce her claims against the shield hero. He should at least irritate her by referencing her "rape" or call her out for making the other three heroes her minions. Hell, call her a whore. spread rumors about the king being the mad fool. Do something to quench my anger for these great villains you created. Give the viewers some vengeance rather than leaving us dry.

The pope: Ironically designed as a villain yet turned out as a good guy in my eyes: he revealed the truth to anyone that refused to listen--as they were too faithful and blind to religion. Though it was through the fashion of the cliche of a villain explaining their evil plan, he nevertheless united the villains by providing an bigger 'Us vs. Them' scenario.

Overall still very enjoyable, but extra irritating sometimes on how stupid the characters are. The writer in charge of dialogue needs to have a little bit more wit when inputting the script. I enjoyed this anime quite a bit and would ultimately give it a 8.5 at most.... but this website doesn't allow non integer numbers. So I'll have to commit to inflating the score to make the average more fitting to my opinion.

edit: episode 21 is when it finally happens and my thoughts become true. Go figure, but it took far too long to finally happen.