Review of The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 3

With this installment, Shield Hero definitively proves an axiomatic fact of life. People are visual creatures and they like to look at things and people that are nice to look at. For as much as people have attempted to ferociously fight me on this point and call me shallow, superficial, and all manner of other, uh, more colorful epithets over the years, this settles the matter unequivocally. In the words of DigiBro, “aesthetic is narrative”. Opinions on season 3 run the gamut from good to bad. Some think it’s great. Some think it’s good. Some think it’s alright. Some think it’s still boring. Some think it’spretty bad. Regardless, there is one thing everyone seems to unanimously agree on:

It’s orders of magnitude better than season 2.

Season 2 is unanimously considered to be far and away the worst installment in the franchise – and rightly so. This reveals the aforementioned unspoken truth.

Look, we’re all adults here. Let’s speak plainly. Shield Hero is many things, but it has never been a show you could ever accuse of looking good. Season 1 looked just about as middle-of-the-road for the genre as they come. It certainly didn’t look bad, but it never looked good. There’s not a single sakuga scene in the entirety of season 1 I thought was worth rewinding to rewatch. It was well below the standard of visual presentation one had come to expect from the studio behind it.

Kinema Citrus is a Bones off-shoot, so one would naturally expect good things from them – perhaps not Sword of the Stranger good, but good nonetheless. In actual fact, they had already released Made in Abyss two years prior. As such, compared to their other work, the lackluster presentation of Shield Hero was legitimately bizarre.

Then both the animation and artwork fell off a cliff in season 2. The kindest way I can possibly put it is that the show looked like catshit wrapped in dogshit deep friend in bullshit. It just looked awful. MAL lists it as a collaborative effort between Kinema Citrus and DR Movie. DR Movie is a Korean studio that, on occasion, works with Japanese studios on garden variety anime titles. Best I can figure is that Kinema Citrus couldn’t be asked, didn’t have anything materially to do with the production of season 2, and just outsourced the whole thing to the Koreans, because the sequel was a visual disaster of incredulous proportions. My hypothesis is further strengthened by the revelation of the third season.

Let me be quite clear here. The anime has never looked as good as it does right now – ever. The qualitative jump in visual presentation is so significant, that I thought, for a moment, that I was watching a theatrical release. If you’d told me that this is Shield Hero: The Movie, I would have believed you. I could legitimately not believe how over-the-top the animation is in the intro scene, only to then be treated to the opening, which is a no-holds-barred spectacle that I was absolutely not prepared for. The OP is so impressive, lively animated, colorful, and busy, that I had to rewatch it at 40% speed to be able to catch all of the frames and details. It’s just that good. My next suspicion was that the visual presentation of the OP and intro scene is bait, and before long, we’ll go back to, at best, the standard of season 1, at worst, season 2. I was pleasantly surprised (and somewhat dumbfounded, if I do say so myself) to find that that is not the case at all. Sure enough, the animation obviously mellows out somewhat, but it never gets to be any less than very good – excellent at best! It genuinely feels like you are watching a different show made by a different studio, which, I mean, not for nothing, but if my theory about season 2 is correct, it technically was.

This is the sum total of reasons why season 3 has enjoyed such a wildly better reception than season 2. The anime just looks really, really, really good, better than it ever has. This is the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and I’m not saying this rhetorically. I mean this to make a very deliberate point.

All visual media is visual, but how do I put this, anime is visual media that is extra visual. It’s visual media on steroids. It is visual media that puts visuals on top of your visual media so that you can enjoy your visuals while enjoying your visual media. Nobody watches anime just for the plot. You watch it because you like its particular look. Much as we’re liable to tell ourselves that we’ve successfully made anime become ‘mainstream’ – whatever the hell that means – simply because you’re no longer getting your head shoved into a toilet for liking Naruto, or because it’s not an instant turn-off to women anymore, let’s be real. It is still an extremely niche hobby in the West. As such, unless you have a very specific taste for this specific cartoon aesthetic, you would simply not be here. You would be enjoying literally any other form of entertainment media. As such, the way a show looks and moves makes that much more of a world of difference in the way it is received and enjoyed. There’s a reason the phrase “easy on the eyes” exists. This is it right here.

If you were to look at the plot objectively, you would necessarily come to the inescapable conclusion that season 2 is the strongest and most significant entry in the series. This is not up for debate. It’s not even close. I’m serious. Really think about this before you tell me I’m full of shit.

What’s the A plot of season 1? Dudes get summoned, hang out, bicker, mope, grind some levels, fight 3 Waves. That’s it. You think I’m being too reductive? Fine. Dudes get summoned, hang out, bicker, mope, we get introduced to the main heroine and 1 or 2 other party members, grind some levels, fight 3 Waves. That’s it. That is honest-to-God all that happens for 24 whole ass episodes. And yes, you have a B plot about some bitch who falsely accuses the protagonist of rape and you have a C plot about some religious leader, but honestly, who fucking cares? Easily the most interesting thing to happen in season 1, insofar as worldbuilding is concerned, is the revelation that there is at least 1 other fantasy world out there, Glass’ world, who is also threatened by the Waves, and similar to how Raphtalia’s world has Cardinal Heroes, this other world has Vassal Heroes. Neat.

Now let’s talk about season 2. Right off the bat you learn that the world has 4 giant kaijus of apocalyptic power called Guardian Beasts and one of them has awakened for mysterious reasons and is threatening to end the world. You get to learn about a number of nations from Raphtalia’s world and see their military forces form an allied army to engage the kaiju. There’s a giant battle where thousands of soldiers die, mountains are blown up, whole battlefields wiped out. Our protagonists find out that the kaiju was being mind-controlled by an evil Vassal Hero from Glass’ world. Our main party decides to invade the other world in order to pursue him. Once there, you find out that Vassal Heroes are not the equivalents of Cardinal Heroes, because this world has its own Cardinal Heroes, and as it turns out, our original world also has Vassal Heroes, we just didn’t know it yet. The Cardinal Hero of this world is the sole survivor of the 4, because the other 3, much like Motoyasu, Itsuki, and Ren, treated their fantasy world as a video game, didn’t take it seriously, and paid the ultimate price. You get to even see some of the politics of Glass’ world. Raphtalia obtains the Vassal Katana of this world gaining a major buff. The evil Vassal Hero artificially triggers a Wave. The Avengers of Naofumi’s party and Glass’ world unite. There’s a big climactic fight with the bad guy.

Then we get to season 3. The A plot progression is minimal, the new conflicts are idiotic in concept, and the resolutions are laughably quick. Rivalries and grudges that had been set up for more than 30 episodes get resolved in, like, 10 minutes of in-universe time. Other than that, there’s really not much of anything going on. There are some B and C plots with some new party members, one of them is a really hot chick, so Naufomi has that going for him, which is nice, but their resolutions are also not overly complicated, and so most of the third installment is Naofumi et co. just kinda hanging out in his village, chillin’. For what it’s worth, there is actually 1 interesting tidbit of worldbuilding in this entry, but I can’t describe it without spoiling, and besides, it doesn’t go anywhere, so your mileage will vary.

On paper, there is just so much going on in season 2 and it’s all A plot. I’m not even mentioning the B plot and filler content, because there’s no point. Again, in terms of primary narrative content, it’s nothing less than excellent and easily the strongest entry in the franchise. By comparison, literally nothing whatsoever happens in season 3. And? And nothing. Literally none of that matters. Season 2 is rightly considered to be the worst for one reason and one reason only – it looks like ass. Season 3 is rightly considered to be better for one reason and one reason only – it looks good. That’s all there is to it. It’s as deep as a puddle.

While not a perfect analogy, I am reminded of the Spine of Deathwing fight from World of Warcraft’s Dragon Soul raid. If you know, you know. In theory, if I were to describe it to you, it would sound like the most amazing, spectacular, revolutionary, creative, kinetic, and fun boss fight ever created. What it turned out to be in practice is the undisputed gold medalist of the absolute worst, most boring, most tedious, most obnoxious encounter Blizzard has ever designed. Season 2 of Shield Hero is a lot like that.

In any event, should you watch season 3? That will come down to whether or not you’re sold on the characters and their journey.

If you’re a fan of the TikTok-brained pacing of modern shounen and would like Shield Hero to just, as it were, get to the point and rush to advance the A plot full steam ahead in order to get it over with asap, then no. You will not like this and you should not watch it. If, however, you are sold on the characters and the setting and wish to spend as much time as possible in their company, and you appreciate stories that take their time getting where they’re going, so as to allow you space to deepen your immersion, then yes. You should watch it and you might very well like it. I know I did.

P.S.: Yes, the slavery trope is still present. No, it’s not hugely relevant, but it’s always there in the background. Yes, the show is still myopic about it.