Review of The Rising of the Shield Hero

Review contains Spoilers To sum up Tate no Yuusha, it is nothing but a trash revenge story with a cumulation of pointless fillers and an ever-increasing harem – with obvious atrocious writing. The first few initial episodes did a great job of getting my attention. Although it touched sensitive matters like Rape and slavery – it was never a big deal. The anime community is filled with shield hero memes, flaming discussions and constant best girl stuff that it is literally impossible for anyone to ignore it. It starts off as our shut-in NEET teleported to an isekai – resembling another generic RPG based world. Theplot is simple – four heroes are summoned from their respective worlds to fight against the waves in order to protect the realm. Our protagonist kun is supposedly the one with the shield while the other three heroes have cooler weapons. While the other three heroes were practically useless during the course of the story and did nothing that qualifies themselves to be called “heroes” while living in delusion that they are playing a game.
Starting with an RPG based simple setting – things get darker as our shield bro gets accused of Rape. From then, follows a series of wild accusations towards Naofumi from the Royals. Naofumi is wrongly portrayed as the enemy of the public by the royal family and the heroes follow the bandwagon without any actual evidence and logic. By these turns of events, the shield hero is made more morally grey – added with his personality, an interesting character but is never explored beyond that.

There's so much going on to break immersion, especially considering how they bill Naofumi at the start; he's someone who plays fast and loose with things like honor and morals as a response to the world boning him. And yet, we don't get to see that beyond the first few episodes. Everything that is interesting is forgotten in a matter of an episode.

The story focuses on corruption and justice at a surface level. The revenge themes presented is one dimensional, inconsistent character writing, obvious pacing and filler problems, and finally turns into a harem.

The pacing is atrocious, and I’m not even blowing away the proportions on this one. The whole hot springs episode? It was only there for the jealousy cliché, which was alright but beyond noticeable and could have been dealt with as a side plot rather than a whole episode dedicated to it. There is another beach episode in the latter end of the story. The entire Raphtalia backstory part two wasn’t necessary to the narrative and was literally forced upon in between a side quest. The bad guy was again a bad guy because bad guys are supposed to be bad, nothing else. A cartoonish personification of an evil dude because of money and corruption. The whole backstory stretched itself to around five fucking episodes with barely affecting the story or the characters. The only purpose it served was creating more hatred towards the system (which was against Naofumi) at a one-dimensional layer. Then we get to the pope part – who is another installment of “We have to wipe out the devil of the shield”, which again was boring and without any substance.

Also, what the actual fuck was the last episode. Most parts of the final arc was literally filler but the final 5 minutes were so rushed that we got a plot twist which made no sense in accordance to the rules that the anime has already set along with an underwhelming battle and an anti-climactic ending. All they did was throw wine at her and next minute they all leave and the waves over and they have a new person in the party in the span of 3 minutes. I'm still giving it a benefit of doubt considering these would be explored in a supposedly season 2 which I am definitely not watching.

The battles in shield hero severely lack dynamics. It’s like the heroes are arguing with each other over a course of a battle and the opponent does nothing. Battles seem flat and formulaic and not to mention – boring. The spell names are so long and stupid, over 5 minutes of a 20 minutes battle content would have been saved if they were shortened or simply, removed. The heroes are supposed to be heroes – the literal meaning yet they have done nothing extraordinary in terms of their talent. When in the rare case of a melee attack, it’s usually either one single weapon slash or a weapons clash, which is followed up by another long conversation. The constant ranged attacks which are literally the same all over are already boring, and now when the former happens, it ends as fast as it started – the whole generic thing with stupid ass convo during a battle. The whole rage/demon shield was supposed to be great if it actually had any negative impact that wasn’t negated by the harem crew simple hugging him every time.

Rapthalia’s whole character is based upon loving Naofumi, without any substance. Her character is based upon riding Naofumi’s sword more than being his sword. She is a cheap excuse of being a great waifu for lonely depressed weebs. Naofumi is a classic example of an MC who in real life would be so unlikeable that no one would hang out with him, let alone have girls fawn over him - pandering bait for those who think it is the world’s fault. Filo is just an annoying character with barely any personality. She exists as jailbait for the above context lolicons. Another addition to our shield bro’s harem is another loli, which, unfortunately, wasn’t much rememberable because of her whole character existing within the worst part of the anime. The entire character of the girls revolves around the shield hero– on top of that the same scenes over obsessing shield hero take over the half episode.

The “bad” guys in this anime remind me of Romanticism in literature. Back then, characters were walking allegories of singular traits they embodied. A character was so cartoonishly evil because they were the embodiment of... well, evil. Malty is a bitch, well for no reason. The king is inherently evil because of a small grudge, while which is still a better excuse. The spear guy is made into a stupid lolicon, and the other two heroes are just mary sues. It seems to me that everyone is made dumb just to get to the next plot point. The kidnapping plot – with the original assassination attempt, just ignore those two soldiers in the background holding a crystal ball towards you and chuckling evilly while you do nothing about it, then at the mansion, Naofumi is shown suspicious of basically everyone; and while they should keep watch because they’re in danger, he lets the children go wander off unsupervised. And then get surprised anyways. The character writing in this show is so inconsistent even in terms of a power fantasy trash novels. The list on how shield hero’s characters suffer from trash writing is Voluminous.

The art style is mediocre and nothing great in particular. To be fair I’ve never liked Kinema Citrus’ work and Kevin’s soundtracks. Kevin’s soundtracks were never rememberable in the anime. I watched the entirety of MiA but I never knew that the soundtracks were considered a masterpiece.

Tl;dr
the story in shield hero:
•every hero is stupid except naofumi.
•everyone hates naofumi even though he saves the people every time because they lack common sense.
•thousands of fillers and slowly turning into a loli harem.
•pacing is bad
•the writing is bad.
• Inconsistent character writing
•Boring fights with no sense of tension
• Malty finally gets punishment which wasn't really a punishment
• Another beach episode and Raphtalia wanting Naofumi's sword.
• Illogical ending.

Story/Themes/Pacing (25%): 2/10
Characters (15%): 2/10
Artstyle/Animation/Soundtrack (15%): 6/10
Enjoyment (45%): 2/10

Total: 2.6/10