Review of The Rising of the Shield Hero
cancerous female cast as well as the 3 other heros all sub zero IQ making this anime impossible to sit through without rage. other than that it is an OK show. The way the 3 heros are portrayed are over the top annoying and i think that was the intended effect so I wont speak too much about them. Instead, let's talk about the female cast. The anime shoves any and all female characters in our faces and it is apparent the author does not know how to write good female characters. 1) Half furry girl half furry girl whose name I cannot remember isused as the emotional centre piece for Naofumi's development. This is done so unsubtly that it is actually cringe. She makes obvious remarks that viewers with working brain cells could have made by themselves and act like she exceptional for "understanding" her master. No, everyone understands what he is going through and her making those remarks does not make her smart or endearing. It is just cringe. "You are just pushing people away... You are trying to make them hate you on purpose." Okay? Her remarks never actual result in them having in-depth conversations about his trauma. She just acts as a mouthpiece for the audience.
The other way the author uses this character is to "calm" Naofumi down from his rage mode. Again, it is really difficult for me to buy that these two really like each other and care for each other because furry girl is incredibly flat (Naofumi isn't a really complex character either). She likes Naofumi and gets jealous of the bird girl, i guess. She also is very sad that her master is going to leave after the waves are over. Everything resolves around Naofumi and it makes her a very boring character. She has no agency outside anything that concerns Naofumi. Now someone might say that this is due to the nature of their relationship being a slave vs owner and you are correct. however, according to the story they moved past that and formed a genuine relationship. AKA their relationship doesn't make sense. they are simulatenously stuck in the slave-master relationship but also beats us over the head that they care about each other (romantically)?????? Side note: I really find the underlying romantic tension to be really repulsive
2) bird girl
she's just really annoying. her fighting over Naofumi's affection with furry girl is also very annoying. She's basically the typical "ray of sunshine" that is supposed to warm everyone's hearts with their cuteness and innocence. I really hate this trope in anime because it is creepy that they use a little girl as a vehicle for some lowly "emotional p*rno". This is a term I coined because I wanted to describe the same phenomenon i saw with misery p*rno -- when authors use a character and make them as miserable as possible for the aesthetics of pain and suffering. Here, because the author is too incompetent to break genre convention and let a non-little-girl character to embody this trope, it comes off as emotional p*rno.
3) the princess
she made me so mad that I had to stop watching the anime for a few days. she's everything that's cancerous about little anime girls. they act high and mighty. insufferable. spoiled. the author weaponizes their age to make them say whatever they want to increase tension in the story. Like how am i supposed to believe that this girl who is incredibly smart and is chosen as crowned princess fails to recognize that her father is treating the shield hero poorly. She literally almost died because of the sabotage and was saved by him. she shit talks her older sister for being mischievous when she makes braindead comments like "my father would never WHEEEEE." Instead of listening to Naofumi she keeps demanding him to listen to her and bend to her wishes. Like does she not understand that the king ruined his life?
Again, the problem is this type of characterization is not being done with intent. If the author's intent was to create a character who is high and mighty and looks down on everyone else DESPITE the fact that she is unable to recognize her own flaws as a person, I wouldn't be this mad. But the intent is clear. they wanted to shove a little girl character in just because. they wanted to make her look smarter than the older bitch ass princess so that the little girl can cuss out the older princess. But they didn't consider how incoherent the character would be if they acted like a normal naive child to the shield hero, demanding him to do things for her just because she's a princess.
0/10 in characters. single handedly ruined the show.