Review of The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 4

I knew this would happen at some point. This time around brethren we’ve got the Pokemon trainer season. Naofumi mostly hands off, spamming Hyper potions, X specials, X defends, X attacks and the occasional mega stone. His team isn’t something to sleep on either. Kyogre, Ninetales, Charizard, Pidgeot, 2 shiny Zeraoras(1M1F), They’d struggle against rock types, steel types will cry against them but I’ll say we’ve got quite the squad.Shield hero Season 4….

My thoughts align very closely with Flacion’s review, I recommend you check his out before mine.

A tale of 2 halves.... The half which focused on ATLA and the other half which didn’t.
As a member of the Anti-ATLA association you can imagine which half was a decent watch and which half made me want to tear my hair out.

First of all I recommend the subbed watch over the dubbed. I watched 10 episodes of Dub and 2 of Sub and I don’t know if it was because those 2 subbed had zero ATLA, but they were far more pleasant to watch.

So where does this one rank?
S1 (opening 7 episodes)
S1
(SUPER GAP)
S4 ←--------YOU ARE HERE
S3
(GAP)
S2

So overall not too bad, I’m here for season 5 and let’s be frank, if you’re still here, you might as well join me on this journey till the end.

Objective metrics

Plot – Rough and smooth. (What happened to the wave timer?)

This season felt more structured it set out it’s goals early on and they were definitely completed. The greatest issue is that, the crisis and the great existential threat we introduced to in S1 as the reason he was summoned is put on the back-burner yet again. I’m here for the main duo and for the cardinal heroes so it wasn’t too terrible for me but for others that were enthralled by the major plot line, this season will be a tough watch.

This instalment consists of 2 Arcs one bigger than the other, with the larger one being the one that’s actually somewhat decent. The other one is truly forgettable, all you have to do is read the preliminary reviews to get a gist of what people felt during it. They try to make some attempt at some more advanced political discourse and it falls flat on it’s head mostly because of the annoying little racoon mutant tramp they decided to make the object of development. It’s quite funny they set up the Arc seemingly in a way to show off Naofumi’s character growth in intellect, discernment and leadership. Halfway through, it’s high-jacked by that silly little striped munchkin consequently exploding into abject mediocrity. The antagonists this season are poor especially during this segment, nevertheless when we aren’t dealing with waves in this show, that’s definitely on brand.

The arc I liked was more relaxing focusing on our fan-favourite main duo and I must say, when they’re together the binge is very easy. We also have quite a few other side characters, lots of action, less dialogue more impulsive action. This time their attempt at politics was more modest, they seemed to know their place so they didn’t try to overcomplicate it and well it passed the brain-on test quite barely. I will say it does become very tiring with female antagonists. They aren’t very cool they never exude any presence at all. They turn very serious events into a laughing stock and they end up cheapening any sort of tension or pressure in any situation.

Story – Slow and inconsequential.

Splitting into 2 arcs again, the story of the first Arc, was just terrible. The character development somewhat negligible and it was just all too easy so not only is a development not believable it ends up seeming cheap. A complex intellectual dilemma solved by throwing it into a deep fryer, convenient ass-pull power-ups. All for that blind, zebra-striped cat stealing oxygen, as well as everyone’s development. No one was allowed to be in the spotlight, not without that tramp, what a suffocating experience the show would genuinely be better without her. People were using words like “Filler” to describe it and they’re not wrong apart from visible changes before and after that arc nothing really happens story-wise.

The other arc again dialled it down focused on simplicity, played it through somewhat linearly with a couple of twists. It does seem that we are bearing fruit to the Naofumi they planted in S1 he’s shining a lot more the maturity, hardened by the tough lessons learned. Raphtalia is probably the star of the show here which I don’t think anyone has a problem with. Definitely felt the development here, compared to S2 2nd half which attempted similar development. What I did feel was lacking was that we were due a major conflict of interest between the main duo, If you’ve watched the end of S3 you should know what I’m talking about. If the events of this season were to be completed these 2 characters cannot remain as a duo in the same respect but it doesn’t even explore this, even though it was the logical conclusion. Very disappointing, a very apparent issue swept under the rug. I’m hearing a bit of it is filler so maybe that’s why.

Characters - Exhausting

People complain about too many side characters, I agree only in part. It was stated that the world is a Matriarchy. So it has a more female focused important character pool and they’re so lacklustre and boring as character devices. There is also the relegation of the Cardinal heroes to side characters, a true travesty of the writers. They’re grunts now, I will say it seems like one of them has caught a few pokemon of his own, that was I suppose a spark of hope. The side characters this season? Not memorable, and just not worth mentioning.

Our MC? Naofumi.
He’s back mostly, he had a few remarks which were quite enjoyable. Nothing he did annoyed me If it continued like this I think we’ve got nothing to worry about. It seemed he’s gotten accustomed to his style of battle which is more of Pokemon trainer. Sending his monsters out and supporting from a distance, it’s mostly fine but if you wanted him to jump in there and get dirty with his shield, he’s definitely using his shield but he’s no vanguard. Raphtalia was very active this season her general behaviour was one which I definitely prefer much more over any season other than S1. I just can’t help but notice they’re dodging the massive elephant in the room. These developments were supposed to tackle their relationship, It just cannot technically exist the same manner as it was before.

Sound – Same (Old?)

Kevin Penkin made the first season sound like a dream, this season we may have gotten too familiar with the score. It does the job but never reaches the ethereal heights we know they’re capable of. OP and ED were as good, I did prefer the OP the visuals looked very stylish and invoked the kind of character we needed in the cast. Sound effects nothing special, nothing takes you out, of it they’re fine for the most part.

Animation – Overall a little worse than S3.

We will again divide into parts:
1st part animation was absolutely not on standard at all. The show looked great in slow moments and stills but in motion it wasn’t there at all. Once the action started the movement was too slow, they abused slow motion way too much, they interrupted tense fighting with annoying chatter, then an unwanted break with exposition. They just don’t know how to do tense combat it showed with how bad of a tournament Arc S3 had and it shows up again. Weightless combat, lack of respecting of environment, terrible choreography, dumb antagonists hitting the ground and choppy transitions. If you want examples, Chinese shows(donghua) are great to see what fight choreography should look like, this comparably was genuinely awful.
2nd part thankfully fixed a lot of the weighting issues and had a much wider range of abilities and attacks and there was a tamer vision in the way they conducted their storyboarding and it just kind of worked enough that I couldn’t really complain. A bit of CG in there, I thought it was good enough however it won’t get past the CGphobia of the weaker ones amongst us.

Final Rankings

Plot 6/10
Characters 5/10
Sound 8/10
Animation 8/10
Enjoyment 6/10

33/50 + COPE(2) points = 35/50 – 7/10

If you’re still here, you truly like the show, I do too. Lets steel ourselves and finish the damned thing. This season does okay but just kill your hope of ever feeling like you did in S1. We must now become accustomed to seeing ‘The Rising of the Shield Hero’ as a somewhat delightful seasonal chore which we still retain some fondness for.

Hope this helps.