Review of The Rising of the Shield Hero

WARNING: WILL PROBABLY BE VERY LONG AND CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS Oh boy oh boy oh boy it's been a while since I crapped on someone's favourite anime. Rising of the Shield Hero (henceforth titled "Shield Hero" in this review) not only continued the already tired genre of isekai for isekai's sake (as in, it's an isekai, not fantasy, because it's been the hip thing for the past 8 years) but also managed to create it's own blight of a sub-genre that further blights the image isekai genre painfully has - that being the revenge isekai. Shield Hero, upon release, was seen as a far darker takeon the genre and managed to become one of 2019's most popular and well-loved shows. We had Re:Zero before which was obviously also a less funsy, more bloody subversion of isekai but whilst Re:Zero had some interesting concepts to explore but poor execution (please direct you attention to my Re:Zero review I'm desperate for internet fame), Shield Hero doesn't have nearly as much going for it in either characterization or storytelling. Time to break this thing down.

Shield Hero follows our protagonist Naofumi as he is *sigh* summoned to another fantasy world where he serves as one of four heroes of legend- each wielding a signature weapon. Naofumi unsurprisingly becomes the titular character of the show being the Shield Hero. They're summoned to help fight off these "Waves" which are phenomenon where lots of monsters suddenly attack parts of the world. Unfortunately for Subaru no one likes the Shield Hero for...reasons and he is betrayed, humiliated, and left to suffer in a cruel, cold world he didn't ask to be in after a "party member" accused him of sexual assault in a matriarchal country. All of this happens in the first episode which was...holy crap 48 minutes? Really? I never liked first episodes that felt they were too important to only take up the prerequisite amount of time including shows I love (Hibike 2 and Fate/Zero come to mind) since it almost always ends up being a huge dump of information given to us without any thought of pacing. Aaaaand yep the pacing of the first episode sucks. As well as the rest of the show for that matter but I'll get to that latter. Anyways where was I again? Oh yeah the plot.

I can plainly see why this anime and so many others that came afterwards became so popular. Most isekai before mainly focused on ridiculously OP main characters who bullshit their way through the story without any trial whatsoever. This was great for giving power fantasies to the viewer as they place themselves in the shoes of a same-face protagonist who goes around collecting women into their harem like some kind of gacha game. However this got boring around the 300th time it was done. Shield Hero is a story of an underdog. And by god do people love supporting the underdog. Naofumi basically starts at the lowest rung of the pecking order and is consistently and constantly humiliated through the show. Yet, because he's a main character, he always pulls through and works hard. People love watching Naofumi do his stuff and go "Oh golly gee if I were in his position and being shit on I would still be the good guy who heals people, does great works of charity and humility etc." No, you wouldn't. You would be even more of an asshole who hates the world. But Naofumi is the type of character who does the things people wish they would do. All of the stuff he does cultivates an image of an ideal hero of the people whom everyone loves. The first few episodes follow him and his hare- I mean party members going around cleaning up the disasters left by the other 3 heroes who are, of course, utter sociopaths who think the world is a game. This always means Naofumi has his image cultivated as a truly heroic person not to the the people of the world he is in, but to you, the viewer. So what's the difference between this and a generic power fantasy bullshit OP main character from every other isekai? Nothing he does actually leads to any bad consequences, things always work out for him in the end, and sooner rather than latter he does end up actually becoming a bullshit OP main character from every other isekai.

What about his actual personality? Well he's...a nice guy? After his humiliation he becomes a lot more douchbaggy and less naive but that's to be expected I guess. The anime, however, flip flops on him being a a cynical asshole who hates the world around him and a nice guy who wants to save others very often. He hardly has any personality outside of being a reactionary protagonist just following the script of "Go here and do this". Not helped by the fact that we really don't know anything about who he was before he got isekai'd. How could a perfectly normal 20-something year old Japanese dude living carefree in his parents' house become the asshole, ingenius character he is in less than an episode? Was he always this resourceful and quick-thinking before he got isekai'd or was he given these qualities as the story demanded? All this vague characterisation and what he does turns him into a near-perfect protagonist who can do nothing wrong. He saves Raphtalia from slavery...why? He could have picked anyone else more useful to him but no he's that nice a guy. Nevermind he doesn't mind slavery in the world which should be a big culture chock to him but it isn't. I know about all the controversy of this anime and slavery but I could hardly care about that. I care about how you could write a character to be unamused by such a concept- which implies he has become a cynical asshole- but then switch to him being a really nice person almost instantaneously all within the first 2 episodes.

Oh well let's look at the other characters for a bit. They're...pretty boring as well. Raphtalia is your basic waifu bait (who won the 2019 Salty Awards for best waifu so it worked) who really doesn't have much of a personality outside of being grateful to Naofumi for saving her. This makes her character arc completely predictable and it plays out like a kindergarten school play the teachers didn't bother to change for the past 5 years. Seriously what actually defines her other than liking Naofumi and being a typical example of "I wanted revenge but now I see how I will beome the very thing I swore to destroy" character? She doesn't do anything other than listen to Naofumi and do as he says.

Filo is the resident loli-bait and is alright I guess. She does provide a good amount of much-needed comedy and slice-of-life downtime to the show. She doesn't develop much and is every bit obsessed about Naofumi as Raphtalia but at least this one kind of makes sense. Melty is probably the best character of the show. I love her design and she's the only character who actually has any bit of noticeable development going from a naive but ambitious child to a responsible and affirmative character who wants to improve her country after experiencing things first-hand. All this in less than a quarter of the time the other MC's get "development". I would just like it more if the anime didn't keep beating me over the head with how much she's grown and all because damn the dialogue stinks. In fact, most of the development dialogue the characters get is "oh yes they have indeed grown" instead of actually showing us with some exception for Melty. Other characters that help our main characters? They exist that's for sure. I mean, they might as well be walking planks of wood with a face painted on them but hey it's not too different from the main cast. Whilst Re:Zero had a shitty main character but very interesting supporting characters whom I would love to see more in season 2, Shield Hero doesn't have anything outstanding among its cast. This includes our so-called "villains".

So we have the other heroes summoned with Naofumi. As said before they're all sociopathic assholes and this never really changes and they get nothing from the show. Spear guy is an idiot...just because? Like, seriously they're all bland one-note characters who exist only to be assholes and make out protagonist look like the second coming of Jesus. The king is an asshole because he's an asshole for several well-substantiated reasons that are never explored but trust me they are well-substantiated. The ever so controversial Myne/ Malty is a thot because...she is? I mean the anime gives us no explanations for anything the characters do and why they are who they are. They just do. Myne offers the biggest challenge to our group of main characters. She constantly tries to get in their way, downplay their achievements, frame them for crimes, straight up try to murder them and her sister Melty (the biggest sin) and is built up as a genuine threat who is smart and conniving until...wait who the fuck is this Pope-ass dude? And why is he trying to shove his way into the story? Halfway through the story we're introduced to the REAL villain behind it all. Whom we only ever saw in like one episode but suddenly this crusty old dude is the final boss whom our hero and the other twats need to band together to defeat. Really? It's not that he wasn't presented as a totally evil dude in the same way almost every fanatical religion in most stories turn out to be it's just that his appearance so abruptly shoves itself into the front of the storyline it feels so out-of-place.

The writing is not great. The first half as mentioned previously is just Naofumi being the second coming of Jesus shown in self-contained episodes for the most part. Starting around episode 8, however and continuing till the end, it feels like they stuffed too many plot threads on top of each other. Like the Fliolial arc in the middle of what was supposed to be Raphtalia's arc which was supposed to be in the middle of an arc where Naofumi was on the run. And the worse thing is it actually affects the story in a massive way. Like, if they didn't stumble upon the chicken queen Naofumi would never have confronted Spear dude and in turn would never have had them fight the Pope dude. What if they missed her entirely and kept with the original plan of crossing into another country? Absolutely nothing because the author didn't plan for that and didn't think anyone would call her out on it. It's just crappy, contrived writing. This seriously breaks the pacing of the show as we're just shoved from one scene of importance to this plot thread to another scene which is important to this plot thread. All only being tied loosely by huge amounts of exposition dialogue. The plot is basically "go to place A and do B then go to C and do D" plot that stumbles upon itself without knowing where to go. Yeah sure give Raphtalia her mini-arc but don't suddenly jank into Filo's arc and then proceed to dump a huge amount of exposition that is important to the plot on us. This horrible pacing messes up a lot of introductions of what would otherwise be interesting characters. Remember that good nobleman Melty trusted? Welp he only stuck around for like half an episode without anything going for him. What about that Glass character? She's like, super important but was only given like 10 minutes of screentime where she mostly trash-talked the characters while pwning them before she suddenly becomes an important character in the end who demands violently hasty characterisation. And why didn't the anime just end on episode 21 or at least pace itself to end on the events on 21? After that episode was a hugely rushed arc which probably should have been 2 episodes longer.

I hate the world building of this show mainly because there isn't any. Like, how lazy can you be to not even attempt to flesh out anything outside of the "game" aspects? And yes this anime follows the "gemer" isekai where there is stats, levels and xp that you gain from defeating monsters. Not that it's too difficult. The monsters in the wave do literally nothing but stand around menacingly (or in the case of the bee-like monsters- hover around menacingly) and occasionally slowly walk towards you in the most inefficient manner. These are seriously the monsters that threaten to destroy the world? I honestly mean it with all my heart that these are the worst monsters ever and that they literally never kill anyone or do anything onscreen. The worst they do is make the viewer's eyes bleed because of how ugly and janky the CGI is. A lot of fight scenes also lose a lot of tension because the characters just stand around doing nothing like the monsters. During the fight against pope dude I was constantly saying the "shoot her! or something" Star Wars meme because they seriously just stand around for ages waiting for pope dude to charge his ulti. And who thought a fight against pope dude would be a good idea? He just stands on the high ground firing shit. There's little to no strategy to any of the fights in this anime aside from spamming attacks. Of course, Naofumi has to be the one smart enough to have some tactical knowledge despite never having played a game like the other 3 hero douches.

The animation was for the most part competently done by Kinema Citrus who once-again changed their logo for the show and I continue to love that ever since they did that for GochiUsa. There were some poor moments of off-modelling though which sucked and the CGI is god-awful. The action direction flip flops between above-average and "wtf am I looking at" bad. The bad action scenes can have characters just flail their arms around with the whoosh sound effect. This unfortunately becomes the norm as the series goes on. The voice acting is pretty great for the most part. Melty and Raphtalia had great voice acting and everyone else was pretty good too. Shame you couldn't save a bad script with good acting. The music by Kevin Penkin is probably the highlight of the show and a reason why many came to watch this anime. It's nowhere near as good as his work on Made in Abyss but it's good nevertheless. I can only complain about how t was used. This anime has a lot of points where its basically just a slideshow of characters doing stuff (which further hurts the pacing and means I have no idea what the time-frame is. I once thought a few months had passed in-story but it was only like a week.) and the music is often played over that which is unfortunate.

Last minute thoughts:
- Episode 13 shows magical video editing software which is the funniest thing this anime has to offer.
- The moments where Naofumi goes all aaaangry and gains his Berserk rip-off black armour always ends with Naofumi remembering his harem and pulling out of the darkness. This only lowers the stakes and there's almost no consequences for becoming bullshit OP. This would be fine if it was done once or twice but it happens like 4 times and all of it plays out the same.
- Another case against the world building and storytelling of this show is just how many locations our characters are thrown around to with no care and we still don't know anything about the world. They initially try to go to one country, then they turn back and go for another country, then they sidetrack like 20 times before giving up and not going to any country at all.
- Pope dude probably my second favorite character. Yeah he's crappily written but he's so comically evil it's great. I also love how they made him literally the least-threatening villain ever.
- One of the baby-face soldiers Naofumi inspires is such a goddamn puppy dog. Like, we get it. At this point we get it. Naofumi is Jesus. We get it already.
- How did Melty just lose all her gaurds in episode 9? Like, you would think there would be gaurds searching all over because it's a big thing seeing as she's the heir to the goddamn throne but no.
- How close are all these villagers to each other? Our characters always end up being so close to the village important to the story. I count like 5 villages/towns in total and they all seem like they're only an hour's walk from each other.
- Raphtalia (and everyone else for that matter) is never actually affected by the curse from the Aaaangry Shield Naofumi uses even though they made a point of going out of their way to get high-quality holy water to treat her. They're always fighting in peak condition. Can you spell "consequences" for me?

In the end Shield Hero is a painfully mediocre show. I thought I was harsh with Re:Zero in that review but Shield Hero is much worse. I give them the same score but there's far less I like about Shield Hero than Re:Zero. The characters are bland across the board, the villains are comically boring, the pacing sucks, and the writing and story in general is only there to make out MC look good. Do I hate it? Not really. It's not a bad show by any means but it's definitely not good by any means too. In the end its an okay piece of entertainment to watch with your brain turned off but it's still like every other anime of its genre.