Review of The Rising of the Shield Hero

Shield hero is an isekai anime that was able to grab many people attention including me into watching this anime. The anime started off really well with its story and the introduction to the characters and the world the protagonist was summoned to. The first few episodes were executed well in the anime and was able to grab my interest but ultimately as the story continue, I started to lose interest in it and it took a long time for me to complete this anime due to its many side stories and detours . Unlike anything we have seen and heard before(sarcasm), shield hero shows uswhat it is like for a normal college dude from japan to be suddenly summoned into another world where the protagonist is one of the four chosen hero where he has to fight off evil monsters and villains that come through ‘waves’, adding extra spices to the story which includes the protagonist having the ‘weakest’ equipment and being backstabbed many times due to his given circumstances. I got to admit I like that this isekai anime has a main motive for the protagonist which is fighting off the monsters and villains that comes from ‘waves’, it gives viewer like me a breath of fresh air in isekai anime as most isekai anime really don’t have a main motive for their protagonist when they are transported to another world. Furthermore, unlike most isekai anime where protagonist suddenly became overpowered, we were able to witness the progress of a main character climbing to a powerful hero while filling with rage and anger.

What made a big impact in this anime were the first few episodes where a depressed and pessimistic protagonist starts to open up to a slave girl which in turn created a close bond between them. It was satisfying watching a despaired and pessimistic naofumi(the protagonist) finally able to trust somebody and be trusted in return. However after the first 12 episodes the story starts to get boring as it starts to get sidetracked. It took me a long time to finish the second part of the anime.

The second part of the anime where the story no longer focus on the ‘waves’ and its villain but on the birds(filolial) and churches felt boring for me. In my opinion, the sub-arc involving filolials and church could have been shortened as it was boring. The concept of naofumi getting famed again by the king and the bitch put a stop in my interest in the story of this anime for a while. The first time was cool but to use it for the second part kind of felt boring to me. Moreover, there are too much talking and emotional exchange during fighting scenes which kills the intensity of the battle. Well I do applaud the commitment and the faithfulness of the studio to animate most of the details into the anime to give character development to the characters, but I feel they overdid it and made the story really slow and draggy that it felt boring .Though the last few episodes was ok and the ending was satisfying, I still lost quite a lot of interest in the story compared to when I first started watching it.

Credit should be given to the anime for portraying raphtalia’s past and her struggle perfectly which felt emotional and enjoyable. Huge props to the animators and the animation studios for putting effort into this anime unlike kenja no mago that piece of shit. The quality of the fighting scenes was really good and the characters design was also of high quality. The Opening and Ending songs are really enjoyable especially OP 1 and ED2. ED 2 really hits the soul. There are many enjoyable characters in this anime that were able to have character development throughout the anime. This anime has characters that you will surely hate, characters that you will like , characters that you wish would die in hell , characters that you want to hug, characters that you want to protect and etc. On a side note, the queen looking like a damn snack in the anime, if you a milf-lover you definitely should give this a go.

Overall this anime has all the good quality from the animation to sound to the characters but really fall short in being a great anime due to its plot. The pacing of the plot was really slow and a big portion of the second part of the anime was too focus on the sub-arc which kill most of my interest in the story. When the story decides to return back to the main target/arc- ‘waves’, there were only a few episodes left and really left me with a mystery to close the show. All in all,the story was not interesting and good enough in the long run to keep me entertain. But this anime is definitely worth a short compared to the other isekai trash aired this year. Just don’t forget anime is trash and so am i.

story-5
art-9
sound-8
character-7
enjoyment-6
overall-7