Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari

Okay, short review, I can do this.

So, if you've seen Tensura and liked that you'll like this. This is a better Isekai than Tensura. Why am I talking about Tensura? Because Shield Hero fails me in much the same ways.

The characters are bland, boring, and nothing but caricatures. The only character whos even remotely a real character is the main character and boy is he relatable. That's also all he is, relatable. In fact he's so relatable that he isn't relatable, because he's also retarded. The main character is a manchild who thinks he's better than everyone else.

This show is a powerfantasy for people who ... think themselves geniuses and view everyone else as less intelligent. It's immature and bland and never once makes you feel anything interesting. There are plotholes and the world-story just barely fits together.

Don't watch this unless you enjoy asking questions like "but wait, they said it worked like this, now they go against the laws of nature of this world? what?".

The enjoyment factor for me was with how people who were dishonorable got what they deserved, but even that was deranged and weak as fuck so the enjoyment was still very much lacking.

For an isekai, the concept is interesting, a hero who can't do anything but to use a shield?

It falls apart a bit, however. Here you have a protagonist that is innocent and a common civilian, transported to a world he knows nothing of, and after the events of the second episode he radically changes from day to night, bitter and resentful, throwing his personality out of the window and adopting a new one. If there had been a time skip between his arrival, his betrayal and its consequences, I'd certainly forgive this, but there isn't (or at least a relevant period of time).

There are ... many plot holes and plot-established rules that are constantly broken and then reinforced again, that goes from how the hourglasses and its countdowns work, what are the Waves the heroes must fight, the memory of filolials, why the protagonist was the only hero who had never experienced an RPG game when all the other heroes had, and so on. I feel like the story focused so much on making the viewers hate certain characters due to amount of shit the protagonist has to go through that they forgot to tackle with the actual explanations of why they are in this world and what is going on.

By the time the whole conspiracy involving the Church and the Royalty is finally over, there were only 4 or 5 episodes left and they had to rush this explanation to end on a cliffhanger (pretty much expected). The writing also is plagued by amateur mistakes such as pausing an event beyond the character's control or a duel/fight/battle to discuss backstories or wash the laundry of all the stuff they didn't bother to show in the past episodes, all while the villains have to pause and watch the debate as if they were stuck in an unskippable cutscene in a videogame rather than strike them down; not to mention the pathetic morality and lesson-giving that everyone's pretty much tired of already: "We can't kill people, no matter how bad they are".

You have rapists, torturers, slavers, murderers, fanatical leaders and politicians ready to murder or destroy the lives of anyone as long as they gain from it (even genocide!), but of course, you can't kill them! You just leave them alive, living in their former positions of power just expecting they won't do all of it again! You'll know this when a certain "Bitch" and a "Trash" gets to stay in their party and living in a castle, respectively, so they can do more bad stuff that wouldn't happen if the protagonist had some balls to end their miserable existence.

What a sick joke.

Another issue is the soundtrack that is one of the worst I've heard (sax on fight scenes? loop of nails against a chalkboard?) and the weird use of CGI in some episodes, you'll know when you experience it, as I think I've been spouting a lot of negatives.

Raphtalia steals the show, pretty much. She's cute, interesting and kicks ass when she has to, but don't expect romance. Filo is your standard cute kid and a somewhat daughter figure for the protagonist.

Overall, I haven't read the manga, so I'm assuming it is better than the show, me and my friends were almost dropping it by the end of the Conspiracy "arc" and realizing there were still four episodes left, so I guess (depending on the person) a person watching it alone would've given up much earlier. Could've been much better if they dedicated some more time on the writing.

The Shield Hero is one of the lowest tier of Isekai type Anime I've ever seen...

It starts decent, the premise isn't too bad, there's this Hero that may not the be classic generic good guy, since some girl accuse him of being a rapist and makes the whole society excommunicated him and hates him... the shield hero, being incapable of using any weapon besides his shield, is for this reason also incapable to find party members to fight for him...so he buys a slave, and you may expect that the anime will turn even darker now, with slavery involved, moral dilemmas etc? nope, wrong, the ... anime turns super bland / generic in a couple episodes after that.
The Hero, after the betrayal, is all edgy and and resent towards the society, and at first he acts towards the slave girl like she is, you known, a slave... literally one episode after though, he will treat her like a human instead of a slave, 4-5 more episodes and they're basically best friends, forget about the whole slavery thing, yey.

I don't wanna waste more time, I'll just say that the whole anime is pretty ridiculous and full of inconsistencies and plot holes, I'll give you one, one big enough to give you the idea of just how low quality the writing is:

At the beginning, the princess accuse the hero of assault so she could steal his money and equipment, how much was his money / equipment? 800 silver, gave to him from her father the king.
So are you telling me
The PRINCESS bothered hanging around with a dude for an entire day, making a rape case accusation up, for LESS than a gold when she is the FRIGGING PRINCESS of a kingdom? right, MAKES SENSE.

Oh yeah, this princess character, will be shown to be a mentally pathological liar, even when she will have a spell applied to prevent her to lie, she will still try to lie over and over and OVER again, like, you must have some special case of mental retardation to try to lie so often when you know you have a magic spell that activates every time you do... she never change in all the anime, she never grows, like most characters, she is a one-dimensional tunnel-vision nonsense no-nuances character, just as stupid as the whole anime is generic and bland.

Well well thats some great dum shit.
The only good thing out of this show are the musics, somme good bit here and there but its stay in this fantasy anime trop without ever going or even trying to go out of those clichée.
The wrinting is prety terrible like a lot of other anime so oke let's pass that. I liked the story until the chicken arrieved (ep16-18) thats when i lost it, juste dum. The anime is also prety mygonisitic and a bit of fascisme too. The animation change between very oke to quite good so that's nice. The music are good. Caracther disigne are ... dum like any other isekai .
Its juste watchebel, won't remember any oh it in 1 or 2 month. In the end ... yeah it existe, there is nothing bad liking this even if it is bad, dum and right winged .

You can't trust what people say aobut a show when it has just come out. They watch 3-4 episodes and write something which follows the hypetrain.

The concept is great but this show has left me frustrated more times than I would have liked. I do not recommend this show

This show is not bad, at times. But it is NOT good. Characters have the same personality throughout the show and the same cycle of events reoccurs again and again. Thing happens, it goes bad, something gives himhope, gets betrayed, redeems himself through bad odds, gets revenge and restart. The three other heroes acts in sync, does ... the same attacks, say the same things etc.

If you like watching a party walk around doing errands while getting stronger together you could watch this, or pretty much the same show in That time I got reincarnated as a slime. The only difference is in this one the main character is much weaker compared to the rest and for some reason since he first arrived everyone has been out to make his life misserable, completely unmotivated.

Tate no Yuusha was a perfect example of a show that showed promise and proceeded to dip into the trap of mediocrity. (Specific scenes used as examples, so beware of spoilers)

At the start, the show gave us a breath of fresh air in the isekai saturated anime fad that's been going on lately. It showed us the age old trope of a character that seems to get the short end of the stick in nearly every way even though the viewers know that this won't be the case for long. What Tate no Yuusha does different though is they actually dive into how someone may ... legitimately act when life keeps beating them down over and over again. It shows us the moral decent of Naofumi and how he resorts to immoral actions and tactics in an attempt to show the world up. It was a nice, new atmosphere in a genre where you usually get the same overdog-posing-as-underdog trope over and over again where the MC just uses their "superior morals and power" to regain respect. Having this initial arc where Naofumi buys a slave and uses controversial methods to train her as well as using underhanded tricks during duels really sets the show up to give him a character arc of ups and downs rather than a straight ascent from "bad" to "good". Even through these immoral actions, they all have rationale and he still retains a sense of humanity.

The character arc remains decent for a good portion of time until the last few arcs of the show where it seems like he's just stagnant. This is especially emphasized in the last arc when he finally finds his motives to care about saving the world he was brought to, but then proceeds to not act on his newfound mindset. In fact, he does exactly what someone who is apathetic towards the world would do when he almost immediately turns around and doesn't finish his fight. It seemed like it was just a plot device to set up some grand "hero 4v4" in a later season of the show and it came off a bit awkwardly.

Overall the character development seemed lackluster or even downright lazy in the last arc. In his fight with l'arc, he and l'arc both have reasons to win at all costs and don't have any reason to truly respect each other outside of being in a party together for a very very short time. Yet, in their fight, it seems like they act the exact opposite of what you'd expect from their characters. L'arc, in a situation where it's do or die for his entire world, whips up some good old fashion "warrior pride" of explaining how he can counter Naofumi, explicitly with the intent of allowing Naofumi the opportunity to counter-strategize. This is the literal opposite of what his character development (no matter how weak it was) would make us come to expect from him up to this point. Naofumi's response of misdirecting their attention of his like-form response is something that we'd expect from his character, but it was a statement that was very obviously a trap to anyone with any form of a brain yet the antagonists somehow completely miss this fact. All-in-all for character development I'd say this show is better than most of what we've been getting lately, but still mediocre at best.

The story of the show seemed like it was running off of an interesting premise, however the show trips over itself at multiple parts. My biggest problem of it was that every episode felt like a filler episode until the last few minutes that baited a hook to keep you coming back for more next week. This is passable to an extent, but still mildly annoying at times. The most prevalent problem in the story comes down to the reasoning why Naofumi was betrayed in the first place. The motives were poorly explained and mostly irrational, which really undercut the early character development of the show. Even something as simple as self-gain for malty and the king would have been a more satisfying reason than "there was a shield hero in the past that we didn't like". If a reason this lofty is going to be introduced, the only way to make people actually care about this rationale is to dive into the backstory of the former shield hero's relationship with the former king. If they did something as simple as this (which there was more than enough time in the show to accomplish), not only would the story be better for it, but viewers may actually find some form of empathy for malty and the king. This would have made the scene where Naofumi finally overcomes his personal grudges and spares the king and Malty a lot more meaningful rather than a literal meme. There are many examples of just complete lack of justification for the story that occur in Tate no Yuusha, and it's really what kills the show most.

Outside of literary elements, the show was just decent. The animation looked like it could be good in the first episode, but soon devolves into being just "meh". Nothing especially good or bad caught my eye. The sound is basically the same story. The show's music was pretty generic overall and didn't really add or subtract anything. It didn't distract the audeince in a negative way, but no sound devices were implemented to complement the mood of the situation. This was kind of a let down.

Overall the show was just okay. If you're like me and you enjoy the premise of Isekai, you might enjoy this show, but if you plan on paying attention to it I doubt you'll find much to make it a hit for you.

Very strong premise and the first couple of episodes promised a story about antihero versus the uncaring world, but slowly, bit by bit, the show changed into more or less typical hero journey bathed in isekai and fantasy tropes. Which in and of itself is not bad, but after the gut-punching prologue, I hoped for something much more daring and creative, that will take its time to tell a complex and interesting story of the guy turned bad guy, forced to do just deeds. There is a lot of good pieces here and there, characters are lovely and the overall story has its twists and ... turns, from time to time encouraging me to still watching the show, but after the last ending my only reaction was "it was ok I guess. I probably will not buy the light novels".

Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari isn't a bad anime, but it's not the legend some people claims it to be. It ads some interesting elements to a world where almost nobody tries to innovate, but sometimes it fails too much in it.

-- Minor spoilers ahead --

(Story: 6) The story is good, not more than that, X random guys from Y ramdon versions of Japan gets ported to magiclal world to save it. We have seen it like a zillion times, but the fact that everybody hates and despises MC, instead of worshipping him like a god or something is kinda fresh. But that's where everything ... goes to waste.

Other guys ported gets better weapons, more money and people like them and then they decide for whatever reason to hate MC.

The show tries to win it's viewers by making them feel pity for MC, instead of making viewers grow some kind of empathy. The story is so focused on how everyone torture the guy that it forgets to grow, and with time pity becomes anger and finally lack of interest.

Sometimes it takes itself too serious and goes to not so smart exents to make MC suffer. It's slow, it doesn't explains things, and for moments is lame and cliche.

(Art 7): The art is cute, no more than that, it won't be rememebed for ages to come for its quality.

(Sound 6): It goes with whatever is going on, but don't think anyone will be buying the OST for how good it is.

(Characters 4): Here's where everything goes to waste. You have a tortured guy with a legendary weapon and you keep torturing him but he doesn't snap, he doesn't kill anyone, he doesn't plan a Coup d'état, he stands there watching everything been taken from him almost in a masochist way.

The rest are generic characters, some more sadistic, some less inteligent, but none very memorable.

(Enjoyment 6): Watching the anime isn't a torture, but it's not a pleasure. You kinda feel bad at the beginning for the guy, but then you hate him for how he stands and take every single blow without chopping one or two heads.

(Overall 6): Kinda enjoyable, some things added to a saturated genre, but no more than that. If you want a clinic version of masochist watch this thing and it's MC, there's a plasure in taking several beatings without opposing.

Final note: An anime that goes from taking itself too serious to useless and cute fillers, a good chance wasted, but still a watchable show.

With the popularity of the isekai genre, new entries need to either a gimmick or a slight change to the isekai recipe to get a bump up from "ugh another isekai" to "hey this isekai might be alright" status. With the protagonist being falsely accused of rape, humiliated and given no respect whatsoever the rise of the shield hero showed promise but unfortunately became another Isekai.

Story

We follow Naofumi, a hero who doesn't the respesct he deserve because he wields a shield, which is understandable it's a shield. His heroic exploits include owning slaves and clever use of his shield to defeat foes. You might ... be wondering how can you defeat your enemy with nothing but a shield? First of all great question, Secondly, Naofumi uses a shield like it's never been used before. I mean that literally he use a shield to burn some of his foes.

As you can guess the story is not as good as it can be. Reminders that Naofumi is a good guy are always delivered in vague lessons of virtue and are always questionable.


Art
If turn the volume off, the only reminder left to to remind you that your watching the rise of the shield hero is the character design. The only commendation I have for the art is the background art.

Sound
Kevin Penkin does it again. with really good soundtrack. To be honest he was the reason I watched this show. I was tempted to listen to the show instead of watching.

The rise of the shield hero was a disappointing anime. There was so much more they could've done with the whole disgraced hero gimmick. Instead they went with your usual isekai crap dominating the anime landscape.

IGNORE the description for Shield Hero, it is not about that at all. I can not say this enough! This anime doesn't give the other three characters any screen time, motivation, or personality. Not one person who rated this anime so ungodly high, can explain Ren or Melty's reason for waking up in the morning. NOT ONE!

THIS is what Shield Hero is really about; Four hero(s) come to "another world," from alternate universes AND timelines. These young men all get good characters except for ONE. A church built around the three heroes hate the shield, and the princess accuses him of rape. This is ... about recovering from false accusations, judgemental pricks, over entitled government, and learning how to make your dollars work for you; all while hating your life. THAT is why we loved this anime. THAT is what a lot of males go through. BUT THAT is slowly pulled away from in this anime and they spend the rest of it stroking his knob. Shield hero literally makes no mistakes and gets bs power ups despite never learning the game. FYI that is literally impossible and learning the game is the focal point in every RPG or Isekai.

If you like senseless battles and "oh, ill just explain this later" then you'll love shield hero. There is no plot or character development because they finished developing the characters personality 6-9 episodes in. Yet another "no one is bad, and everyone is good" anime. #$%#!



Advice? Read the manga.

For one, I’m not really into anime that tough, but I keep an open mind. Shield Hero sounded like a great story and I wanted to get into it and see what all the fuss was about.

When I saw that this was a story set in a virtual MMORPG, it gave me a pause.
Honestly, I would’ve enjoyed this anime a lot more if it weren’t set in a virtual reality videogame. Why couldn’t it just have been set in its own pre-established fantasy realm and not a fictional world within a fictional world? This could’ve easily been God of War (2018) mixed ... with some Game of Thrones if done right.

I know—I know, it’s isekai, which is basically a synonym for wish fulfillment. And boy is this anime wish fulfillment at its finest.

It’s not that Shield Hero is bad, its actually quite enjoyable if you turn your brain off long enough. What makes this anime watchable is seeing what the protag will do next. He’s basically an anti-hero who’s falsely accused of raping the kingdom’s princess. So now he has to build his reputation from the ground up and earn his respect as a Hero in this fictional world within a fictional world.

Outside of that. Shield Hero has a great premise, but the execution just isn’t quite there. Why? Because the writing is just all over the place.

So the Shield Hero is part of this otherworldly league of heroes summoned to fight these (ridiculously convenient) monsters who arbitrarily attack the virtual kingdom. For reasons unknown, the Shield is automatically reviled by the kingdom’s people and the monarch. Why even bother bringing him in the first place, then? It's like betting on the Cleveland Browns and being disappointed when they lose.

Why treat the hero like this when his only job is to save the kingdom from annihilation? Makes 0 sense plot-wise. It just seems like artificial melodrama to kickstart the plot and the protag’s future behavior.

The show also features dark themes like enslavement and racism, yet these themes are soon forgotten to make room for an unnecessary harem to come to play later. I have no problem with harems, but they almost always devolve into one guy getting all the honeys without flexing a muscle.

The female characters are ‘badass’ of course, but when there isn’t fighting, the only thought that passes through their minds is how badly they want to suck the protags d**k. Good harem is a two-way street: the guy has to have a reason to be involved with these women and vice versa. The women in Shield Hero (if they could be called that?) just love this guy for no other reason than that he feeds them.

Things that REALLY grind my gears…

1) I saw no point in making the bird creature a loli. Like… what purpose did this serve???
2) Why are grown men growing boners around this loli who clearly looks 8 years old??? (*FBI has entered the chat*)
3) Why is a society that practiced ‘human supremacy’ so acceptant to a demi-human walking around freely???
4) Why was a king, (who imposes the law of the land: including enslavement) so willing to free a demi-girl loli from bondage when HE MADE IT THE LAW TO ENSLAVE THEM!?!?!
5) Somehow slavery is a choice, even after you’ve been made free, apparently.
6) An invincible protagonist who wields the mighty power of ‘plot convenience.’
7) Since this is all a videogame (even though the protag keeps telling himself otherwise) what’s truly at stake here? Isn’t this the equivalent of ‘it was all a dream’ trope?
8) Thoughtless masturbatory female characters who are clearly underage and used as creepy eye-candy.
9) Why treat the Shield like dirt when he’s virtually one of four people currently saving your life right now??? It’s like verbally berating a heart surgeon during the middle of the operation.
10) The armory guy looks like Kratos and that makes me sad… because I really had an itch for this show to be like God of War. It is…sorta-kinda.
11) Why are all the female characters dependent, submissive or outright bi**hes for no reason???
12) why the hell even bother making Raphtalia transform into a 20-year-old woman when she could've easily just stayed a kid and the story would be no different if not better.
13) Why are the other Heros dumb as hell and gullible for no reason other than to add artificial tension???

With all that said, you won’t hate yourself for liking Shield Hero. It has its moments, but don’t think too much on what’s going on and you’ll like this show just fine. This is a review coming from a guy who very rarely watches anime. Attack on Titan and Samurai Jack pretty much sums up my limited exposure to this culture. Anyway… Peace!

Short review,

I'm not sure how this show got so popular with its poor storytelling and average characters.

The story is so forced to move along a linear path and certain decisions that the NPCs and the hero makes is so forced. String of inexplicable events that happen in the show really take you out of the story and sometimes even frustrate the viewing experience.

The show definitely had its cool moments and showed its potential, but those moments were soon ruined by the scenes succeeding it. I wish they focused more on its unique trait of having a protagonist who only excels in defense ... and has limited offensive options and wins battles with his wits.

Story: 3/10, Art: 8/10, Sound: 8/10, Character: 5/10, Enjoyment 4/10,
overall 6/10

This series has an interesting premise, the idea of someone's naivety leading to them being taken advantage of when they get isekai'd is a fairly fresh and logical take premise for the genre, but unfortunately the execution leaves much to be desired as after a bit of weirdness wherein the main character buys slaves (which makes sense for his character, but the show handles the subject matter super weirdly for the entire runtime) the story rapidly devolves into your typical generic isekai power fantasy harem nonsense.

For what its worth, its at least up to par with other isekai shows in terms of art, the characters ... are somewhat believable (although written in a manner that validates some rather slimy worldviews) and it's not unpleasant to watch (most of the time) so I can't give this a negative score, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're after some mindless popcorn entertainment.

It's got a strong start then fizzles out as it goes on, especially after abandoning the reason it stood out. I didn't hate it, it just became disappointing and boring after awhile.

Going into more detail, the reason it got so much backlash by certain people and drew in so much interest is what happens early on with the protagonist. He gets accused of something he didn't do by someone in power, he gets abandoned by everyone, robbed, he's hated by everyone because of lies and he's left with a defensive power that is nearly useless since he's alone and unable to even wield weapons.

The strength ... was not only the under dog trying to survive and rise up through adversity, it's that he wasn't brought down by someone who was just physically stronger, there's no monster he can just beat. He was brought down by his fellow man, and the writing of how he was treated was actually very realistic. You might wonder why they were so willing to throw away one of the heroes, but this is also explained later on. He was cast into a hated role against his will and was betrayed by those in power and demonized by nearly everyone in the kingdom. All while having innocent lives need the protection of the heroes, which leads to a conflict of wanting to help the people and hating them for betraying him. That was the interesting part.

Minor vague spoilers at this point.

As it goes on he starts getting companions. The first acquisition is pretty messed up, although you could argue it's better he took her in than leave her, morally grey at best. Then we find out her species just immediately matures and she just becomes a competent fighter, a fully grown adult who chooses to follow him, negating all the difficulties and moral conflicts nearly instantly. Then he buys an egg that by chance becomes an ultra rare sentient companion, which turns into a girl and ages up enough to be useful in battle. After this point he and his party become very powerful.

Not only are the accusations quickly cleared, but the accusers are stripped of power. On top of that, there's a whole show of it and they basically have magic televisions all over the kingdom broadcasting it and after the trial everyone believes him and that's the end of that. The writing becomes very unrealistic for the convenience of the plot. I mean unrealistic as far as human behavior, not because there's magic.

At that point it just becomes a more generic isekai of a guy and his all female group wandering around becoming more powerful and recruiting more female characters who will, yet again, end up being being overpowered because his group is the best. Everything that was good about the early parts is basically gone. I even read ahead a bit in the manga but I just got bored and stopped at one point, and I never went back. It just becomes very average after a while.

The character writing was particularly terrible, save for a few.
The villians were cartoonish in their antics with several filler-like episodes; villains show up, cause problems, drats foiled again! Their motivations are never defined, just senseless prejudice to give Naofumi something to hate.
The sword and bow hero show some awareness of something going on (after too many episodes), however never make any meaningful decisions and remain useless.
Filo is an overpowered mascot figure, no backstory or depth to her actions, which is fine except for the one battle where Filo goes full "NAKAMA POWER" which felt very out of place and forced.
If it wasn't for how comical ... the villians were, more credit could have been given to side characters that believed in Naofumi.

As for Naofumi, from naive to only placing trust on a contract/business deal basis to finally being able to smile and make friends again, Naofumi's development was the most natural. Although his initial motivation was simply to survive/take revenge, his pairing with Raphtalia helped him empathise with the weak as he later seeks to protect them.
However, Naofumi developing offensive capabilities which end up 1 shotting most major enemies detracts from the original premise to the point where nothing presents any real challenge to spur further development.
Raphtalia had some great moments in the first half, overcoming her past, standing up for Naofumi and fighting hand in hand with him, but her role dimishes to just emotional support which gets repetitive.

The queen's debut episode was well worth the wait (though I binged the whole series in a day).

The story progression was severely delayed in favor of side quests which could have easily been used for side character development, yet little to none of that happened because "ooh Naofumi bad, don't believe what he says". The main mystery in the story is introduced in the first episode and finally makes progress in the last episode.

This could have easily been 12 episodes without losing anything of value, however for the few highlights this was still entertaining.

When I first started watching this series, I really enjoyed it... so much so that I couldn't wait a week for the next episode and binged the light novels. And the light novels are pretty good... they'd easily make my list of the top 20 light novel series I'm waiting to continue.

Now, it's very rare for an anime to fully express the greatness of a light novel series it's based on, and legitimately so, as the production process is much more expensive for anime... but some of the creative licenses taken with this story, and especially some of the characters' decisions, are just face-palm ... levels of frustrating... to the point where eventually I just couldn't stand to keep watching anymore. The character animation is spot-on, though, and the opening theme is catchy.

Shield Hero

From the approach an Isekai like any other, without great individuality. If it weren't for the mostly gloomy atmosphere and the betrayal at the beginning. These two things represent this Isekai and ensure that it is more popular than it actually deserves.

Don't get this wrong, "Shield Hero" is by far one of my favorites among the Isekai and probably one of my more likable favorites in general.

Among other things, this anime managed to put together a sympathetic troop, with a very appealing protagonist. It is a very good and captivating introduction and a mysterious plot.

The biggest problem and the reason why this series has ... lost quality for many, including me, is that the story breaks off completely from episodes 5-6. Somehow it holds up to episode 12, but from then on it is below average. The episodes are poorly executed, there is no tension, it is sluggish and the important developments seem to have no impact. Whereas the first episodes of the season were extremely intense.
And only by cutting off this potential, nothing can come of the first season.

By the way, the anime adaptation is full of censorships from the novel/manga, which make some scenes seem much more harmless than they should.

Story [4]
Apart from "fighting the mysterious waves", the concept is quite simple. The hero has to fight for his honor and his life, which was almost stolen from him. He forms a group and ensures that his reputation increases. This flow is kept almost through to the end and there aren't many resolutions in season one. Given the length of the novel, this is not surprising either.

Characters [4]
I like Naofumi, Raphtalia and Filo too. All 3 are sympathetic, even if I can understand why Filo is a thorn in the eye for many. Naofumi is a very promising protagonist who has a personable charisma and has some personality. Raphtalia is still untreated, but aside from the minimal fan service, she is a stronger female personality with character. Filo is Filo, a hyperactive bird creature who doesn't add much to the plot other than being an active supporter.
- The problem is, I can hardly take the troupe seriously because they are practically a loli harem. As much as it hurts me, I have to accept that fact. Their character relationships are also largely based on this. At least it's always nice to see how the characters feel about Naofumi. Melty is so far a difficult character to assess due to her short screen time.
The use of fan service on these characters has been hugely questionable, among other things. Especially with a newly born Filo. I already see certain fetishes there.

Most of the supporting characters are below average or poor. In this regard, of course, the 3 other heroes were deliberately written as stupidly as possible. Hateful characters are beautiful, but these are just mindless and incomprehensibly stupid. Most of the other supporting characters have no personality whatsoever.
On the positive side, I have to say "Malty" who is practically the primary antagonist of the first season and yet is a very fascinating character. They were later even more surprising than I thought. In any case, its very presence gives the first 5 episodes a perfect touch. Her screen time was practically relevant for the first season, without her the whole thing would hardly have worked.


Animations [6]
At first, the animations had a subtle dynamic, which almost completely disappeared over the course of the episodes. The later episodes were mostly animated in an average way and had hardly any dynamism or charisma.


Music [6]
Both intros have that certain "something" and are above average thanks to a catchy song. The visual representation also helps.
The Osts are not okay and underline some scenes satisfactorily.


The first season of Shield Hero could have been stunning, as long as more effort had been put into adapting and implementing the plot. Unfortunately, this is the unchanging result and I hope for a great improvement in season two.

Nevertheless, this anime is well worth watching and has certain qualities that should not be ignored.

Enjoyment - 7
Overall - 5

Started with a lame generic set-up, but an interesting drastic change of tone happened. Got a pretty good set of protags, but has a crappy set of villains. Then a rushed final arc that was a set-up for a continuation ended the season with 0 goals achieved.

It might sound like I hated this but, honestly, I was fine with it.
I did skip through a lot. I skipped through the fanservice Filo vs Fitoria episode. And prior to that, I was skipping through the first episode as I found the introduction lame, rushed, and very generic. But turns out, it was an intentional set-up for a ... twist by the end of the episode, which will also be the root of the protagonist's character motivations.
That twist got me interested enough to watch the rest. It got me invested for quite a while until the protagonist started dealing with some cartoonish level of villains. From that point on, I knew the anime was heading into generic action-comedy territory. You could also smell the harem fillers coming from miles away. I kept going since there are only a few episodes left and, it wasn't that bad anyway. Every episode felt like a breeze to watch. It's over in just a few blink of an eye cause there wasn't much to sink in. And then it got to the last arc where everything felt so rushed. They were planting things for the next season even with the current one not concluding yet.

I don't really read Novels and Mangas so I don't know how it went for those. But after watching some videos and some google searches, I'm now aware that there has been some important content that got cut, and that it has been toned down. It was such a shame since it had a pretty interesting concept that could've provided a lot of long-term content. But there's a possibility that the 2nd season can be better if this turned out to be profitable. I'm not getting my hopes up though, nor am I excited for a new season.
I don't dislike it. I was fairly entertained. But I hate that, after 25 episodes, I don't have any takeaway from it.

6 for STORY: Good concept. Nothing concluded.
7 for ART: Character designs are great. Different animation technologies used on some parts blended well enough.
4 for SOUND: Didn't even notice any BGMs. 1st OP fits fine, 2nd OP not so much.
5 for Characters: Aside from the protags (excluding Melty. Generic loli-tsundere :P), Beloukas the Slave Trader is the only one worth mentioning. Myne was consistently an irritating villain but not because she was a well-written antagonist. Just loudly interrupting the protags and say something that every stupid bystander will believe in. Ren and Motoyasu had a chance for some character development but, they seem to have saved it for next season.

Spanning drama genres up to the famous Isekai, the big reason why the anime repentance fame was attributed to a political issue in relation to a rape charge against Naofumi regarding the anime's “heavy and dark” themed display. However, as the plot unfolds, everything will take on a much lighter tone and without a gender pattern, developing mainly the emotional and the trust complex of the protagonist.


The main hero is not treated as a savior, but as the enemy and I liked that! That whole scene where Naofumi is falsely accused of liking our main protagonist. A switch is activated inside it and it enters ... the duration mode. This is certainly one of the strengths of the anime.


'The Rising of the Shield Hero' is very lively, with an excellent character design. The anime has great action scenes, but there is a lot of talk during those scenes. The construction of the world retains a lot of information for a long time and many of the secondary characters are underdeveloped.

It is clear that the greatest strength and emotional core of the program is the relationship between Naofumi and Raphtalia. It is well developed and the main reason for concern about what happens, Naofumi and Raphtalia saving each other is something stronger than anime. 'The Rising of the Shield Hero' contains a story about how to find the meaning of connections with other people.


'The Rising of the Shield Hero' does not fail to deliver a good anime that deviates from some generic rules, but it cannot completely deviate from the clichés, without an ending, it was a pleasant work to follow in the midst of this flood of Isekais.

translated by google translator.

Man honestly shield hero wasn't good by any means, the narrative and story itself was horrible and the plot devices used here are plain bad. and don't even get me started on the plot holes, its pretty much the only thing consistent throughout the series lmao.

But one thing I do like is the different angle this anime went for when telling the story, it was as real as it can get, you get a real feel for how the political aspect of the story works, the underhanded tricks society uses against you, and the way it showed Naofumi slowly understand how the shield works ... is also a great pleasure to watch. But yet again, the dynamic of the show is ruined by the bad story planning and shitty characters.

6/10
Overall I liked the beginning and end of the series, but the mid point conflict and storyline was unbearable. I also appreciate how this series made me want to beat the shit out of a woman, fuck you myne. That is all, great story, horrible execution.