Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari Season 2

This show is a piece of trash, and I’m shocked I or anyone else ever gave it the time of day. The first four episodes of season one are decent, and while the production issues which would later come to plague the series were already rearing their ugly heads even back then—bad CG, bits of clunky animation, and so on—the actual story they told, at least as far as isekai is concerned, was fairly compelling, and the firestorm of internet controversy they ignited was thoroughly hilarious. However, immediately after this, the series devolved into the most generic isekai harem you’ve ever seen, and nothing about ... it is worth anyone’s time for a list of reasons both obvious and egregious.

Reason 1: How the fuck are we not bored of this yet?
Gosh, where do I even begin? I’m so glad Mushoku Tensei came out between now and the previous season of Shield Hero, because it serves as a nice and easy example to reference when explaining why this very similar anime is, in comparison, complete shit. Isekai as a genre has grown into this unholy behemoth, and almost all of it has been awful, but Mushoku Tensei was a truly refreshing exception. In oversimplified terms, both are isekai anime with an overpowered MC who is, at least ostensibly, easily characterized as a self-insert. However, their execution sets them apart completely. Where Mushoku Tensei actually cared about developing a uniquely detailed fantasy setting whose immersion was only bolstered by the stellar background art, beautiful colors, and hand-drawn detail, Shield Hero relies on the same RPG video game standard we’ve seen used fifteen billion times by now, whose drab, ugly, lackluster banality and endless info-dumping is only made worse by the hideous art design, garish CG, stale environments, and shitty over-designed, off-model character art. It’s an anime that both looks and feels incredibly cheap, and I’m having a very hard time figuring out why this series has received so much attention, even as a light novel. I understand why it grabbed peoples’ attention at first—and we’ll get back to that in a minute—but why didn’t people get bored and drop it after it became so generic and boring? Was the first arc just good enough to keep people around, no matter how awful it got? Because as it stands now, I’m genuinely challenging myself to find any difference between this and the seasonal isekais that nameless studios pump out every season, and I seriously cannot find anything.

Reason 2: What the fuck is the author expecting me to see in this man?
Whenever a show comes out that doesn’t conform to peoples’ strict worldview, it has become normal to see internet mobs trying to “cancel” such anime. The most common source of this sort of whining and bitching is, as one might expect, lolis. Anime containing loli fanservice or lolis in general will very often find themselves the targets of raging lynch mobs screaming about how they contain or promote pedophilia, and while this may seem like a ridiculous thing to suggest, I must say, as an individual who grew up and lives in a country where the first response to gun violence in schools has always been out-of-touch elected officials blaming the sales figures of Grand Theft Auto V, this method of conflating fictional entertainment with real life social issues is actually a very common thing. However, in the anime community, these people almost always come across as virtue signaling prudes or, as is most often the case, as complete charlatans who don’t actually give a shit and who just want to ignite controversy surrounding a show they don’t like. I know reviews can be taken down for analysis like this, but I’m not technically breaking the rules as I’m not commenting on viewers of this show specifically, and either way, I don’t disrespect the hustle. I’m an attention whore myself, and I’m glad I brought up Mushoku Tensei earlier, because the controversy surrounding that series absolutely reeked of this, and it remains a good comparison for my thoughts on Shield Hero. The protagonist of Mushoku Tensei was an outright sexual deviant, and this became quite controversial not simply as a matter of fact, but also because the series and its characters seemed to go out of their own way to make excuses for his behavior in a way many found discomforting.

Personally, I enjoyed Mushoku Tensei for two main reasons. Firstly, it had a clear and impressive amount of effort put into its production, and seeing such love and care from the creators behind it gave me an inherent respect for the series. Secondly and more importantly, it was shockingly and consistency well-written in a way that most anime—and certainly most isekai—are not. But why is this relevant to the controversy, and why is the controversy relevant to Shield Hero? Naofumi is, generally speaking, a good person, and Rudeus, the protagonist of Mushoku Tensei, is not. He’s a borderline narcissist who has great difficulties recognizing his own faults, and whenever he does recognize such faults, he turns into a pouty child who’s incapable of getting out of his own head and improving in real terms. Much more damning is the fact he’s a pervert, and his willingness to cross the physical boundaries of women in his life is only exacerbated by the fact he’s the protagonist of an isekai harem and, quite crucially, knows it. Before being isekai’d, he was a disgusting otaku NEET who spent his days jerking off to anime girls exactly like the one’s who he now inhabits a world surrounded by, so his tendency to instantly view and treat the women he meets as sex objects is frankly gross. I could go on, but hopefully you get BOTH of the points I’m making here. Point one is obvious: Rudeus really is a scummy guy. But the second point is what I’m really getting at: Rudeus is a real, fleshed-out, well-rounded, flawed character, NOT a self-insert. He has some positive qualities, and he has what some might consider to be a relatable backstory, but he is far too complex and unpleasant of a character to be broadly considered a “self-insert.”

In comparison, Naofumi was a real character for about four episodes, and ever since those first four episodes (which were not the most brilliantly written pieces of literature in the first place), he has been a classic, hollow, lifeless self-insert, and this is where the controversy becomes relevant, because what is a self-insert? Why is it used as a derogatory term? A self-insert is a protagonist who the author deliberately designed to be as generic and unremarkable as possible, while simultaneously being as relatable as possible, but only by means of the most inoffensive, broadly applicable, and unchallenging personality traits imaginable, all for the soul purpose of creating a clear and inviting non-character for the audience to project themselves onto to achieve maximum escapism when watching a show, which itself is also deliberately pandering in whatever way. This is usually considered to be a negative way to construct a character, because not only is it cynical and manipulative, but because it is simply a recipe for an awful script. If you’re watching anime because you want to actually watch an anime and not insert yourself into it for whatever indulgent, masturbatory reasons you may have, and you actually want to be treated to quality storytelling, then this approach to constructing a protagonist is obviously contemptible. Naofumi going from a brooding, expressive, angry MGTOW to some generic light novel man and falling squarely into this self-insert trap can be criticized on these terms, but watching this season, I’ve started looking at this show from a slightly different angle, because this show features slavery. And that’s fine. I mean, slavery exited in real life, so why shouldn’t it exist in fiction, right?

My reaction to these kinds of things being included in anime has always been to simply shrug it off and ask, “Who gives a shit?” But then I started to truly appreciate the angle Shield Hero was taking. In the first four episodes of season one, back when (despite not being the best anime ever made or anything) the show was actually decent and able to be invested in, the initial handling of slavery didn’t seem particularly eyebrow-raising to me. Regardless of the inherent evil of the institution, he used it to rescue Raphtalia from a horrendous situation, and her thankfulness didn’t seem inappropriate to me. When taken out of context, sure, presenting a character as being happy to be someone else’s slave might make you question the author’s intentions, but in context, it worked given the nature of the setting, the circumstances of the story, and the personalities of the characters. But what happens to this dynamic when the characters lose their personalities? What happens to this dynamic when the protagonist goes from being a desperate man raging against a corrupt system maliciously rigged against him, using whatever means he could and taking advantage of whatever institutions were at his disposal to gain victory, to a generic, unchallenged, deadpan self-insert with an afterthought of a personality? And most of all, what happens when this dynamic becomes unnecessary? What happens when new waifus willingly becoming slaves just becomes a fun little gimmick of the story? At what point do we start asking ourselves if, actually, the slave harem was the author’s fetish all along, and at what point did he expect his audience to self-insert with his Ottoman Sultan harem-having slave-driving protagonist?

Reason 3: What is even the fucking point anymore? (Spoiler: there is no point.)
The plot of this season picks up pretty much exactly where season one left off. There’s lots of boring, generic new characters to replace some of the side characters from the previous arc, and while the main cast obviously remains the focus of the story, everyone feels like a complete husk of whatever they once were. Filo, for example, has always been a hollow character, so I guess calling her a husk isn’t much of an insult, but Raphtalia lost any spark of life she previous had and has devolved into your standard mid-class pandering waifu, and as I’ve discussed now at great length, Naofumi is a self-insert. Just stoic Mr. Isekai Man who everyone loves and who can do anything. They info-dump the plot to come, then it comes, and there’s a new setting, so they info-dump all that, and life goes on with a string of unexceptional, over-the-top, villain-of-the-week monstrous perverts for white knight Mr. Isekai Man to save all his women from and gain the love of everyone. If I’m to bring Mushoku Tensei back for one more comparison, I guess it should be: what is the fucking point? Mushoku Tensei is about Rudeus coming to respect himself on his own terms while also learning to value the bonds of family which he in his past life was too self-centered to grasp. Shield Hero was, at one time, briefly about learning to love and trust in an unfair world you never understood and which valued you less than dirt. Its theme was poignant and empathetic. But those days are over now. They were over in 2019 when, over the course of a single episode, the series transitioned from betrayal and redemption to atrociously animated sequences of the villains humiliating themselves with goofy retard music playing clumsily in the background.

Season one started decently, and quickly descended into mediocrity and failure.
Season two is just mediocrity and failure from start to finish.

Thank you for reading.

After watching this season, I can safely say, Malty is the reason why I even finished Season 1. The biggest problem with Shield Hero is that it just isn’t as satisfying to watch anymore, because the revenge plot is done, and now it’s just a generic isekai. I’m sure the studio and animators realized that, so what did they do? They proceeded to milk the living heck out of Raphtalia and create some fan service, because they know there are many people watching this show just for her. I had low expectations coming into this season, because I didn’t think Season 1 was that good ... to begin with, especially in the second half. Somehow this season still ended up being disappointing. This season of Shield Hero was paced poorly, was uninteresting, the characters got even worse, but it did have one saving grace, and I’ll highlight that down below.


My grading criteria: Story: /25 Art: /10 Music: /10 Characters: /20 Enjoyment /15 Thematic Execution /20

STORY: 5.5/25

An awkward mess would be an understatement. Granted, I didn’t expect a whole lot from this season, but this was not good. I’ll talk briefly about the two main arcs of this season:

The spirit tortoise arc. Absolutely atrocious, and I’m sure most of you agree. I started the arc and the first thing I wondered was who Éclair was. I looked back at the previous season, skimmed through wikis, and I found nothing about her. So, you’re telling me she just showed up? YUP! That was the first sign that this was getting extremely rushed, even though I’ve never read the light novel. I don’t blame them for rushing this though, because it’s just a boring arc, and I can see why this rushed it, but you can’t introduce an important character without letting us know who she was beforehand. The biggest problem to me was how they deviated from the plot of season 1, which was fighting the waves, and seeing the video game mechanics in play. This time, there’s just this random tortoise thing that’s supposedly a danger to the world, which felt so random.

After a few episodes of meandering about doing a whole lot of nothing, Naofumi and company face off against Kyo Ethnina, who is officially one of my least favourite villains of all time. The way he just shouts so annoyingly, but honestly has the same intelligence as people in Team Rocket from Pokemon is just near unbearable. All he does is shout arrogantly, and when he gets defeated, WHOOP-DEE-DOO, he has yet another trick up his sleeve. Very poor character writing, and one of the lamest villains I’ve laid my eyes on, Malty was actually frustrating to watch, in a somewhat good way, and vastly superior to Kyo.

Next, we have the New World arc, which started off decently, but once Kyo came back on the screen, I realized that it’s still horrible. The first few episodes of this arc were the best of the entire season, and those were the episodes where virtually nothing happened, and they were exploring the Infinite Labyrinth. Obviously, the writers knew that the series was struggling at this point, so how should we save the story? SMOL RAPHTALIA IS DEFINITELY THE ANSWER TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS!!! Yikes. Though, the reason for my increased enjoyment to start this arc was the addition of the Cardinal Hunting Hero Kizuna, who was a fun and bubbly character with at least a little personality. Another reason is that Shield Hero finally got back to its roots and focused on levelling up and gaining items, which was the best part about Shield Hero in Season 1. Twists and turns happen, the gang eventually reunites again after episode after episode of absolute nonsense and Raphtalia not leaving the screen for more than two seconds. The villains were uninteresting, and the ending of the arc was rushed heavily as well.

Overall, just hugely rushed. The development of the characters was poor, the villains were lame, and the amount of plot holes was crazy.

ART: 4.2/10

Huge step down from Season 1, and it became abundantly clear that Kinema Citrus was already setting their sights on working on Made In Abyss Season 2. Character expressions were awkward, fight scenes took place in stills, and the Spirit Tortoise looked like a huge, heavy pile of CG. Yikes.

MUSIC: 8.4/10

I will say, Kevin Penkin is still the saving grace of this show, and the music is pretty good in important scenes. Looking forward to his work in Made In Abyss Season 2. The opening was not as good as the first two, and the ending was alright.

CHARACTERS: 5.5/20

Uninspiring, boring, and just stock characters. Maybe they’re kinda cool in fight scenes, but what could you tell me about any type of reasonable character development? Let’s go over some of the characters.

Everyone’s favourite character, Raphtalia! I’m convinced she’s just here since the fans love her. She can fight, and keep Naofumi level-headed, but that’s no different from Season 1. The romance is just there because you just gotta have some kind of a harem in an isekai for the fans to be happy. When the story gets bad, they just show some smol Raphtalia, and expect the fans to be satisfied.

Let’s talk about Filo and Rishia now. Filo barely got any screen time, and there was no development for her, she’s just there. Rishia got my character development this time, by being more brave I suppose, and building up her skills. Her plot armour is crazy though, as not even Kyo’s gravity attack can oppose her. The question though is, why was Rishia wearing that Filo outfit in the tortoise arc???

I mentioned Kyo earlier, and how bad he is, so let’s talk about our saving grace, Kizuna. Definitely the best character in the series, because she’s strong, and has a pretty fun personality. Still a very bare-bones character that would benefit from some development. Would love to see more of her.

Finally, let’s talk about our protagonist, Naofumi. He seems like a smart guy right? To be honest, he’s just an average protagonist, but he looks smart because everyone around him have very low intelligence, and rely on him to do the heavy lifting, though we do see this theme quite a lot in other shows as well, it just seems more noticeable here. He’s a solid character, but his only intriguing aspect is when he gets angry and the wrath shield tries to take over. I still don’t understand how he can attack when he’s supposed to be a defensively oriented hero.

ENJOYMENT: 2.5/15

I found myself completely checked out at times, and there was little to no elements that had me enjoying this season.

THEMATIC EXECUTION: 4/20

What this show does, is fix bad thematic execution, with what the writer and director thinks is good themes. For example, if a fight was underwhelming, or if the story was convoluted, they’d try to fix it with some fan service. If the plot was boring, they’d try to spice things up with a hint of romance. It just doesn’t work. No themes were executed well, as a lot of things felt forced and rushed.

OVERALL: 30.1/100

Definitely the worst show I watched in the spring season. The story was massively rushed, the characters were uninspiring and bland, the villains were lame, and I didn’t enjoy it at all. I even heard that they didn’t follow the light novel very well from the readers. It’s a shame, though I kind of expected this, since the second half of the first season gave me signs that the story would go downhill, but I didn’t expect that this would be this appalling. The production and animation overall was very janky as well. The saving grace for this series was definitely Kizuna and Kevin Penkin’s composing. I believe that Season 3 might be a bit better than this season, but I’m not going to be expecting much at all.

The Rising of Shield Hero Season 2 is one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had to sit through, and this is coming from a Yankees fan. How do you even manage to fuck up a sequel to one of the most popular LN adaptations of all time this badly?

Say what you want about the first season of Shield Hero, but it was hard to deny it was all the rage back in 2019. As early as the first episode’s airing people were either ranking it among their Top 10 or throwing shitfits over it. There’s not much to say about Season 1 that hasn’t ... already been said by thousands of others. Shield Hero is the definition of low-hanging fruit at this point. It’s juvenile shlock with terrible characters and endless plot contrivances that has no idea what it wants to be. I hated it, but at the same time I kept coming back. At the end of the day I had fun watching it week to week, laughing at the comical amounts of edge, tonal whiplash and stilted dialogue. Season 2 on the other hand strayed so far from my expectations I was left speechless by just how consistently fucking terrible it managed to be every episode. It’s not bad in the entertaining sense, it’s bad in a way that just leaves you incensed. So much of it fundamentally fails on every level that you’d think this was the result of some kind of corporate sabotage scheme put into place by the vengeful author of another terrible isekai series, angry that his internet fanfiction turned legitimate franchise was overshadowed.

As you can probably guess, Season 1 left off on all the plot threads that kept people watching (the rape accusation, the “other universes” nonsense, etc.) resolved in the most unsatisfying ways possible; now Naofumi the Shield Hero/wholesome slave owner and his harem of walking cliches have pretty much accomplished all the goals that were set in the first season, or the first 5 volumes of the novels. Here’s the issue: the whole point of the "rising" of the Shield Hero was already shown in the first season. There’s nowhere else to go from here, but considering there was still 17 volumes left to cover, a second season is pretty much a given. Guess what Kinema Citrus decides to do? Rush through the following volumes, completely skip context to new characters and story developments, and drag out what fans already consider to be the worst arc in the series with a decreased animation budget and worse directing. Great. Of course most viewers won’t know any of this supplemental info at first, so they’ll be immediately let down. I couldn’t think of a better way to make sure 70% of viewers drop your series within the first 5 episodes.

The Spirit Turtle/Kyo arc is (from what I’ve heard) incredibly boring enough in the novels, so I have no idea why the studio chose to turn it into even more of a pointless slog. I couldn’t tell what the worst part of this season was, the endless scenes of characters spouting prosaic dialogue at each other for minutes on end, pedestrian attempts at developing characters or the stale, repetitive fight scenes that only exist to hook the audience back in after the other 2 put them to sleep. Director Masato Jinbo doesn’t have that bad a record, working on stuff like Shakugan no Shana S2 and Yuru Camp. The animation is considerably less polished than Season 1 and there’s an embarrassing number of off-model shots, even during still frames or any one of the thousands of mind-numbing talking scenes. Looking at all the shoddily drawn characters is more stimulating than actually listening to them converse. It’s a direct contrast to Season 1, which looked leagues better than this. In Season 1 characters were hardly ever off-model for 25 episodes, and the worst I can say about the animation was that it relied too heavily on CGI models for a lot of fight sequences. The background characters even looked like humans instead of stick figures most of the time, and it's sad that I have to praise it for doing the bare minimum that most anime can't even seem to accomplish these days. What’s the problem here? Did they not care? I’d have to guess that condensing the volumes of the story this season covers into a 13 episode season gave the staff less time to refine everything from adapting the light novels to a television format to making sure it actually looked halfway finished. This was probably the decision that sealed Season 2's fate.

On the topic of characters, one of the biggest blights on this season is the new character Rishia. She’s so fucking annoying. I thought people were overreacting before I started the season but yeah, she really is one of the least likeable characters ever written. 99% of her screentime is wasted on her obsessing over one of the heroes who wants nothing to do with her (understandable), crying for some reason or just being dead weight in fights or emotional scenes. Season 2 opts to skip most of the scenes establishing her and make her feel like a genuine addition to the cast and just skip right into her training, making her feel like she was awkwardly inserted into the story at the last moment. You’d think a character like this would have some kind of arc or emotional resolution but she NEVER IMPROVES. She’s obnoxious and stagnant enough to the point Naofumi calling her out during his rage scene feels completely justified instead of mean-spirited. The reason I reserved almost an entire paragraph for her is because she’s a major character in the season, and you’d better believe they try to force you to like every time she’s onscreen despite the fact there’s absolutely nothing to like.

Naofumi and his harem are as insipid as ever. The other new characters from parallel universes range from uninteresting to background scenery. Glass, the mostly silent rival to Naofumi from the first season, gets ruined as she becomes another sidekick for Naofumi. The arc villain Kyo is a bland, two-dimensional prick with about as much likeability as Rishia. Season 1 at least had the smart idea of making all the villains comically over the top, unapologetically evil scumbags so you could enjoy how awful they were, and get some satisfaction when they finally go down. Kyo is not only unbearably annoying but also has no depth to him. Filler villains in Naruto have more complexity than this guy, who’s supposed to be a major player in the Shield Hero world, as he’s the illegitimate Book Hero as well as being from a parallel world. He appears, conducts a little evil in the background, makes some evil swords (ripped off from that one Bleach arc for some reason) and gets defeated in one of the least exciting climactic battles ever animated. You really think nothing of him the entire season and forget everything about him once it’s over.

Shield Hero Season 2 is an unbearably ugly, passionless and aggravating sequel to a series that didn’t really need any further continuation. I actually feel like I was too hard on Season 1 in the past, because despite it being tasteless, ludicrous and offensive to everyone, it was entertaining. It was fun, ridiculously grimy shit you got invested in because it always managed to rise to some absurd new level of stupidity. Season 2 has nothing of value. It insults fans of the light novels and the manga by removing key elements of the story. It insults casual viewers by being an ugly, vacuous waste of time. There is nothing redeeming about The Rising of Shield Hero Season 2 and it should not have been made. There was no passion put into the production at any level and it absolutely shows. The best thing you can say about this season that it’s a massive letdown and the worst thing you can say probably breaks several MAL guidelines. I’m not even a fan of the series yet I still feel like a part of me died watching this.