*** Genre ***
Isekai tropes are present throughout Shield Hero, but are they relevant for it’s story? Not for much of it. Both Shield Hero's world and characters work well without the Isekai version of a heads-up displays for the heroes, or the TV-style projectors Melromarc's government uses to spread news to commoners. These are just ugly plot devices to allow for convenient narration shortcuts, without significantly influencing the plot itself. The story is closer to epic fantasy worlds than to vanilla SAO-type Isekai. Shield Hero relates to shows such as "Danmachi", "Made in Abyss", "The Twelve Kingdoms", or "Spice and Wolf" equally well.
Other premises are more typical of the isekai genre, These include leveling and grinding mechanics, and of course the waves of catastrophe and the related dragon clocks. A wave, timed with second precision by the dragon clocks, is a periodic, world scale attack coming literally out of blue sky. The heroes have to be prepared to this heartbeat of increasingly difficult opponents, which feels like a forced way to create a feeling of emergency. It’s only consequent that wave fights are shown, but the world’s overall strategy to deal with the wave phenomenon is given more attention.
*** Story ***
Shield Hero is typical high fantasy regarding the size of it's narrative, cast and world . The plot details touch many hot-button issues in a way driving away parts of the audience very early on. They miss out on the quite decent saga this debatable shock-value kick-start evolves into. The cast is diverse regarding to races, stereotypes, social level, and age. The world building is done in nuanced detail, with each location having a distinct history, population, and political interest.
The story briefly introduces the main cast and rudimentary isekai mechanics first, and then for a long arc turns into a road movie of the titular hero's adventurer party. His journey becomes increasingly influenced by political intrigue which culminates in a stand-off of opposing political camps near the capital. The season ends on a cliff-hanger related to the multiverse structure of it's world.
Like a classic Bildungsroman, Shield Hero builds it’s characters trough training montages, fights, contact with players more powerful than themselves, and some individual's dark past. In particular I enjoyed some smaller arcs from genres rarely covered elsewhere, such as a trading arc similar to "Spice and Wolf" and a healer arc reminiscent of "Mushishi" plots. The protagonists and antagonists only think they understand this worlds' nature, but while unraveling it new mysteries keep appearing. This unreliable narrator trope is used a lot, e.g. news in this world spreads at proper medieval speed and rumor grade distortion only.
The single most polarizing accusation the show faced is that Naofumi is a self-insert incel (“involuntary celibate”, a derogative term for single males) protagonist with despicable morals and obnoxious methods. Some viewers see large parts of the story's premises as mere vindication to allow Naofumi to do questionable things in good faith. In their judgement, Naofumi mind-breaks Raphtalia to transform her into a child soldier, and by this slavery and child abuse are glorified and the Stockholm Syndrome and trauma are exploited. Superficially this makes sense. To make things worse, there is cognitive dissonance in the upbeat montage that's visually narrating Raphtalia's training arc. Is it delivering or deconstructing a slave owner's mentality excuse plot? The sequence remains ambiguous, if it is deconstruction, it’s success gets stuck half way between School Days' and Madoka Magica. However, consider similar arcs in Game of Thrones, such as Arya Stark and the Hound. The Shield Hero's versions are wooden in comparison, but in GoT we accept medieval moral standards and logic because they're just consistent within their world and era. Why not in anime?
The narration techniques Shield Hero uses are fairly modern, which is a huge advancement for the Isekai genre on it’s way to catch up with contemporary hard high fantasy story telling. In it’s execution, and when own inventions come into play, Shield Hero’s narration sometimes fails to deliver on it's ambitious goals. Complexities of the best-selling light novel plot are sacrified too easily on the altar of PG-13 approval.
There’s too much cognitive dissonance between an epic, mature at heart base story, and the at times heavy-handed, oversimplified and forced way it is told. It's almost like two parallel narrations. One is the adult, nuanced plot contrasting the two main power couples, Raphtalia/Naofumi and the Queen and King of Melromarc. The other is the over the top, cartoonish plot told trough the third power couple, which is Malty and Motoyasu, with the help of comic relief and chicken-ex-machina Filo. This coarse team easily annoys adult viewers like myself with it's cliche overuse, and the clumsy ways Malty begs for our hatred and the other heroes for our schadenfreude. Unfortunately these sub-stories are too important to the overall arc to be ignored.
Shield Hero’s story telling approach is ambitious, but fails to fully meet all of it's goals. There are rough edges which include decency of plot devices and heavy handed character designs with forced plot, but equally many innovative and entertaining aspects as well. Because Shield Hero points into a direction I like to see more of in future anime, innovates the isekai genre, and has the courage to touch hot irons, I still rate it (6/10), despite visible flaws.
*** Animation ***
The animation in Shield hero is average at best, the art style uninteresting. The detail level changes far too often and static montages are overused. One can literally see how producers decided to save money on scenes selectively. This hurts the fight scenes in particular, which have little fluidity, are using a lot of bad CGI and have PowerPoint grade frame rates. Despite some visible effort to increase the detail level of faces during emotional scenes and big plot changing decisions, the protagonist's faces often weren't drawn expressive enough to give their dialog visual credibility. This often leads to uncanny valley situations where you hear them talking about about big emotions, but can't see those and by this have empathy. Animation is by far the biggest shortcoming of the series, rating as low as (3/10).
*** Sound ***
When looking at the low animation quality, you would’t expect the outstanding sound and music in Shield Hero. This is largely owed to Kinema Citrus’ Australian prodigy collaborator Kevin Penkin of "Made in Abyss" fame. He delivered very strong OPs and EDs, where the dramatic K-pop anthem OP1 and the enka influenced ED1 are particularly memorable. ED1 pretty much made it into my personal top 20 of anime songs, and certainly is a contender for best ending of the year. The sound effects for the environment and fight noises are nothing you will notice much but they are always present and well done. The background music and character themes cover multiple styles and support the plot very well, just as you would expect from the A-tier movie composer Kevin Penkin is. The score is recorded using a full orchestra. An easy (8/10).
*** Characters ***
Arguably some flatness here, but it could be worse. Not all characters develop equally credibly. This is owed not the least to a really large cast, less may have been more. Naofumi's development is titular, continuous, and visible: an interesting, gray character who was discussed in the story section already.
The second member of the leading couple, Raphtalia, is oddly uneven. She has rapid development in the early episodes, then stalls, only to speed up again significantly towards the end. She's not a flat character at all, and her rags-to-riches growth is sufficiently made visible. She is given two full episodes and several long scenes to develop, but some of it in my taste is too forced. Her overall goodness and Rem-grade level of unconditional love for Naofumi-sama make her waifu-bait. But she had deserved a little more Holo-style banter and self-will, to better show her growing maturity, individuality and undeniable wit.
The supporting cast remains underdeveloped, owed largely to anime's run-time. The development and stupidity of Sword and Bow hero is not very credible, and antagonist leading couple Malty and Motoyasu are outright cartoonish. The friendship of the side-kicks Melty and Filo has very little and predictable development only. There are a few cardboard villains with frontal lobotomy such as Idol and the Pope you forget about ten minutes after the episode.
There are some interesting antagonists, such as the Royal couple of Melromarc's and other members of the social elite. They have shades of gray, individual morals and motives. However, their face and woman every fan loves to hate, Malty, is spoiling it. There is an interestingly gray character in Fitoria, but her appearance remains without consequences, as is the team of heroes from another world introduced late in the show. All four certainly will be revisited in a second season, if it comes to pass.
Most players in Shield Hero’s world are neither good nor evil, have individual moral compass and drivers, and are in conflict with themselves over hard decisions they have to make. This may confuse some viewers more used to stark good vs. evil contrasts. Very importantly, there is sum of the parts magic at work. While some characters have issues, the show works amazingly well as an ensemble piece. Cartoonish characters as Motoyasu, Firo and Malty for my taste do more harm to that than good. The rest of the cast too often remains decoration, e.g. using POV story telling for them could have worked miracles.
The world itself is a major character in any isekai, this one in particular because it leans so much towards high fantasy. Just 24 episodes, however, are too short for both world building and detailed character development for everybody, while still having some plot. A second season is needed to build on the groundwork this season laid. Most mains are having credible development arcs, and the world is immersive and despite the usual fantasy caveats pretty consistent. This can't completely make up for some annoying and undeveloped secondary cast roaming in it. (5/10)
*** Enjoyment ***
I've been fantasy trash for all my life outside anime, with fandom for the usual suspects such as Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. I’m also a big fan of adult, morally ambiguous stories in which each character has an individual moral compass and motive and there is no need for “the good side” to win. And Shield Hero caters both preferences.
When I recently started to explore the world of anime, I immediately binged genre classics such as Re:Zero, Konosuba, Youjo Senki, No game No life, Danmachi, on top of the more fantasy and adventure themed Made in Abyss or Spice and Wolf. Verdict: Shield Hero isn't any worse than Re:Zero and most other isekai classics. It's definitely better than Danmachi, even with disadvantage it gets from animation quality.
Crunchyroll has both co-funded and co-produced this show, and it feels like they tryed out many things in the first season, leaving an uneven aftertaste. A huge problem of the show is that it can't make up it's mind regarding target audience. It's appealing to younger isekai fandom, but misses out on genre tropes such as good fighting scenes and almost completely lacks sexualized fan service (which is not a bad thing, just an uncommon decision for the genre). It appeals to a mature audience with world building and gray characters, but annoys them with the caricatures Malty and Motoyasu are. I keep my fingers crossed that Crunchyroll's data-mining department concludes that shifting the series towards mature viewers (down with PG-13!) and adding more animation budget for a second season is the way forward. The characters' background stories and the world itself have all it takes for a satisfying franchise, this season’s implementation doesn't.
The show has many easy attack surfaces if you apply SJW and red flag standards. It actively seeks them. It temporarily has a loli slave, it has a misogynist world view, it has rape, it has some flat and cartoonish antagonists. Those issues are all real, but I love the genre and despise SJW-ish down-voting. Fortunately Shield Hero is not another morally solidifying piece of edification literature - within it's PG 13 and 24 episode anime format limits. Shield Hero is still a (6/10) for me, because I definitely want to see next week's episode – even with some tears in my eyes.
*** Overall ***
(7+3+8+5+6)/5=5.8, rounded to 6 with no corrections needed. People passionately hate or love this show. It touches them in one way or another, so there must be something about it. It sets itself high goals, but fails to deliver on too many of them. The animation quality isn't fun, but Shield Hero is a genre contribution that matters, and this means: above average, (6/10).
