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.
