Better than S2?
Without a doubt! but that's not an achievement.
I should have listened to the elitists on twitter when they called this show mid.
Gone are the golden immersive sequences which caught me by surprise in the marvelous orchestration of S1. This season I could barely stop myself from pausing the video, several times, in utter disappointment. I struggle now to recommend this series to anyone other than the Isekai fanatics.
Let's be honest, they got us good. That short stretch of episodes we were blessed with at the dawn of S1 have lived rent-free in our heads for too long. The novelty has now worn off, they can longer hide the flaws.
I remember the loud LN readers telling us how the show was going to be far better after S2's failure. "Tortoise arc was the worst one", "The characters get so much better". I'm not going to say they're wrong. It's no where near as bad as S2, except, what's carrying this experience are the animators and Admiral Penkin, not the story.
Ultimately we must now come to grips with the fact that this show is barely a mid-tier Isekai. The writing and direction are in absolute shambles.
After watching so much anime, I doubt I would find many first times for anything. This show managed to be the first time I was bored during a tournament arc.
I'm a sucker for tournament arcs, but if you wanted to make me hate them, just do it like these guys did.
The tournament arc was just too quick, too sloppy and had such a lack of attention to detail that It just left me stunned frozen in disillusionment. I won't even use lack of tension, they didn't allow enough time for the brawling to get tense, paradoxically speaking.
To go into depth, something simple but important like their disguises were butchered. Honestly they were like elephants hiding behind a bamboo tree. Every twist and turn of this arc broke my concentration. It was all so rough consequently lacking tact and a genuine atmosphere. You could never stop take in the true spectacle and emotion of environment. Oh dear! the dialogue, It was rubbish, this ruined a fair amount of the seriousness as well as any chance of me getting engrossed into it. They designed some surprises along the way but the transitions into them didn't work or felt rushed collectively cheapening the experience.
For me especially, these fights were over too fast, I needed to see more going at it, old school, head to head, 1v1s, 2v2s, 3v3s all with previous skills and abilities we have come to know from the OG squad. There was a moment where I almost got into the zone but was rudely interrupted by some annoying plot point, abruptly killing the momentum. Picture this, a crowd jam packed but seemingly dead, an announcer that is for all intensive purposes doing it for the paycheck, a plot twist but instead of bringing a welcome change of mood it stifled the creation of the mood we desired. Little things that spice up the experience were absent like, dare I say it, the spamming of authentic and interactive crowd reactions after every pivotal moment. Football is far less interesting without an interactive crowd of fans, similarly so here. The funny thing is that, there are many shows with much worse animation/budgets that can recreate the arena environment and ambiance quite well, even if you know the outcome of fights they still manage to make it interesting and enthralling. Another golden aspect of tournaments is some sort of adherence to rules and integrity and if you track where I'm going with this, you can guess what occurred.
Here's a question, can there ever be too many women in these type of shows?
Yes.
It's even worse when the men are treated by the writers as either useless old husks filled with regrets or dumb jobbers.
I hoped for my salvation with the return of the cardinal heroes, on the contrary, they dragged me deeper into mediocrity. Giving some thought to it, outside of Naofumi, the slave merchant and the countless women we are swamped with, the level of characterization is atrocious. They're not characters, they're jobbers. Person A, Person B, Soldier A, Soldier B. There's nothing to them they're robots, barely sentient just churning out the appropriate lines and "Shield Demon" or "Shield Hero".
On the subject of these cardinal heroes. Instead of vivid and creative wisdom in the writing of these characters, we are graced with undeniably some of the most amateur depictions I've ever seen. Basically the other 3 heroes are just cookie-cutter, 2 dimensional, giga social-rejects with barely any autonomy. I talked previously in my review of S2 about these heroes being used as mere plot devices, despite how pivotal a role they play in the greater plot. They aren't real people, they aren't alert, they don't respond to their environment, their only job is to make Naofumi look more righteous. It's a real shame because they could have created really organic and lifelike interactions between them based on their shared background from Japan, or even constructive tips, strategies and methods on leveling their skills and party members. This could have created a great deal of humorous, witty and relatable moments promoting a more memorable experience that the audience could truly appreciate. Things of this nature certainly would have brought the hype of this show back to S1 levels. Oh, lest I forget, the flashbacks, the oh so terrible flashbacks. Utterly laughable, how did authors/writers come up with this? It's hardly believable. They try to show you what happened during the "Tortoise Arc from hell" from the other heroes' perspectives, nevertheless it comes up short. I don't have any confidence that I could think of a more insulting way to portray these events. I was just mortified with what they came up with, a thoroughly senseless exercise in writing.
An old antagonist makes a quite startling re-appearance but assuredly, there's no way this villain had a possible way of operating with such cunning deception in these circumstances if we assume there was a shred of forethought and coherence in the writing. The sad state these heroes are reduced to is practically unthinkable, it just doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of things. I recall their pitiful attempt to copy-paste repeat the magic of the emotional breakdown Naofumi had in S1 to give these heroes depth. The problem is, they all can't have the same breakdown. The depth, in question, just insults the audience. It doesn't grip me as a story of 4 different heroes with separate ideals, goals and interests. Far be it from such a exciting premise, rather we have; Naofumi and the 3 clowns with identical character development arcs, grudgingly I expected so much more. It doesn't end there, after the "development" you genuinely can't distinguish their characters other than some generic tropes. Taking a step back I just can't help but notice the horrendous state of the characterization of men in this show.
So you're thinking how after all this how it gets rated 7? Well let's talk about the positives.
In shows like this I love when they return to more familiar characters we have seen before to advance the plot rather than a whole host of new ones.
What's the best part of this season?
Naofumi is back as a functioning and autonomous main character whose decision-making appears appropriately refined and made wiser as a result of his rollercoaster of experiences in S1. This was a very welcome improvement from the garbage shell of an MC we were subjected to in S2.
There's also a neat dragon fight. I got some goosebumps watching that at least. How it was eventually defeated wasn't the best and the entire reason that fight even occurred was lackluster, but all in all, it did hit the spot.
The animation improved by leaps and bounds. With the help Penkin's creative score of pieces the show looked and sounded great even in it's darkest moments.
The positives run quite thin, to make matters worse, they end the season with a very annoying retcon ending.
A puzzling cliffhanger seemingly out of thin air with a whole host of new characters for S4.
Even though I'll most likely watch S4, I'm so disappointed. The hope and curiosity is rapidly fading for me because I know the writers/directors will likely lack the competence and careful thought at to really nail any of the developments of the next season.
If I am to describe this show for any prospective Isekai enthusiast I would say the following:
This series has a Hall of Fame S1 48min introduction, an above average S1 and the rest of it is just an average Isekai with some interesting world building, with S2 dangling it precariously into the trash region.
Quick summary
Pros this season
+ Old Cardinal Heroes again
+ Stellar Animation, good fight choreography, very colorful consistent art.
+ Very Pretty Anime Opening
+ Naofumi back as a character
+ One of the best CG dragon fights i've ever seen
+ Allows us to forget S2
+ Kevin Penkin soundtrack
+ Consistency in general
Cons this season
- Too many girls out of no where, doing crazy things.
- Male characterization is boring, filled with tropes and cliches lacking assertiveness or awareness.
- Hated being narrated to when they could just give us decent dialogue and a few scenes.
- Garbage writing
- Garbage Characterization and the developments of them.
- Worst tournament arc I've ever seen
- Woeful Direction.
- Boring retcon ending/cliffhanger.
Ratings
Animation 9
Sound 8
Story 5
Characters 5
Enjoyment 7
34/50 6.8 = 7/10 Shamelessly, I'm inflating the score. (It's really a six but I'm hopeful for next season)
I had to score it above the 6 I duped out of S2 (which was more of a 4-5/10)
Don't Give Up! This series isn't finished yet. However, now is the time to lower your standards for this series. No more "peak" shouts.
It's not gonna be Slime, Re Zero, Kage No, MT or Overlord it's just little, bang-average, scraping the mid-tier shield hero and that's how it's going to be.
This season definitely got back on track, but that's all I'm afraid.
This will probably be the last time I'm listening to these cringe LN coping bastards telling us it would cook later on.
Hope this helps.
