"Cute. Simple, but cute." - is what I thought when I started this show.

Someone once said that there isn't anything to praise this anime for, but you still can't stop watching. And partially, I agree. Maybe there isn't anything special in it as in a fantasy isekai story. We've seen this done many times before, and it came in a time when people were fed up with isekai shows. However, behind this supposed simplicity, there is surprising depth.

I have some issues with art and animation, they are somewhat clumsy at times, but overall not unpleasant. On one hand, yes, sure, I would love to see more frames in every given second for it to be smoother, but the ones we get are surprisingly detailed, making the picture look more alive. You can pretty much pause this show at any time and get a well drawn frame instead of a typical blurry filler mess.

Surprisingly beautiful backgrounds too. This is something you don't often pay attention to in anime... until you do. And then they can either make or break the picture. These ones definitely make it, a lot of them aren't just "nice", they are gorgeous.

A pretty good CGI dragon. Someone \cough\~~Overlord~~\cough\ could learn from it. It was actually a very cool and well animated model. A few more CGI elements (including one of the main characters in a couple of places) were barely noticeable, so that's good.

Opening is great. At first, I thought it spoiled too much, but then it turned out that things happen in this anime rather fast, so... the first episode had no opening, they only started adding it from second, and the things that I thought it spoiled happened in third. So, it's not as big of a deal as I thought. I also loved the second ending to the point where it made it into my favourite of that year.

The soundtrack overall is very memorable. Various flutes (~~Or clarinets? I don't know.~~) and a whole lot of bowed string instruments add some very welcome variety. And then there's this masterpiece. Honestly, the more I watched the show, the more I liked the soundtrack. Not so much as something I would listen outside of it, but as a soundtrack it was great.

Obviously (well, "obviously" after you've seen episode 1) most of the characters in this show are massive pieces of shit. Not counting the protagonists, of course. And these disgusting characters are, surprisingly, what became the true saving grace of this show for me. A breath of fresh air, they are a perfect allusion to modern society. A society that blindly follows and spoils people with victim mentality. It does not help them. Does not lend them a friendly hand. But praises them, whether they deserve it or not. Pats them on the head. Panders to their every whim. Trusts their every word. A blind society that thinks they are kind, and some of them really have good intentions, but instead of "teaching a hungry person to fish", they throw them a fish at every turn.

The next portion of this review will talk about characters, which may be considered slight spoilers by some people, so if you don't want even that much, please skip this section and go straight to Pros/Cons.

Among all these horrible characters, best presented by Malty (who was instantly believed just because she's a woman), Ren is probably the most pleasant exception. I do not take the blame off him for a lot of things he did, but at the very least, he always says what he thinks. Not enough to go against the majority of this rotten mass, but it was never his goal to begin with. You can see that he cares deeply about mistakes he makes. This is a surprisingly good development for a relatively secondary character.

Mirelia... well, you know how much I love my purple haired queens... Henrietta from Zero no Tsukaima, Cornelia from Code Geass... top tier waifu. And she supports this by being one hell of a badass character to boot.

Melty (not Malty) is a brilliant master of putting people at their place. With just a smile, never so much as raising her voice. Amazing.

Filo gets a huge respect from me. This is the character who doesn't give a damn about rules and opinions. She just does whatever she wants. Probably my favourite character in the entire series.

I also loved Glass a lot. Mostly because I love this kind of character design, but also because she is a very honest antagonist, which, among the whole lot of assholes, doesn't evoke any negative emotions.

Now, as far as Naofumi and Raphtalia go... without spoilers, I can tell you that I like them a lot, although the story around them could be better, and some moments diminished the value of their relationship quite a bit. I straight up hated episode 4.

Spoiler, click to view

It was, of course, obvious that Raphtalia wouldn't go anywhere. But just the fact of granting her freedom itself was mishandled because of two major reasons. First - Naofumi wasn't the one who did it. Even if we assume that releasing Raphtalia was necessary, he, and only he should have done it. Otherwise this deed loses any meaningful weight. Second is his trust for her. She was kinda nice to him for a few scenes, and suddenly he trusts her completely? Come on. And that's after he was presented as a cynical bastard who was supposed to disown her the moment she lost her slave seal. I mean, you could make this happen, sure, but not as early as episode 4! At that point of the story it was highly undeserved. They just didn't have time to deserve my belief, as a viewer, that their relationship already works. This happened way too sudden. So yeah, they lost me at that point... ...is what I would say, if in episode 5 Raphtalia didn't ask for her slave seal back. Not because she was some sort of a broken slave who needed it, but because of how well she understood Naofumi and how uncomfortable the thought of her potentially betraying him would make him in her eyes. This is a well done character moment, and I respect her a lot for this.

Either way, like I said, by the end of the series I liked them more than not. All the hype internet had around Raphtalia is well deserved, she is a great character. In fact, I'd love to see more characters like her as main ones. Oftentimes they are, like, say, Mutsu from Dororo, very secondary.

And yes, the fact that I don't like some plot points around the main protagonists, doesn't mean I don't like the story as a whole. Yes, sometimes it's silly, far-fetched, filled with cliche and have one and a half facepalm's worth of logic... but you still care for these characters and seeing the villains get what they deserve is so damn satisfying!
It really is hard to stop watching this show. Every episode leaves you wanting more. And that's after the fact that the episodes, because of the amount of actual content in them, always felt quite long.

Pros:

+ An original soundtrack + Art varies from average to good, but is almost never bad. + The story is pretty standard, but still interesting. + Some moves are at the "Unlimited Blade Works!" level of epicness. Love it. + A pleasant sound design. + A surprisingly wholesome and finished ending, considering there will be at least 2 more seasons. + Filo's ahoge ^\_^ + Filo's eggs Т_Т + And a whole lot of Filo's quotes that make no sense without context but make me feel so happy:

Spoiler, click to view

-- Eeeh? -- Did you just call Filo a fat chicken? -- Is it time for food yet? -- You can't have the cart, it's mine! -- Something strange grew out of my head... I DON'T WANNA!!! -- Master is angry a lot, because he has to clean up your mess. -- I didn't understand anything, but it's the dude with the spear fault! -- Everything Filo loves - you gave her. Everything fun, interesting and even the cart! -- Filo will eat all your sadness whole! -- Filo is called Filo!

Cons:

\- A very unnecessary game interface. Is it so hard to make an isekai just a fantasy world, without gaming? They aren't even IN the game, they went in through a book! \- The dialogues are on the simpler side. \- Naofumi is more of a slowpoke than in LN when it comes to relationships. \- Not the smoothest animation.

This is yet another anime that far exceeded my expectations. Shield Hero is a beautiful and ugly allusion to how such a society treats simple people like Naofumi, who doesn't want to bother anyone, doesn't want to be a villain, who just genuinely wants to coexist with everyone. But these are not the people such a society listens to. And instead it vilifies, demonizes them because they don't fit the agenda. Even if Naofumi never wished any evil on anyone at all. Which, by the way, is something many watchers forget. "Oh, he didn't go far enough, he should be more evil". That's not how it works. Decent people - not even good, decent - don't suddenly become villains, even if you treat them like shit.
It is not a deeply philosophical show, but it had way more hidden meaning than say Danmachi, Tensura, Goblin Slayer or Overlord, all of which I still like.

And even though I didn't feel some overexcitement while watching it, I often caught my self simply smiling, out of nowhere. Which means this anime did something right.
I'm very happy that there are already works on season 2 and 3, because I watched in horror how the number of episodes left was vanishing before my eyes.

This is an anime that I can recommend without any doubt to anyone who isn't completely sick of isekai as a genre.

P.S. Finally, I wanted to quickly touch upon the ending of the season, so this is obviously spoilers from here.

Spoiler, click to view

In the spoilers above, I've mentioned that by episode 4, the characters didn't deserve my trust in their relationship. And this is true. But by episode 25 they absolutely did. I will always admit when an anime makes me cry, I'm not ashamed of it. Shield Hero didn't exactly succeed in making me bawl eyes out, but there still was a single happy tear at how wholesome that ending was. I haven't seen such a happy Raphtalia in any of the previous 24 episodes. And this smile is worth a lot.