"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.
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.


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.

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