Overview:

Shield hero does a decent job at conveying the main character Naofumi’s emotions, although far from great. Raphtalia’s emotions and how they conveyed them I consider good, especially for how the last ep ended with her coming out with all she was bottling up.

The arcs covered are transportation to this new world and learning about the world/gathering party members, devil of the shield, hero church, Queen and best girl party and wave arc :gasm: .

Throughout the season it shows the conflicts and feelings of the main characters and how unfairly they are being treated due to being affiliated with Naofumi… since he is the shield hero. Naofumi gets to the verge of breaking at times and doesn’t understand why anybody would act the way they have been towards him. Luckily Raphtalia is there to comfort him.

Due to the neglection the others have showed towards him, mainly those in royalty, he is forced to go solo and find/fund his own path all while trying to level up and be powerful enough to fend off the incoming waves as this is what he was called to the world for. There is a decent amount overlooked when it comes to internal thoughts of Naofumi but this is due to anime limitations in a way. There are ways they could have incorporated the internal thoughts of his character but chose not to do so.

Visuals/Music:

The visuals for the most part is very good, the animation at times can be a bit funny though. One of the more noticeable moments is about 2/3’s of the way through, in a battle Raphtalia jumps in, swings her sword and I swear it was only about 3 frames in total. Watching it made me laugh. Another moment was a few eps into the show when they had Raphtalia go to the bathroom and just before she was out of sight, they neglected to draw the rest of the frames and poof she g0n. All of these problems will more than likely be fixed in bd.

The music is very good throughout the entirety of Tate. Both openings and endings are highly enjoyable to listen to with the full songs only improving on a good situation. Both opens are done by MADKID / RISE with both openings having a different feel to them which is a good thing. They did not try to encapture what made the first opening good and decided to make it different which is how I believe it should be. Never liked it much when an anime tries to encapture what made one good and basically rinse repeat as it always ends up in disappointment.

The endings were done by Chiai Fujikawa and just like the openings were different and didn’t try to be the same. Both had the ending feeling vibe where it is more chill and makes you sit there and listen through them both as that is what is needed when an intense ep comes up.

Simply put the music all around is a very solid point mainly because of the openings and ending. The room for improvement would be the ost’s in the anime itself but even then, what was used is good enough and better than a lot out there.

Final Thoughts:

Tate is a show that is one of the real OG’s when it comes to isekai manga but for some reason was quite late to the party. Even though it was late I would say it delivered a highly enjoyable experience that I would rewatch again with others… even if I just want to see lil Raph again :mrclean:

With the last arc, the island one, it is one that should have been cut out entirely and pushed onto a second season since the mass popularity will more than likely give it another one. Even if it doesn’t, I feel the way they rushed through it just to give us more content was not the best of choices. The ending/queen arc concluded as if it was the final ep of the show but there were still a couple episodes left. IT didn’t make much sense since there was content that was skipped over. There would have easily been enough time to flesh it out another couple eps with the missed content and if it wasn’t, then they could have included something to pass the time such as giving more character building moments or cooldown situations that were needed at times. Instead they shoved another entire arc into a couple eps and ended up skipping a more than should have been done. If anything, they should have made it an ova arc. Have seen other series do that with good success. OVA arc would have avoided the pacing issues that popped up a bit here and there.

Characters (main) – 5/5
Characters (sub) – 4/5
Enjoyment – 4/5
Visuals – 4/5
Music – 4/5
Story – 4/5

`<code>Overall Ratings - Rec: 4/5 Raw: 83%</code>`