The Rising of the Shield Hero, or Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari, is a symptom of the plague that has fallen upon the anime community over the last decade- mediocre isekai. The show attempts to defy the expectations set by previous shows of its kind with its darker premise and by throwing seemingly unsurpassable obstacles at our hero from the first episode. However, instead of the interesting journey that was promised from the start, Shield Hero fell into the same traps as most isekai have and delivered an incredibly poor final product. I would not recommend this show to anyone who wants a quality experience, as it does nothing to separate itself from the pool of garbage that shares the same genre.
Quick note, this review will spoil the first season of Shield Hero. It will also be comparing Shield Hero to other isekai anime, but I will do my best to avoid spoiling anything significant in those shows.

Before I go into what I despised about this show, I want to make sure that I give it credit where credit is due. The show does certain things well, and I want to make sure to highlight those before roasting the terrible contents.

After a few episodes, I could not stand the sight of our main character. After he was framed for sexual assault in episode 1, he takes an incredibly dark turn and learns to survive using whatever means necessary. From buying a slave that he can force to be loyal to him when no one else would, to deceiving townsfolk so he can earn money to survive, Naofumi does what he has to do, since he cannot ruin his perception among the townspeople more than it has already been ruined.

Over the course of the show, however, the audience learns (at the same time as our sometimes-ignorant protagonist, in some instances) that not only is he not the bad person that people believe he is, but he can also actually be good. He is incredibly loyal and makes sure that he does right by people that are good to him. He has to earn his respect, he must be the one to clean up his image that has been sullied time and time again, and it really feels like he has earned that by the end of the season. In a genre that usually provides some of the most bland, ignorant, and worthless protagonists, Naofumi stands out as being better developed. His development is so much stronger than other isekai protagonists, from bad characters like Kirito in SAO to better ones like Sora from No Game No Life.

This is not to say that the character is perfect, by any means. He deals with the same issue of power creep and overpowered skills that many of his isekai protagonist peers have, with a shield that has essentially limitless power. His development is also not perfectly paced, as he seems to revert to previous tendencies for seemingly no reason at times. These flaws didn’t ruin my enjoyment of his character, however, so I’m willing to overlook the issues.

The only other character to receive any worthwhile development in the first 25 episodes, Raphtalia stands out as the only other likeable character in this show. She is the most believable from a character standpoint, one who has clear motivations and personality traits, and consistently acts in accordance with those characteristics. I fully expected Raphtalia to be furry bait, and I am happy to say that I was wrong.

Raphtalia is a simple character, all things considered. She had trauma from before she met the protagonist that made it difficult for her to meet Naofumi’s expectations. However, shared experiences help the two bond together and help Raphtalia grow into a stronger person, as well as a stronger fighter. When we learn about the time that she spent as a slave after the death of her parents, everything she does is consistent with her outlook as a person, even though she does lose all sense of happiness through the process. There is just nothing to complain about with her character- she is wholesome, a badass, cute, and loyal to no end.

This, unfortunately, is going to be the bulk of the review. Outside of our two main characters, no character in this show deserves praise. The plot is contrived and pathetically thought out. The art is mediocre, and the fight scenes vary from mediocre to terrible. Ugh, this is going to take a while, so let’s get started.

I’m not going to spend as much time on most of these as I did with the previous two because there are so many terrible characters in this show. I’ll try to highlight the ones that I really hated.

Filo: Clearly, the author of the light novel wanted moe, and wanted true furry bait. Why not make a moe girl who can transform into a giant chicken? Why is she in this show?

Melty: Not a furry but still like moe? Have we got the girl for you! The show was unable to make me care one bit for this boring, irritating character.

Malty/Slut: That is her actual name in the show, I swear that’s not just an insult. One thing that ruins immersion for me is characters who are evil for the sake of being evil. Every single time Naofumi encounters the heroes in the first 15 or so episodes, she is there, being evil for the sake of being evil. They tried to add a motivation for her trying to become the true successor by killing Melty and blaming the Shield Hero, but the fact that she had been evil for no real reason through the first half of the show made those attempts meaningless. While she was vital for the first episode and the turn against Naofumi, she is only kept around to make sure that the audience and the rest of the characters in the show remember that we don’t like the Shield Hero because reasons.

King Melromarc/Trash: His nickname describes his writing perfectly! Same issues as Malty except he probably has a thing for his daughter AND he hates furries! Evil for the plot’s sake is just an awful viewer experience.

Motoyasu/Spear Hero: Ever wonder what happens when you break the great piece of wisdom “Don’t stick your dick in crazy?” Motoyasu is another character with no depth who just becomes a massive simp after hooking up with Malty. There’s no real reason for that except to keep making sure that people can’t like the Shield Hero, but I’ve seen people do stupid things for sex, so I guess they got the realism part down. Oh, he’s also a furry AND likes lolis… Really? That’s what we’re going for?

Itsuki/Ren: I finished this show a few hours ago and I had to go look up the names of two of the heroes. If that doesn’t tell you how bland and forgettable they are, I’m not sure what will. They don’t even deserve separate entries.

Fitoria: She wasn’t as bad as others, but this trope where the wise character teaches our heroes a lesson and then moves on without explaining their motivations fully really gets on my nerves. Why is this in the show? Cooperating with the other heroes, her only piece of advice, barely accomplished anything outside of the Pope fight, which I will get to in the next section.

L’Arc/Glass/Therese: We love characters that only set up for future seasons in this household.

I have a lot of mixed feelings on the plot of this show. Scenes varied dramatically in quality and importance, from enjoyable to downright garbage. I’m going to breeze through some stuff to keep this review from being 3000 words, but I’ll try to touch on some stuff that I had strong feelings about.

I actually liked a lot of the early parts of the plot, especially when we got to focus on the hero and his party. As I previously mentioned, the best parts of this show were the characters earning their trust from others in the community simply by doing the right thing. The duel scene in episode 4 really ruined my enjoyment of the early part of the show, however. We get the wonderful Malty and Motoyasu duo being bad for the sake of being bad, except now we find out that the King and the Pope are definitely in on it! Wow!!! What excellent writing, I am so intrigued!!! At least it helped Naofumi and Raphtalia bond, I guess.

The middle of the show (starting with the second Wave in episode 11, ending with the Pope fight in episode 20) is easily the worst part of this experience. The second Wave of Catastrophe and the first fight with Glass are boring and accomplish nothing except showing us that everyone on the hero side is completely incompetent. Then we get more evildoings by Malty because the show can’t think of any good reasons to have characters do things, leading to the hero and his party fleeing to the wilderness and hiding from the law. While Raphtalia’s character arc was a nice break from the terrible writing of the show, we jumped back into boredom with the filolial kingdom arc, and into pure stupidity with the Pope fight.

I’m going to take a second to rant here- can anime stop using the Church as a bad guy? The idea of religious zealots as antagonists is a great one, which is why it is used so frequently. Anime, however, never gets these villains right, and Shield Hero is no exception. The Church and the Pope serve as antagonists because the author couldn’t think of a better reason for people to hate the Shield Hero after half a season, and the ensuing fight between the heroes and the Pope is horrible as a result. There is never any investment, never any tension, and absolutely no emotional payoff to the victory that could not have been done with a better antagonist. Sorry. Rant over.

Finally, we end with the archipelago arc and the fight with the… heroes from the other world, I guess? I enjoyed parts of this ending, mostly because we spent a lot of time not focused on the plot and just being with Naofumi and his team as they try to grow stronger together. However, like most long-running shows, we are left with more questions than answers after the final fight, and the show’s ending only serves to set up for more seasons. This is complete preference, but I am the type of fan who wants there to be some conclusion at the end of a season, and this show gave none- the enemies ran away, we meet a new party member, they start repairing the village, but nothing feels anywhere close to closure. Part of me wishes they would have chosen a different ending point, but there’s not really any good time to end it that I saw in the 25 episodes, so I will give them a pass here.

Why are fights in anime? Is it to look cool, with incredibly skilled artists and animators flexing their powers by making great on-screen products? Are they moments where we learn about our protagonist, where he is forced to be smarter than his opponents to win? Are they supposed to be outbursts of emotion, where episodes of built-up tension are finally released in an intense duel to the death? Well, in Shield Hero, it does not matter in the slightest, as fights rarely ever accomplish any of these goals or even serve a purpose.

Fights in this show are anticlimactic, dull, and downright boring because of the poorly written characters in the show. Part of the issue with the only two well-written characters in the entire show being best friends is that Naofumi and his party never get to fight anyone that the audience is invested in.

Let’s go through some of the fights. In episode 2, Raphtalia and Naofumi fight a monster to acquire a valuable jewel. Here, we get Raphtalia overcoming her fear of blood and fighting for Naofumi, resulting in a satisfying conclusion. In episode 4, Motoyasu and Naofumi engage in a duel that essentially has no consequences except for the other two heroes realizing that Naofumi may not be all that evil, an incredibly unsatisfying conclusion after a 25-minute episode revolving solely around the duel. In episode 8, Naofumi unlocks the Curse Shield while fighting the zombie dragon and is only saved from pure rage by Raphtalia, another good development moment. In episodes 11-12, the heroes take on the second wave and Glass in a fight that accomplished literally nothing. In episodes 14-15, Raphtalia overcomes her childhood abuser, another satisfying moment. The Pope fight in episodes 19-20 was an absolute atrocity for anyone who enjoys good character moments. Finally, the final battle against Glass, L’Arc and Therese accomplished nothing except for setup for next season.

It's no coincidence that the only good fights do not involve any important characters besides Naofumi and Raphtalia. The cast is written so poorly that fights are worthless because there is no weight to any of them.

These poor fights are not aided by boring choreography and mediocre animation. I am not the kind of fan that needs every fight to look incredible to enjoy it or get any emotional payoff. I think the issue with these fights is that they are really limited by the premise of the show, the fact that our main character can only wield a shield. There is a standard formula for fights with the entire party- Naofumi blocks the initial attack, Raphtalia and Filo say “AHHHHH” and attack, and their attacks either land and kill or are parried. Naofumi eventually does find creative ways to use some of his shield’s abilities, like using Air Strike Shield to give Filo better angles of attack, but no other hero does anything interesting with theirs. The magic system is also poor, as it seems like the author spent more time writing the incantation that magic-users have to say to cast spells than he did actually thinking of creative spells or interesting ways to manipulate basic spells.

The lack of emotional payoff and good fight choreography ruins any show that tries to rely on its action. This show does not want to rely on its fights, similar to shows like Mushoku Tensei, but unlike that phenomenal work, Shield Hero’s fights actively make it worse.

I am incredibly excited for the amount of downvotes this review is going to get from all of the fans of this show. Rising of the Shield Hero is another entry in the list of terrible isekai shows that will get a second season. I am truly baffled on how this show, at the time of writing this in April 2022, has a 78% mean score on Anilist. I will only remember this show as a masterclass in poorly written side characters and poor fight scenes.