*Contains spoilers
S2 of The Rising Shield Hero throws away everything that S1 offered. S1 is among my favorites, especially because of the excellent revenge plot, but it never found itself again and starts using tropes, becomes cliched and it does not help that it is rushed compared to its source material, as well. Maybe I enjoyed the S1, because of the timing. I cared little about plot devices, flaws, tropes, etc. I even agree with a lot of the criticism made on S1. I never read the Light Novel, but after S1, I thought about reading it. After reading a chunk of reviews, it was apparent it went downhill after S1. Though I was still highly expecting this season, as S1 was highly enjoyable, as I should have expected, “it went downhill.” The first season was not without its flaws, but it had world-building, a great plot, and was not entirely generic. It differentiated itself from the rest of the batch, being the revenge plot, but after that plot finished in S1. It began going downhill and became highly generic. It never finds itself again and becomes pure generic isekai with your typical magical beasts, weak antagonists, who have zero motive. Problems ‌get solved by Deus ex machina, and overall it is just a colossal mess.

The story helps little with the progression of world-building, or character development. A problem arises, then gets solved, without no consequence or any progression in the grander scheme. Ultimately, it feels as if there is no point ‌with this season. The newly introduced characters are all shallow and thin, with no depth‌. It is your typical copy-paste characters. Every character is “good” and wants “world peace”. Nobody has any desire or motivation, everything is just really shallow. The same thing applies to the antagonist. He is your typical generic shounen villain. It feels as if there is no reasoning for what he is doing, other than being a villain. There are things suggesting that there is reasoning behind his actions, but it cannot establish anything, and appears being extremely weak, and leaves no room for a mystery. He does what he does for the sake of being a villain.

The first newly introduced character is Ost, who apparently was the guardian or something. It is extremely forgettable, and she ends up just being another plot device. Throughout the entire arc, I thought something might happen, but she ended up acting like an NPC, who guided the squad through the arc and told them how to defeat the tortoise. Whenever they did not know what to do or were mind-boggled. Ost was always there to tell them what to do, and her entire motivation was generic. She helped kill people in order to give the tortoise souls, and it does not help, when showing nothing of the tortoise when they are talking about it, “show, don’t tell,” . It makes the entire problem or antagonist seem weak and non-existent, as they are merely following the tutorial. It gives no anticipation of the showdown between the squad and the tortoise. The use of CGI at this point is questionable, but I found it to be decent. Overall, the tortoise arc is incredibly weak, and flat-out boring.

The power-scaling is probably amongst the worst, as well. The only thing it really ever establishes is “Nafoumi is stronger than everyone.” At one point, I thought maybe Kyo would be a decent antagonist, but low and behold, he was easily defeated, and then when he came back. I had absolutely no expectations for him as a villain and was overall just waiting for him to take yet another L, which he did. Alas, being predictable.

I just began not caring after the first or second episode, and the lore, etc, felt “meh.” Sometimes things felt pleasant, but the incredible rush of its source material made it feel like there were missing heavy chunks of dialogue, build-up, or anything else. Tropes are not per se bad, and they can be used well. There is a reason why they are always used because they work and are easy to use. For example, the chosen trope. It can feel rewarding when someone has worked hard compared to others and been on a long journey towards their goal and they get that power-up.

Solo leveling uses this concept well. It feels rewarding to see him progress after clearing dungeon after dungeon. But when someone gets a power-up in Shield Hero, it just feels not rewarding. There is no build-up, ‌again, and just “why?” There is no reason for it to happen, and even the villains are made dumb and weak compared to the good guys, so just why is it necessary? Every bad guy is ‌a stormtrooper, so what is the point of giving an even better light saber to the good guys? It makes for extremely boring and predictable fights.

Again, predictable fights are not bad per se, but it fails at making anything exciting or building up villains. Predictable fights can feel exciting because the villain is written to be extremely annoying and you know soon enough, he will get crushed, but Shield Hero fails at almost everything. Stuff might be rushed and partially blamed on its poor adaptation, but all the villains feel shallow and lackluster and all have the “We were just trying to save our own world when we destroyed your world” ideology or “I am evil because I am evil”. Is it per se bad? No, it is not, well the latter is generic and bad writing but the former can be done well, though it is generic, there can be events and build-up that makes for anticipation, but Shield Heroes does it in poor fashion and is executed poorly. I even forgot who L’arc or glass was and first remembered them when there was a flashback.

The power-ups come out of nowhere. Raphtalia suddenly got a vassal weapon or something. Overall, it feels like there is no point in giving power-ups to the main characters, so the already idiotic other characters can feel even stupider or weaker, and having all other heroes and other characters being stormtroopers does not exactly help‌. They as well experience no character development and have little to no screen time. It could have been nice to see them go through character development and start acting like normal people. They have little to no screen time, so it hardly affected my enjoyment. It just felt like a missed opportunity. Of course, they might go through some development in the next season or later, but honestly, who cares at this point? It keeps making them look stupider and stupider to ‌the point where any reconciliation would feel weird, and something that just comes out of nowhere. Do I look forward to the next season? Yeah, I still do, as my fundamental problem with this season was mainly that everything happened outside of their world. There was the spirit tortoise, which also felt highly generic, but at least if the next season focuses on the actual world and waves. It might go somewhere, but do I care at this point? Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. I really don’t know at this point.

The only decent character is Naofumi, whose ideology goes against every other character. He does not see the good in everyone or forgive everybody, because of his past, while his other companions are the opposite. You could also just call him an anti-hero, I guess. He is not per se a good character, but he is just the best of the batch. Kizuna, another new shallow character, wants to forgive Kyo, because she thinks he is doing it to save their world, while Naofumi does not share the same sentiment. He has more depth than any other character, but his character is still incredibly shallow throughout the entire season as well, and indecisive. The inevitable conflict between ideologies is heavily foreshadowed through the entire season and is something that I at least found interesting, and looking forward to, and then it happens, everything goes down, and the tension rises. Really not much build-up, as it is heavily rushed. You see flashbacks, there is finally some emotion, though it feels iffy without build-up, though finally, something is happening. The animation is superb. The final showdown is finally happening. The inevitable conflict is slowly reaching its climax, and the little to no build-up is still there, but then… out of nowhere… it pulls out some weirdest “emotional speech” that honestly could not have been worse and ruins everything. From being a 3/10 it went down to 2/10 in mere seconds. It feels incredibly anti-climactic, but there is still tension, and hope for something to happen… but then absolutely out of nowhere… again… everybody appears, and the inevitable conflict is solved. It is horrible and deus ex machina, which also was apparent in the reviews for the Light Novel.

I got my hopes too high, after the previous season, and it feels like the series would have been better off if these two arcs never happened. The power of friendship is not always bad. I cannot think of any anime at the moment, but it can definitely be done in ways, where it feels like there is meaning and reasoning behind it, but this season just does none of that, and in the end, it does not even strengthen the bonds, nor provide character-development. It removes any character development from the previous season.

Did I enjoy this season? I enjoyed parts. Sometimes there was eye candy, and sometimes there were sweet and nice moments with meaning, but it always ended weirdly, ruining mostly everything. Sometimes I had a hard time continuing, as things could go in weird directions and made no sense, but I ended up watching through the entire season, so yes I enjoyed it to an extent, but a part of me also hoped for more, for it to go back to its initial plot, or explore its world more. Did I just get hopes too high up? Probably. Will I watch the next season? Probably. Will I read the source material? Maybe. Will the next season be better? Honestly, who knows, but for now I will keep my expectations low, as the LN reviews say it never gets back to its original level. The revenge plot has ended, so even if it returns to their world, stuff will keep being your typical isekai.