Countless anime transport you into fantasy worlds filled with excitement and wonder, far from your dreary, everyday life. Then there are anime like Shield Hero's second season that make you wish you were doing homework instead of watching it.

The Rising of the Shield Hero season two is a significant departure from the first that will disappoint fans, but I'm just here to say, "I told you so." For starters, Shield Hero has abandoned its revenge fantasy premise. The shield hero has already risen, gained redemption, got his revenge, and now people cheer for him and his overpowered crew like he's another generic isekai protagonist. The "Waves" are still a threat to the kingdom of Melromarc; the main goal no longer hinges on fighting other humans.

The new enemy is a Guardian Beast, the Spirit Tortoise! This was awful when I tell you this arc was boring even by Shield Hero's astronomically low standards. Shield Hero has never been an impressive spectacle, but Kinema Citrus hit a new low with this level of stiff animation, flaccid directing, and outright lazy artwork. They seem to have taken inspiration from The Promised Neverland's second season by trying to torture unsuspecting fans. The Godzilla-sized CGI tortoise is the first major fight of the season. The hideous CGI quality couldn't even pass in 2000, let alone in 2022. Four episodes of painfully bland exposition build-up to the fight; it's like witnessing a slow-motion trainwreck. Forgettable politicians and heroes from throughout the world come together to spout exposition.

In traditional Shield Art Online fashion, Naofumi and his team of girls are too overpowered to lead a compelling boss fight, but the battle is dragged out over multiple episodes. For all the preamble, the war was about as exciting as watching paint dry. To mask the lack of animation, the artists utilized bright lights and cheap visual effects; the brown and green color grading is so over-done that it looks like someone smeared mud matter over every frame. The longer the show goes on, the more the characters start to look like wax figurines melting in the Summer heat. Their facial features appear distorted; even during still shots, the anatomy seems bizarre. I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure you're eyes are not supposed to be different sizes. The only thing I can thank for the production is rehiring Kevin Penkin as a composer. Penkin carries the whole show on his back with another top-notch orchestral soundtrack. It fits the tone like a square peg and a round hole, but it's a welcome distraction from the monotony and visual terrorism.

Naofumi, Raphtalia, and Filo add a new member to the wife squad, Rishia, a magic-user from a noble family. Amazingly, she has even less agency than Raphtalia and Filo and is even more desperate to please Naofumi. I couldn't believe my eyes when she begged the shopkeeper to become Naofumi's property. In retrospect, I should've expected the Rising of the Incel Hero would continue pandering to the lowest common denominator. Once again, they lampshade the owning women problem by claiming it would make her stronger. Hopefully, no one needs me to explain why it is very bad for an anime to argue that men enslaving underage girls is for their own good. Rishia is dead weight aside from her underutilized translating skills. Her character arc peaks when Naofumi utilizes her for misogyny-fueled power that requires him to choke her and call her a w-word (which she thanks him for). After being introduced, she stares at the screen and vomits her life story onto the unsuspecting audience as if we care. Her flashbacks have a white filter because Shield Hero doesn't trust its audience to have comprehension skills. Unsurprisingly the only dialogue between Rishia and Raphtalia is to eagerly compete for their master's attention. Meanwhile, Filo's role is blissfully reduced until they figure the only way to generate sympathy is by making her a damsel in distress, but the Shield Hero kind. In other words, she gets tortured onscreen by sadistic kidnappers.

The second newly added prominent character is Ost Horai, the familiar of the Spirit Tortoise, but she quickly abandons that role in favor of helping Naofumi. Ost is a guide rather than a person, leading Naofumi's party to slay the beast. She never rises above a plot device for all the show's efforts to make us care about her. They've given us a charmless, vapid plot device without a single spec of sympathy, then pleaded with us to worry when she is put in danger. I mistook her vacant demeanor as enigmatic and wrongly assumed she would become the villain. That role is reserved for a much worse figure.

An insufferable Vassal hero is the season's non-threatening antagonist, but at the very least, he provides a distraction from the tortoise nonsense. What motivates him? Insanity and sexual sadism. Much of the runtime is wasted chasing Kyo, the comically evil villain, through an alternate universe. Kyo is also known as the Vassal Book Hero. For the uninitiated, Vassal Weapons are wielded by Heroes who have been chosen to protect the world (you're still reading this, right?) from the Waves of Calamity and Guardian Beasts (have you fallen asleep yet?) like the Spirit Tortoise. You'll need to check the wiki to fully comprehend the endless list of names, backstories, and convoluted lore. The slideshow animation lends itself perfectly to the monotonous script consisting of one long-winded explanation after another. Speaking of dialogue, it consists of exposition dumps, video game lingo, and medieval formalities; if I hear Raphtalia shout "Naofumi-sama!" one more time, I will lose my mind.

The second half of the season attempts to start fresh. Seven episodes are wasted establishing a new setting populated with so many cardboard cut-out caricatures you shouldn't even bother memorizing their names; ultimately, they're irrelevant to the first thirty episodes. The heroes teleport to an alternate universe because no one cares about the original one. One of the other world's cardinal heroes, Kizuna, joins the crew. Her legendary weapon is hilariously lame, a hunting tool that prevents her from attacking humans. Despite being eighteen, she looks like a twelve-year-old. Naofumi immediately nicknames Kizuna "loli-hag" because she is not a preteen and, therefore, too old to join his wife squad. All of the other heroes surrounding Naofumi contain no personality and only exist in terms of their special weapons. There's no character development for the original cast, and these episodes do nothing to build upon the overarching plot.

Eviscerating Shield Hero to this extent gives me plenty of pleasure, and it would be dishonest to do anything else. It doesn't rise to the level of cheesy enjoyability because it was agonizing in every category. There's nothing here beyond hours upon hours of tedium. Even worse, the studio involved was so certain, so arrogant about the anime's potential that they resorted to a filler episode at the end. The post-credits scene is meant to tease the third season, but it's more like a threat that there's more torture in store.