This review contains minor plot spoilers for Rising of the Shield Hero

The Rising of the Shield Hero tells the story of Naofumi Iwatami, an otaku from modern day Japan, who is summoned into a fantasy world in need of his help. Literally every isekai ever, right? But as he arrives, he realizes that he was not the only hero summoned- there were three more, each from a different world. They were each in command of a legendary weapon, with Naofumi getting the shield, and the other three heroes recieving the bow, spear, and sword. Then some stuff happens, next thing you know Naofumi, or "The Shield Hero" as he is commonly known, is falsely accused of rape by a woman named Myne (remember her, she shows up way too much in this show). After having everything taken from him, he needs to find a companion so he can, you know, actually fight (his shield doesn't do much yet), and this is where much of my problems start with the show.

He purchases a slave from a shady store, and as an audience you figure, I'm sure he is just doing this so he can take it down or something, but no, this is the set up for him being an antihero, a morally ambiguous character whose actions cannot be called good. My problem with this aspect is that as the story devolves into a revenge fantasy, the part of his character that acts in this way is completely forgotten, and in its place remains a character who can do no wrong, and oh by the way still owns slaves. The justification for this comes about halfway through the series, when The Shield Hero is actually put on trial for his crimes. His slave actually wishes to stay in that slave role, even after being freed from his control, and while you might make the case that she is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, that complicated aspect of their relationship is neglected so that they could add in a fan service heavy love triangle. By the end of the show, any sort of moral gray areas that have resulted from his actions are seemingly forgotten so that he could be the good guy, so that he could get revenge on Myne for falsely accusing him of rape (and a ton of other shit), and on the other heroes, whose only crimes were being idiots (and the spear hero was also a pedophile, but again, the writers only put this in to make us mad, and then promptly forgot). I guess my main problem with these aspects of the series is that it forgets about the morally ambiguous characters they wrote, just to make the ending a great battle of good vs evil.

My other major problem with the series, which comes more from the delivery and less from the actual content of the show, was how bad the pacing was throughout much of the series. The first arcs were actually pretty interesting, but from around episode 5 to episode 15, the show was about as boring as your average SAT reading article. It dragged on and on, and never made you feel as though the next episode was something you really needed to watch. The ending wasn't so much boring as it was aggravating, because of the moral righteousness with which Naofumi is portrayed, as well just how stupid the other heroes were.

Now, because it's a review of the anime, and not the light novel, I should add that the music was decent, but not memorable in any way, and the animation was mostly good, although there were a few entire episodes that were noticeably under animated and the characters were mostly off model

My final rating of this show is: 65%. While it's not as despicable as most of the other isekai on the market, it's definitely not consistent in its characters and writing, and does not deserve a lot of the praise that it receives on places like reddit.