Shield Hero, So Far (Review-Rant)

It's no secret that I am an avid fan of anime and manga, and especially of the fantasy genre in general, as it is the genre of much of the literature and media I consumed in my youth and adolescence, as well as a good portion of the creative writing I did contemporaneously. The seasonal anime line-up of 2019 is a rather mixed bag, though I can't claim any expertise as I tend to only watch only a handful of shows (currently 9, but the number of seasonal shows is far larger now than it was even a decade ago).

So, with that said, let's talk about Shield Hero, also known by its full title Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (盾の勇者の成り上がり "The Rising of Shield Hero")

As a disclaimer, I haven't read either the original light novel or the manga adaptation, so I am basing this review-rant off of the 11 episodes of the 2-cour (25 episode) anime adaptation that have aired so far. Therefore, as long as you have watched the first 11 episodes, this review should prove spoiler-free as far as you are concerned. Otherwise, as I will be going over certain plot-points and characters that were introduced later on in the series, there may be a couple of spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen this show, or hasn't caught up to episode 11. Also, my impressions of the show aren't going to be holistic or representative of the overall narrative as it exists currently, as it is obviously behind the LN and manga in terms of story progression. So there may be some twist or reveal at some point later on that redeems certain aspects of the show that I find issue with, and some of my contentions might apply primarily or exclusively to the anime adaptation and may not translate into criticisms of the original work. For the most part, however, my discussions will be entirely rooted in the narrative, without any discussion of the technical aspects of show-running such as voice acting, VFX, SFX, CGI, animation quality, pacing, or other anime-specific concerns.

Without further ado, here we go.

While the fantasy genre has recently been saturated (comparatively) with light-novels, manga, and anime featuring the isekai trope (異世界, literally "other world"), this is not necessarily a purely negative trend. Within the Pascal's Wager of good/bad isekai/non-isekai content (at least, in my subjective opinion), we have all four squares populated. (In this case, I am only considering fantasy as constituting shows with a form of magical or mystical power, in the sense that properties that have cryptids or mythological/fantastical creatures but no form of power system aside from the ability of those creatures to merely exist, would not count as fantasy in the sense in which I am using it)

	Good	Bad
Isekai	Overlord TenSura Log Horizon	Smartphone Ragnarok SAO
Non-Isekai	Ancient Magus Bride Little Witch Academia WorldEnd Seven Deadly Sins	Akashic Records

While there are plenty of entries that could be added to this list, I haven't heard of or read/watched enough mediocre content to fill this table properly.

By virtue of having spent more than half of my life doing creative writing as a hobby, I am now more or less convinced that in order for a story to be interesting or compelling, it must have interesting or compelling characters. Sure enough, that isn't the whole of it, but it is difficult to write a good story with bad characters, because without the characters there isn't really all that much of a story to speak of.

The isekai trope is perhaps as popular as it is because it allows for incremental world-building: the principal character with whom the audience is meant to identify or perceive events from the perspective of, is quite often thrust blindly into a strange new world, which might either be completely unfamiliar (KonoSuba, TenSura, Re:Zero), or familiar but uncanny (SAO, Log Horizon, Overlord). In either case, the writer neither needs to drop any "Concerning Hobbits" worldbuilding expo up-front in order to acclimate the audience to the peculiarities of the world the story takes place in for the most part, and also has the freedom to introduce new elements to drive the narrative without them appearing as hand-wavy as they might otherwise be. This is probably best exemplified by the case of the adpatation of the LN "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime," in which our non-Newtonian protagonist Rimuru Tempest has most questions about the workings of the world he was reborn into answered by a near-literal proxy Voice of God. However contrived this device might be, it definitely serves a distinct purpose of allowing our natural puzzlement of how the other-world works to be immediately answered whenever glaring issues or questions arise through the eyes of our protagonist, without having an actual character provide the exposition or some vague omniscient narrator fill in the gaps extra-diegetically. The information is provided only when needed, and is rarely excessive, and creates a good balance between wonderment and understanding. Not to say that having in-story characters fill in the gaps doesn't work if done well, mind you, but it can often come across as gimmicky or excessive (as I have heard some express about Meteora's role in Re:Creators, which I personally didn't find as much fault with). There is then the middling-tier, where there is no one to explain anything, but a good bit of information is already understood, as in "transported into a game world"-type isekai such as Overlord, Log Horizon, and Sword Art Online. In each of these cases, the protagonist is a relative veteran of the created world that they suddenly find reified, and at most conduct research in terms of experimenting what elements of the world they know about carry over, and what elements are mysterious or surprising.

The approach taken by Shield Hero is far from atypical, as VR-style HUDs in isekai fantasy shows are somewhat of a trope if not a staple, but the initial explanation of the world Naofumi is transported to is slightly skewed. The four summoned heroes are pretty willing to accept everything that has happened to them without any question, which is almost played for laughs rather than realism. No matter how many light novels you read, I guarantee that most people, even most otakus, would probably want to know quite a bit about what the hell just happened and where the hell they are before diving blindly into adventuring. At the very least, I guarantee that almost everyone in that situation would try to figure out the genre of world they are in, because there is a huge difference between how you would treat a Konosuba world and a Re:Zero world, for instance. While in principle it would be more or less natural to term Shield Hero a "dark fantasy," in practice it comes across as more "edgy" than anything else. While the recurring influx of unholy aberrations from another dimension, the "Waves" that the heroes are summoned under the pretense of fighting back against, would normally indicate a cosmic-level "rotten world" where the hardship faced by the protagonist's party and everyday folk come in the form of inherently evil monsters that have no motive but destruction (as, say, Goblin Slayer executed much better, even if not without comparable controversy to the first episode of when placed next to Shield Hero), but in actuality the main forces that are the source of the ongoing conflict for the protagonist are just various types of shitty people. These shits come in different shapes, sizes, and consistencies, but are unmistakably shit. While it is certainly possible that there is some upcoming explanation of just why everyone seems to hate the very idea of the "Shield Hero" from the outset, to the point where no one really seems to pay attention to anything about Naofumi other than the fact that he was given a shiny buckler before writing him off as a waste of space, in the absence of such an explanation this facet of the story seems rather contrived. This serves a purpose, whether intentionally or otherwise, of providing an in-universe reason why Naofumi was singled out as a no-goodnik from the get-go that didn't require his character to have any outward flaws: he could be as much of a well-mannered ikemen as the story needed him to be, by providing a reason extrinsic to who he is or was originally as to why people had their misgivings initially.

Then we get the "Royal Flush," in the form of the occulted machinations by various members of the court aristocracy and the in-house royalty, seemingly engineered by Princess Myne ("Shit-herezade") and perhaps orchestrated by the Shit Who Would Be King. The exact reasons for these machinations are not quite explained in full, save for the simple fact that Shit-herezade is a scheming fuck who doesn't care how many people she curbstomps into the gutter or bleeds dry in the pursuit of her ill-defined personal agenda (there is probably something Freud could say about how Myne's first instinct is to side with the summoned hero carrying the largest phallic symbol and how she targets the one hero who is carrying a non-phallus, but that isn't my place to argue and could easily become problematic). There is literally not a single redeeming quality to her character. She is so outrageously awful a person that it is safe to say that she singlehandedly burned every bit of vegetation she could find just to eliminate any possibility of turning over a new leaf. In all likelyhood, my best guess is that she is trying to accede to the throne ahead of her younger sister Melty by aligning herself with a marriage candidate (Motoyasu) who she makes every effort to elevate to Lord Adonis status by enlisting him to perform numerous "heroic" deeds that I would not be suprised were motivated solely by a desire to fuck over as many non-titled people as possible, Naofumi first and foremost. It would be a mistake to call her an "ojousama" or "hime-dere", because either moniker would imply that she has some depth to her character other than "irredeemable unrepentant clusterfuck of a shit human being." The king seems content with endorsing (either in advance or ex-post-facto, the exact nature is unclear) of every act of fuckery Myne is responsible for, either directly or through the proxy of Motoyasu.

Motoyasu, the Spear Hero, for his part, seemingly oscillates between being a puppet of Myne and a fully autonomous dick. His initial behavior is mainly that of a moderately vain and arrogant beefcake, and his role in Myne's schemes are as yet unclear: he could equally be a confederate or a mark of the scheme, which is an important distinction; if he is merely swept up in the plans, his reaction is understandable, and he is more of a collateral asshole than a laser-guided shit. On the other hand, his behavior betrays more of a horrible attitude than mere preconception.

Naofumi. Oh boy. There is potential for some hidden depth to his character, such as "everyone fucking hates me so I will push everyone away so they don't get dragged down into the mud by the same forces that fucked me over horribly" or "I can't be a nice person or the people I truly care about will be harmed in order to deprive me of any shred of fulfillment." More than that, however, his status is a tentative "edgy misanthrope" or "jaded bastard" who doesn't really care how the people he deal with end up feeling about him because he is pretty much resigned to the fact that he is universally hated, not just by the royals who screwed him over but by the entire universe. Since he is put in a situation in which he is forced to fight without a say in the matter, but deprived of any means of fighting on his own and stripped of any reputation that could earn him any allies or sympathizers, enlisting the services of a slave-trader (in a world in which slavery of demi-humans is accepted) and transferring the young half-tanunki Raphtalia into servitude under him. This situation is perhaps understandable in context, but still deeply problematic, for reasons that I won't bother going into. Raphtalia, who has something approaching an actual characterization, ends up deciding (though not given much agency in the matter) to act as Naofumi's "sword" (calm down, Freud) regardless of the fact that she was sold to him as a slave and disciplined with the curse-equivalent of a shock-collar. I would even say that an alternative story told from Raphtalia's perspective, which starts out with Naofumi forcing her into a less oppressive slavery, but still a slavery, than the one she perhaps expected: beginning with him curing her untreatable illness, even if only to enable him to force her into combat scenarios. From her perspective, we would have very little idea of who Naofumi was and what happened to him, other than how everyone seems to be reacting negatively to his presence, and how his attitude is cold and somber. This would not be a harem story, but a complex story of liberation in many respects, both of Raphtalia physically and psychologically, and of Naofumi in both respects as well: he is hindered by his inability to fight offensively and his hatred of the world and resignation to the fact that the world hates him, while she is a literal slave, but one who is also unable to overcome her fear of fighting against monsters due to childhood trauma of her parents getting eaten. This would not be a pretty story, but it would at least be a story.

Let's get back to Motoyasu. This is the point at which I started losing the remaining sympathy I had allotted to Naofumi. While at the castle with the instantly-mature Raphtalia, Motoyasu tries to flirt with her, Myne spouts hate-rhetoric, and Motoyasu is convinced that she is being forced by Naofumi against her will (this is the only part that is debatable rather than true) to fight monsters. Motoyasu then denounces slavery. Bear in mind that he is in a party with the princess and on the best terms of any hero with the king, who is responsible for creation of the law of the land, and yet is much more concerned with liberating the one slave who happens to be allied with the man that the royals and Motoyasu threw in front of the Bus-kun for personal gain, rather than doing anything about the pervasive issue of legalized and generally accepted slavery of a dehumanized population that Myne (and probably the King) have no sympathy for. Pretty much no one in their right mind would accept the King's behavior as anything but a personal vendetta, though the peanut-gallery of sycophantic aristocrats have no problem acting like the king is a paragon of virtue. Motoyasu then challenges Naofumi to a one-sided duel which Naofumi stands to gain nothing in other than the marginally favorable (though unfavorable for the most part) status quo, with Motoyasu's victory resulting not in Raphtalia being freed and empowered to decide her own fate, but by the forcible separation from Naofumi after being abducted by the royal guards and used as an incentive to force Naofumi to fight. Bear in mind also that Naofumi is physically unable of using any weapons, while Motoyasu is aided from the sidelines by Myne's magical intervention (which only the Bow and Sword Hero actually testify to witnessing after the fact), at which point Naofumi falls into despair and believes that Raphtalia, who is berating Motoyasu for being such a colossal turd, has betrayed him. From this point on, everything Naofumi does is colored by his bitterness and callousness. While he accomplishes numerable meritorious deeds both during and after the first wave since they all arrive, Myne and Motoyasu go around with their Shit-Midas powers turning everything to shit, like imposing a crippling tax on a village that Naofumi saved during the Wave, sowing an alchemical abomination of a plant-monster sealed within ruins with a legible warning of its danger near a town that Naofumi then has to save, and in general being horrible people at every turn. The Bow and Sword hero are painted with a similar brush, doing notionally heroic deeds without regard for the real-world consequences they end up having, such as the overthrow of a tyrant that led to his former subjects either dying of starvation of becoming refugees without any remaining prospects for survival, or the rotten corpse of a dragon causing a pervasive plague in a nearby village. They are pretty much set up as benchmarks of how a typical person would perform, in order to demonstrate that Naofumi is not just better than the awful Motoyasu, but also is the best hero in general because his initial experiences shattered any illusion that the world they were adventuring in was like a video game.

I could go on forever about how much I don't like Filo's character or her introduction into the story as a harem candidate despite being a literal infant and also a bird. I could also mention how fucked Naofumi is in the head for rejecting Melty out of hand without even hearing her out, just because she happens to be a princess, making her also the most likely and probably only person in the entire world who could help him regain some semblance of a dignified life.

I will not stop watching the show in all likelihood, but I certainly have my fair share of complaints about it. It isn't a bad show, but there is so much that could be done better that I could easily change my mind if it goes over the tipping point.