So, just to be blunt, Rising of the Shield Hero is a overrated mess. Because of this, my writing may be a bit all over the place due to the sheer anger within it. At first glance, the show seemed average enough, even if it did start off with the main character repeatedly telling you his only personality trait at that point in time. Then it gets into the classic "protagonist gets trapped in another world" gimmick. The use of four heroes getting put into the world at the same time was a neat touch at the time, but it's easy to realize that the three heroes besides the main protagonist, Naofumi, are the exact same character with different weapons. They even serve the same purpose in the plot. So half-way through the first episode it's already up to a rough start. However, I am a practitioner of the three-episode rule, and continued watching despite how depressing it was.
In the first few episodes, the show tries to make the viewer feel for Naofumi by putting him through hell, but all it resulted in was a tone of pity. Naofumi is the type of person that needs help to get anything done yet complains about everything. Yes, he is the shield hero, which means he can not use weapons. However, he doesn't even try to remedy the situation until he is openly confronted with a solution to it. Enter Raphtalia, a raccoon demi-human who serves as the first in a line of underaged girls for fan-service. Okay, anime can occasionally have this, and it wasn't about to completely ruin the show right? At this point in time it was about a 5/10. For an an isekai that's pretty good. Then episode five hits, and with it, a bird loli. This is where I lost my mind. WHAT?! How is this being praised?! The fan-service is seemingly endless, the plot is mediocre at best, the characters are one-dimensional, the world is boring, and it's being praised. Okay, you can't stop just because of yet another loli. Surely it'll get better right? Well, after watching the entirety of two seasons of Rise of the Shield Hero the conclusion is that of a 4/10. There is just so much mediocrity with this show. Everything that's set up to be possibly unique or interesting is immediately just sort of gone. The bow, sword, and spear hero all basically wield weapons with the exact same capabilities and nothing truly unique for each weapon. Maybe this fact could be overlooked if the only person with an extremely good weapon at his disposal wasn't Naofumi himself. That's one concept down. But hey, the anime is pretty high on theming. One of the more common themes being that despite its appearance this world isn't a game. Though all of this set-up is completely overlooked towards the end of the show, when Naofumi is given a bunch of new game-like mechanics to play around with. Naofumi himself, despite being played off as an outcast even to this new world, is literally just every other isekai protagonist ever. He's a formerly nerdy, overpowered guy with a harem of girls and a personality ranging from decently sad to angry. When he is happy it's because he's fighting for his friends, and surprise surprise he eventually decides to stay in this new world. Of the villains that are in the show, Myne is one that has been there since the start. She's the figure who puts the plot in motion, which is kind of funny because her reason for doing so isn't ever properly explained. The most unbelievable part about her is that nobody around her sees that she's actually just evil. The only exception to this being Naofumi himself, which is a little strange, because the way that he tells nobody would make you think he didn't know. Every single time Naofumi is faced with a problem he either uses of of his army of lolis to deal with his threat, uses his rage shield, or when he isn't able to use his rage shield uses his OTHER RAGE SHIELD. WHY?! HOW?! IT DOESN'T MATTER! This show doesn't show the why of anything to you, so if it doesn't explicitly tell you what's going on, you have no way of knowing beyond guesswork. So currently we have no idea why the shield hero was persecuted due to conflicting information, a crucial aspect of the show! Just a quick tangent, WHY DOES NAOFUMI GET GRIEF FROM THE KING FOR HAVING A SLAVE?! THE KING IS THE ONE WHO ALLOWS SLAVERY?! WHY DO "THE WAVES"(a series of cataclysms that the heroes were summoned to fight) EVEN HAPPEN?! WHY ARE THE 4 WEAPONS NOT WIELDED IN THE UNIVERSE THAT THEY WERE CREATED IN?! WHY IS THIS SHOW SO STUPID?! IT HAD EVERY OPPROTUNITY TO BE JUST A BIT UNIQUE AND TO BE PERFECTLY HONEST IT SQUANDERED ALL OF THEM! THE ONLY POSITIVE THING I CAN SAY ABOUT RISING OF THE SHIELD HERO IS THAT IT'S BETTER THAN ALL BUT THE FIRST EPISODE OF SWORD ART ONLINE. WATCH AT YOU'RE OWN RISK BECAUSE YOU MIGHT DIE FROM SHEER MEDIOCRITY. 3/10 and that's that...
0 Comments
|
AuthorMcRae Walker, an 20-year-old writer and lover of many dorky topics. Archives
September 2022
Categories |
Proudly powered by Weebly