the Rising of the Shield Hero Girl Gets Raped
The Winter 2019 Anime Preview Guide The Ascension of the Shield Hero
What is this?
Naofumi Iwatani is simply your average otaku college pupil, happily living at home e'er since he helped get his brother back on the straight and narrow. When he's out of cash, he enjoys going to the library and checking out calorie-free novels, which is exactly what'due south what he'due south doing when suddenly a volume called "The Four Cardinal Heroes" emits a bright lite and summons him to another world. Naofumi finds himself in the book's world along with three other guys, and they soon detect out that they've been summoned to save this world from subversive events known as "Waves." Merely something is definitely amiss – while the other 3 heroes non simply have basic knowledge of their new game-similar globe from games they played, Naofumi's totally in the dark – and the kingdom besides doesn't seem as well happy to have him as the Shield Hero. When a adult female named Myne frames him for assault, Naofumi finds himself thrown out of the castle and forced to make information technology on his ain in this strange new world, with his reputation and religion in humanity in tatters. What volition happen to him now that his isekai fantasy has become a nightmare? The Rising of The Shield Hero is based on a light novel series and streams on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays. How was the get-go episode?
James Beckett
Rating:
Kinema Citrus substantially earned my undying loyalty afterward producing Made in Abyss, merely fifty-fifty I was wary when it was appear that The Rising of The Shield Hero would be their next major project, given the controversial reputation of its source fabric. It'southward likewise no underground that I have go extremely weary of the market'due south current isekai oversaturation, especially when it comes to fantasy worlds that are trivial more than generic fantasy MMOs, complete with an encyclopedia of barely custom rules and mechanics that almost always result in a less creative story overall. So my expectations for Shield Hero'due south premiere weren't exactly high.
Anybody probably knows near the inciting incident that's got people talking about Shield Hero this season already, so permit's get the elephant in the room out of the way upwards forepart. Making Naofumi'due south fall from grace the result of his partner Myne falsely accusing him of rape isn't but ethically dubious and needlessly off-putting – it'south also lazy storytelling. From the beginning, we see that Naofumi has a reductive view of women overall, judging literally every woman he sees down to a blank-bones sketch of a princess in a volume based on his perceptions of their sexuality and attainability. When Myne erroneously describes this new world equally "a matriarchy" (despite the ruler being, you know, a king), its proximity to the reveal of Myne's betrayal creates a link between these two elements that'due south impossible to ignore. The implication, intended or not, is that in a world that venerates women, deceptive snakes similar Myne will say whatever they want, and poor Nice Guys like Naofumi will suffer.
Every trick in the book is employed to frame Myne as an exaggeration of the duplicitous, promiscuous harpy that uses her beauty to lure men to their doom, and Naofumi is the innocent lowest who'south punished for being too trusting, thus justifying the hatred and misanthropy that follows him. It'south not just a cliché, it's a fantasy of persecution that's oft propagated by men in order to justify mistreatment and mistrust of women. Information technology would be foolish to say that no person has ever falsely accused another of assail, but the fact is that society more than oft does not accept allegations of assault seriously and often punishes victims for speaking up near it. The situation is and then bad that the bulk of victims choose not to report sexual violence, because it is assumed that they will be ignored or harassed further. This is why Rising of the Shield Hero's treatment of this subject matter deserves to be discussed. The thought that men are aggrieved victims of some matriarchal conspiracy is non simply an imaginary boogeyman, it'due south something that has caused real impairment in the world exterior this piece of work of fiction.
The other reason I felt the demand to take so much time addressing Rising of the Shield Hero's central controversy is considering the remainder of the bear witness is so unforgivably tiresome. Naofumi is a completely uninteresting protagonist 70% of the time and a complete tool for the other xxx%. He'south only the near "likable" fellow member of the cast so far because everyone else is either a paper-thin nobody or an unrepentant asshole. The fantasy earth itself has no unique qualities of its own – for all I know, it may as well be the same setting equally Death March to The Parallel Earth Rhapsody. The only true conflict in this double-length premiere, which is constantly hammered home through the episode's awful monotonous dialogue, is that Naofumi feels similar a loser for being stuck every bit the Shield Guy. It's contrived, silly, and in no way warrants so much runtime. Shields are perfectly capable deadly weapons. People have been murdering other people with shields since the literal dawn of human civilization. Watching a stale cracker of a protagonist get dunked on for an hour because he'southward been assigned a office that millions of MMO players fulfill just fine every day does non a good premiere make.
Ascension of the Shield Hero has only 1 redeeming quality, and that is its production values. Kinema Citrus still knows how to bring this world to life in vivid color, even if the overall direction is by and large lifeless, and Kevin Penkin'south score is wonderful every bit always. I joked at the beginning of the flavour that Penkin's music would be the but reason I watched this show, but fifty-fifty that turned out to be setting the bar likewise high. Even if the Myne plot were completely cut out, this evidence would notwithstanding experience like a waste of time, considering it offers absolutely cipher we oasis't seen done ameliorate a dozen times before. I'll be more than than happy to just buy the OST when it comes out and not waste any more time with this nonsense series.
Paul Jensen
Rating:
Going into this premiere, I knew next to cipher nearly The Rising of The Shield Hero, except that it's an isekai series surrounded by some sort of controversy. Well, now I know why people have been arguing virtually this i, and the timing of this adaptation certainly doesn't practise it any favors. Information technology seems like an unbelievably bad time to start an anime series with the main grapheme being falsely accused of sexual assault. That premise makes the testify seem tone-deafened, and I imagine it'll drive away some potential viewers. Just for me, this premiere had problems that went across merely one ill-conceived plot device.
Fifty-fifty if you gloss over the details of how Myne sets up Naofumi, The Rising of The Shield Hero gives off an excessively grim and gloomy showtime impression. That'south non necessarily a bad thing on its own, but a dark fantasy story needs to offer either some sort of entertainment value or accept an interesting thematic purpose behind its intensity. Unfortunately, this series doesn't seem to have either of those at the moment. The but real combat nosotros meet amounts to a dude clumsily popping fiddling balloon monsters, which is slightly funny merely fails to scratch the old "blood and gore" crawling in any satisfying manner. As for the story'due south themes, this premiere spends a lot of fourth dimension piling misery onto Naofumi while devoting precious little free energy to telling us why we should intendance. Outside of the obvious "people are jerks" message, I never felt like the story was gearing up to ask any interesting moral questions. It'south just grumpy and mean-spirited without purpose, which isn't at all fun to watch.
If at that place's a vivid spot here, information technology'southward that Naofumi's crappy shield forces him to put some real thought into how he's going to defeat even the weakest of monsters. I can see this opening the door for some clever and unconventional dungeon-crawling tactics, especially if he ends upward recruiting folks who don't fall into the usual fantasy archetypes. It'south also nice to see a series step away from the frequent isekai pitfall of handing everything to the hero on a silver platter, even if this particular instance ends up going besides far in the other direction. Now, if only we could practise something about the RPG menu screens that become shoehorned into all of these shows. I've seen this stuff and then often now that I want to beat my head confronting a wall every time an anime character talks near stats or experience points.
The Ascension of The Shield Hero has some potential equally an antitoxin to all the bland "easy way" isekai stories we've been subjected to in recent years, merely my concern is that information technology goes too far in its efforts to make things tough for Naofumi. Perchance I've just gotten likewise old for this item brand of dark storytelling, but I need to see much more than insightful writing if I'm going to sit down through a whole season of people existence nasty to one another. Your best bet might be to cheque dorsum in six weeks or so to run across if it's either lightened up or gotten more than nuanced in its messaging.
Nick Creamer
Rating: fire it and common salt the earth
I knew Shield Hero by reputation long earlier this season, so I was prepped for it to be one of winter's most controversial anime. I knew that the beau from our world who's transported into a fantasy realm would be known as the unloved "shield hero," and that the plot would commence with a false rape accusation that destroys his reputation. That by itself made me uneasy, so I should probably explicate my reservations now.
Framing a prove effectually a false rape allegation doesn't automatically make for a terrible story, but information technology does potentially provide an indicator of where the writer is coming from. Though some authors are more transparent in their attempted social commentary than others, each choice a writer makes will carry with it some unavoidable real-world baggage. A false rape accusation isn't e'er the wrong selection, but it is always a weighty selection that relies heavily on context. We exist in a earth where rapes are staggeringly nether-reported, women are constantly shamed and attacked for acknowledging abuses against them, and imitation rape reports are a tiny statistical abnormality, vastly overshadowed by the number of assaults that are not reported at all. Given all this, Shield Hero's premise feels similar a tone deaf story option at best, and an indicator of the author'southward own feelings virtually women at worst.
In context, Shield Hero's premiere did every believable thing in its power to communicate that this was the latter case. Simply this writer isn't just angry at women—his bitter paranoia extends to basically everyone around him.
This premiere's mundane failings are endemic to the isekai genre, which at its worst represents a hollow shell of masturbatory otaku reference scrabble. Protagonist Iwatani Naofumi opens past telling us he'southward a "normal otaku," implying that this work is aimed at an audition where normalcy ways deep entrenchment in niche nerd media, specifically the kind where characters merely tend to express themselves through tropes from anime or light novels they've experienced before. Soon, Naofumi is transported to an utterly unconvincing fantasy world, where he learns that magic and skills and fifty-fifty personal development all work just like a JRPG, complete with character stats. This kind of globe-building has get the default for the isekai genre, where an bromidic author will regurgitate tabletop tropes without much creativity instead of sculpting a living, breathing world. Dreaming of other worlds only as harem-friendly versions of Dragon Quest feels pretty depressing to me, just I realize it's ordinarily meant to exist the describe of this creatively anemic genre.
Once nosotros've gotten through the clumsy, overlong, and anticipated worldbuilding—wait, you know what, I shouldn't merely gloss over that stuff. To just handwave this show'southward worldbuilding as lazy would ignore how choices like "the four heroes cannot party together" and "the shield hero can only utilize shields" are delivered not equally natural consequences of dramatic circumstance, only literally dictated to our leads through an electronic voiceover that guides all their actions. This is terrible storytelling that feels like a natural consequence of assuming "it's just an RPG" is good enough fantasy worldbuilding. If you're going to be that derivative, why not go all the manner and base all your drama on "this happened because the game says I should practise this next"?
Anyway, once nosotros've gotten past the worldbuilding, we get to the actual point of this show: everyone is mean to the Shield Hero even though he's super nice and corking. Though Naofumi himself is already unlikable in a casually misogynistic way (at ane betoken he assesses a very vague drawing of a adult female to exist "too slutty to be a princess"), all of his compatriots are pointlessly rude and mean to him at all times. At that place's not much established motivation for them to concord a grudge against him; they're just hateful because someone at some signal was mean to the author, and this is his way of working through those feelings. There'due south no depth to any of Shield Hero'southward supporting bandage, because they have no emotional interiority—they merely be insofar as they react to the Shield Hero, and since this is a vengeful power fantasy, their reactions to him are at all times nonsensically negative. Emotionally rich storytelling demands investment in and sympathy toward others, but so far Shield Hero only offers a purely reactive trounce of some fabricated reality.
"I'm the greatest but no one appreciates information technology" is a common premise in isekai, but Shield Hero goes ane stride further by baking this assumption into the actual lore of its universe. Despite the Shield Hero ostensibly existence one of the four people who will salvage this planet, everyone immediately responds to Naofumi with resentment and derision, presumably because that's how the author sees certain people effectually him. Information technology'd exist hard plenty to purchase into this under-developed video game world under any circumstances, only the fact that this earth'due south salvation myth has to constantly justify the protagonist'due south relentless victim complex makes information technology feel fifty-fifty less like a complex narrative and even more than similar an unpleasantly biting venting exercise.
That brings us all the way dorsum to the rape accusation. After a day of adventuring with his ane party fellow member, Myne Suphia, Naofumi wakes upwards to find himself falsely accused of rape and hated by basically anybody. Through the course of a "trial" that feels eerily similar to several paranoid conspiratorial memes nigh feminists I've seen online, Naofumi finds himself villainized by everyone, crucified by all of the author'due south social anxieties and hangups about women at once. "Her kindness was all fake," Naofumi thinks to himself, articulating the resentment of a million boys angry that unproblematic kindness did non equal sexual interest from a woman. "Nosotros should never have summoned the shield hero," cry the people, succinctly summing upward this show's contradictory sense of martyrdom. Frankly, I agree with them. Unconvincingly developed and emotionally sterile every bit this world may be, it deserves a better course of hero than this.
Rebecca Silverman
Rating:
Aneko Yusagi'due south story for The Rising of The Shield Hero tin can initially be hard to stomach. Seeing Naofumi go beaten downwards from starry-eyed hopeful hero to a homo who trusts no one to the point where ownership a slave seems similar the merely viable option for trustworthy companionship is pretty rotten. (And yeah, slavery will exist a troubling theme throughout the series.) Information technology'due south also hard seeing everyone turn on him so quickly when it'due south so obviously a setup – not only do we encounter Myne deliberately try to get him boozer before maxim "spiral it" and executing her program anyway, merely she also makes it clear that she'southward doing this deliberately to discredit Naofumi as the Shield Hero.
The Shield Hero being the to the lowest degree respected of the 4 summoned heroes is something that we encounter play out more than slowly over this double-length episode. Our first real hint comes when the crowd at the heroes' introduction anniversary murmurs uneasily while looking at Naofumi; the second is when the male monarch attempts to cakewalk correct by him without allowing him to introduce himself. By the fourth dimension Naofumi is faced with no one being willing to join his party, he's already enlightened that at that place'southward something seriously wrong with the way he's being treated compared to Ren (sword), Itsuki (bow), and Motoyasu (spear); Myne's ploy is a way to lull him into a faux sense of security as well as an easy fashion to plow the other heroes against him.
As far as an accommodation goes, this is then far fairly faithful. The art gives a nice sense of a Medieval-based fantasy globe, the blitheness is proficient, and more than importantly, the story is playing out without the clunky-ness of the novels' execution. The gamelike conceit of the world works amend when the narrative isn't regularly interrupted by status updates – in the anime, a shot of Naofumi's status screen is less of an issue than an entire paragraph in the center of the activity listing off his stats. Having a vocalization for Naofumi also helps requite us a amend sense of the dramatic shift in his outlook, because those early volumes of the novel weren't quite up to the job.
Role of the books' entreatment is the emotional hook that Naofumi refuses to recognize his own humanity underneath all the injure and bitterness. Raphtalia, the graphic symbol who's about to make her archway, contributes to that, simply and then does Naofumi'due south refutation of isekai "game world" tropes. If that's appealing to you, it may exist worth sticking around to see things really become going, but information technology's also safe to say that this series' premise won't be to everyone's tastes.
Theron Martin
Rating:
This isekai series has already proven controversial based on a few key points of its premise, and subsequently seeing the double-length first episode, I can understand why. So for my part, I wanted to see whether or not there was anything to this series beyond the controversy.
To go directly to the bespeak, this story pivots on a imitation rape accusation against the main protagonist, with the strong implication that he was deliberately prepare upwardly by Myne, the young woman who changes her heed and decides to work with him after initially supporting someone else. It was clear that she intended to take reward of him from the beginning, but throwing in the rape accusation did seem unnecessary; possibly the rationalization is that she wanted to cover her tracks past putting Naofumi into a situation where his word was being pitted well-nigh directly against her own? It certainly works out that way, which creates the first major result that some viewers will accept with the series. Given what's been going on in the world lately, the timing of this premise probably couldn't have been worse.
Setting aside this element, the end event of putting the protagonist in a place where the whole world has turned against him so that he has to claw his style up to success from aught is pretty standard territory. If it feels unique, that may but be because it hasn't been employed much in isekai stories. (The Twelve Kingdoms is one fairly dated example.) The mechanics of the situation allow Naofumi to be regarded as a criminal but also brand information technology impractical for him to be incarcerated, which seems as well convenient, but I guess a prison house break storyline just wasn't in the cards for the author. Ultimately, we end upward with an embittered protagonist who's go a social pariah, having to play hardball just to scrape by.
That angle actually has some story potential. The notion that all iv heroes are from different versions of modern Nihon is likewise an intriguing twist, though I tin't see that having much long-term story relevance. Naofumi'due south abilities with a shield also show some hope; he won't ever be much of an assaulter, but since information technology can take on different configurations with different abilities, he'll be an ideal role-histrion inside his eventual adventuring party. This helps to offset the heavy emphasis on game mechanics (which is increasingly annoying me in isekai adaptions that aren't literal game worlds), the blandness of the other heroes and the bones premise, and the unremarkable technical merits and setting blueprint.
The episode and so ends on another controversial moment; this isekai looks to exist going the slave route. The slave daughter shown in the final shot is featured prominently on source novel covers and promotional artwork, so I'one thousand presuming that Naofumi will buy her every bit a regular cast member. We'll have to see how that plays out, but for now, the series is off to a troubled but not irredeemable start.
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