New month
New day
New quest
Same anime lover
Today I'll be talking about the Isekai anime - The rising of the shield hero. An anime adaption of the light novel series created by Aneko Yusagi, the series was first aired on the 9th January 2019 and gained massive popularity containing a total of 25 episodes of the first season. It focuses on themes like betrayal, Loss , injustice and final redemption of the main character.
The series tells the story of a college student - Iwatani Naofumi who is suddenly whisked away into a foreign world while he is at the library to become one of the heroes destined to save this new world from wave monsters. Naofumi along with three other randomly selected individuals are given distinct weapons namely: Sword, Spear, Bow and Shield.
The protagonist gets the Shield which leads to him being isolated by the very people who summoned him due to lingering grievances from the previous shield hero. His weapon also possessed a flaw which created further complications with the natives and his comrades, the shield only performed defensive roles with no attack abilities putting him at a huge disadvantage.
The heroes were instructed to create their own parties and the member of Naofumi's crew was the princess of the kingdom Malty S. Melromarc.
Malty falsely accuses Naofumi of rape which leads to his exile and lose of support from the entire kingdom. Feelings of betrayal and anger overwhelms our young hero who now has to survive on his own with little to nothing to hold onto. The entire country hated him, everyone saw him as a villain and he was alone in a world he knew absolutely nothing about. But Naofumi's determination to survive was unwavering, he turned isolation into motivation and pain into his biggest weapon leveling up as he gained experience.
Certain that he would never be able to perform attack based skills, Naofumi purchases a demi human slave named Raphtalia to do the fighting for him. Initially, he is still withdrawn from her finding it difficult to bond due to his trust issues but after a life threatening encounter, their relationship morphs into something deeper than master-slave interaction as they both help each other overcome their past traumas.
Naofumi also finds a new companion in bird creature he names Filo who has the ability to turn into a girl with wings. Together the three of them go on numerous adventures fighting the wave monsters plaguing the world. After series of battles, Naofumi is finally able to clear his name from the false rape accusation, the princess punished for her crimes and reinstated as a complete hero of the kingdom together with all the privileges,honour and recognition that comes with the title. No more is he the lonely loser with a bad reputation, Rather Naofumi becomes a respected hero placed even in higher standing than the other three because of his massive contributions in curbing threats to the kingdom.
The rising of the shield hero is a must watch Isekai that offers a breath of freshness to old viewers and a captivating story for new times. It has quality visuals, action packed with a story that requires looking deeper educating the audience that heroes are not just individuals chosen for the job but people who can go beyond adversity to get the job done.
The first season is a solid 9.2 but the second and third seasons were pretty lacking, hopefully the upcoming season will have that flare that drew in massive viewership.
Images are from Wikipedia and imdb