Since no one has gone into great detail on it yet and it seems there's some interest, I guess I'll drop my current take on The Rising of the Shield Hero. WALL 'O TEXT HERE!
Plot Summary
I've been watching the anime with my group as we do a weekly get together and spend most of the day watching whatever's currently airing. We'll usually pick 10-15 shows each season, possibly dropping some along the way. While we wind up watching a lot of junk, occasionally we find a gem we might have otherwise missed. At this stage though, Shield Hero isn't one of those gems.
We picked it up because it had that nebulous "hype" around it and appeared to be a more serious kind of fantasy. It's an isekai so we tempered our expectations a bit, but as of episode 4 it's... not especially good. It's strengths are in it's animation, direction, and musical score. It's weakness is the fairly standard storytelling with it's notable problematic issues (which I'll delve into later) being the only thing really setting it apart. So you could say it gets by on shock value and controversy to get people to talk about it, but even if I didn't take issue with those developments it just doesn't utilize them properly.
So to begin our protagonist Naofumi is a NEET, but he thinks he's the cool kind instead of the loser variety. He spends a lot of time at the library since he can read manga for free. He opens up a mysterious book about these different heros with signature weapons. He flips around and sees an image of a woman in a dress, to which he thinks, "Is this the princess? She looks kind of slutty." That got a side eye from me. Then he magically gets whisked away to another world where he and three others have been summoned to a fantasy land as the great heroes who will save the land from calamity. The other guys come off as standoffish assholes whereas Naofumi is just kind of going along with it.
The heroes meet the king and talk among themselves a bit, but we don't really get a feeling for the other heroes personalities (which hampers later developments). The heroes line up to get their adventuring party like it's a game of dodgeball and Naofumi's the kid nobody picks. He's the shield hero so unfortunately he's in quite a pickle since he can only use a shield. Then one of the adventurers that went with spear hero decides to help Naofumi instead. He's happy to be in a party with a cute girl! They go adventuring, buy equipment, and turn in for the night. Then BAM! Said companion accuses him of raping her and the court railroads him into being a pariah. And this is a matriarchy so it's extra bad! He does a 180 on the courtroom floor, going from a goofy, easygoing isekai protagonist to a gruff, the ends justify the means guy.
Naofumi tries to make things work, but the other heroes are outpacing him on leveling and merchants want nothing to do with him due to his rep. Then a sinister ringmaster entices him to visit his giant circus tent of slaves. Ultimately he picks out the sickly looking little racoon girl and pays the ring/slavemaster who places a seal on her which inflicts pain if she ever disobeys him. That's basically the first episode.
Since I've already spent so much time on the setup I'll speed up. From there Naofumi gets Raphtalia gear, feeds her kids meals, get her medicine, buys her a ball, and does all the good slave owner(TM) stuff. They go out and fight some random mobs and a rabbit which Naofumi has to invoke the slave seal's power to get her to fight. Then they go to a cave and fight the dreaded multi-headed dog which reminds Raphtalia of the monster that killed her parents. Ultimately she overcomes her fear and stabs it. A month passes. she levels up fast, which physically ages into her teens, then young adult. Random people start being nice to her and Naofumi calls them lolicons for it. Then the wave happens, the fight they'd been preparing for. Monsters fall out of the skies and Naofumi and Raphtalia wind up defending this small village which the kingdom was more than willing to firebomb without evacuating. The other heroes take care of the boss and the wave ends. They go to the big fancy ball at the castle to get their reward, but spear hero, the king, and Myne make a fuss about Naofumi owning a slave and process to restrain and gag Raphtalia. Naofumi and spear dude fight with Naofumi actually holding out despite being 20 levels lower, but Myne interferes giving spear the win. Then everybody pretends they didn't see the interference, cuz gotta railroad the shield hero. They remove the slave seal from Raphtalia and Naofumi is about to give in to his secret dark power, but Raphtalia hugs him and tells everyone what a good slave owner he is. Spear hero is shocked that Raphtalia didn't immediately join his harem upon being freed and questions his life choices.
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Analysis
My main gripe with Shield Hero is that the false rape accusation and slavery aspect are unnecessary. It could easily tell the same story it seems to want to tell without either of them. Alternatively it could potentially keep them and tell a different story if written more skillfully. To break it down Shield Hero's hook seems to be introducing Naofumi as a fairly standard isekai protagonist, only to have him become gruff and pessimistic due to a sudden betrayal. As such using a fake rape accusation isn't necessary for this twist. Especially since everything seems to have been orchestrated by the king and princess. This seems to be an absolute monarchy so they can literally accuse him of absolutely anything and have it stick. He was already the odd man out, being the shield hero and the only hero that didn't have knowledge of their world. Like how easy would it be to let him think he could have anything from the royal vault only to blind side him with, oh no that was a royal heirloom and you've defiled it with your strange boorishness! Or just let him stumble into some sort of faux paus since he's totally ignorant of the world. Naofumi's agnst comes from being wrongfully accused, the people who should be his allies (the other heroes) turning against him, and the people he was brought there to save wanting nothing to do with him. That all remains intact even if the reason changes.
Now moving on to the slavery aspect. The common refrain I see in defense of this is that he had no choice. With his reputation sullied no legitimate adventurer will join him. Those who would are brigands that want to take his money and run. He physically can't wield a weapon so the obvious choice is slavery! Wait, no... actually he did have a choice. Several choices. 1) Fuck this, I'm out of here: He's a free man and he doesn't know yet that when the wave comes he'll be forcibly pulled to fight. So why not say screw all these people, that's the angsty thing to do. 2) Slave revolt: Naofumi has no issue threatening shopkeeps. Why not bust open some cages and enjoy the chaos. Someone might even join willingly seeing that he wants to tear down the system that holds them down. 3) Go solo: Forget help. Do it alone. From what the show has show he can't wield weapons to fight, but when he was defending the down he was able to use gasoline and start a fire. Work around the rules to get ahead. 4) If he's gotta buy a slave, why the slave mark?" He could have bought the frail, sickly little girl and been like "Ok, you're free". Except she has nowhere to go, in a town where her people are regarded as subhuman, and she's dying. So obviously she sticks with Naofumi anyway. This is also very problematic which is why I've put this last. But I just want to put a point on how unnecessary her magically being his slave is. It's like other people were talking about earlier in the thread with how the concept seems to have evolved from "woman likes bland protagonist because he's vaguley nice and will bend themselves absolutely to his will" to "that, but she's literally got to be his property too".
I mentioned at the beginning these things are bad not only because they reinforce negative concepts that are harmful in real life, but also because it results in a weaker story. So even if you don't care about "social justice" or whatever you should still be unhappy with the lost potential it brings. Making hard choices makes fertile ground for a better narrative. Ok, so let's say things remained as they were, except we were actually supposed to see Naofumi as a bad person. In the actual show it wants us the believe he's the victim of false accusations, he acts like a jerkass, but only so people will actually treat him fairly. The system's stacked against him and he's just finding ways around it. He's really got that heart of gold if you look hard enough. In the seasonal anime thread someone linked to an interview with the author where they described Naofumi as "a broken mirror" that reflects the way people treat him. Except what did Raphtalia do to him for him to have the slave seal placed on her? He may treat her "well", but she ultimately does not have her own agency. She's alive and only continues to live at Naofumi's whim. And in order for us to continue seeing Naofumi as the "good guy" we get scenes like in ep 4, where spear guy essentially becomes a straw man for Naofumi to knock down with his "Slavery is legal in this country" comeback. Spear guy is "wrong" because he doesn't actually care about slavery, he just thinks Raphtalia would look good in his harem and if she weren't bound by that seal she'd leap into his arms. This isn't an actual debate about slavery, it doesn't say anything interesting. Naofumi only "wins" the argument because everyone else in the room is too dumb to form a coherent thought.
Like think how much more interesting it would be if that same scene plays out, Naofumi defends keeping Raphtalia as a slave and Raph says she likes being a slave, but spear guy just shoots back with "If that's the case why not remove the slave seal." At that point Naofumi can either keep digging in or relent and let it be removed. Presumably he'd be reluctant because his previous run in with Myne gave him severe trust issues. The show could use this as an opportunity to let us see Naofumi''s actual thoughts on the subject, not just the jerkass persona he puts forward. And if Naofumi says no, spear guy could try pushing the king on getting rid of slavery entirely (after all, the heroes are from the modern world). The king would shoot back with a hell no, and that would create some uncertainty between the heroes and the people they're supposed to be defending. That could lead to an interesting plot development.
Or what if Naofumi just outright hated himself for buying a slave and given how everyone's treated him so far he's ready for the judgmental glares of the townsfolk, but then everyone's ok with it. That leads to a situation in which he's not only wrongfully accused, but others don't even hate him for something he actually considers wrong. That's some prime Aaaaangst right there. It'd fit right in. My point isn't to make endless what ifs scenarios, but to draw attention to the fact that there were many different roads this series could take. The actual scenarios I've laid out don't matter. The problem is the false rape accusation and slavery are crutches used by a writer who has difficulty crafting a compelling narrative and leans on them for shock value rather than actually trying to use any sort of potential those concepts have. That's why sliding in other plot elements is so easy.
So ultimately I've got to say I recommend passing on it. It squanders what potential it does have due to it's need to prop up the morally questionable protagonist with antagonists that are somehow worse, but also stupider. If my watch group wants to continue watching it I'll continue with them, but I did a 15 minute spiel after ep 4 so it may get dropped just so I shut up.