The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 2

盾の勇者の成り上がり Season2

6.53(331K votes)

Ranked #7680Popularity #248

episodes

Type

Status

Finished Airing

Aired

Apr 6, 2022 to Jun 29, 2022

Studios:Kinema Citrus, DR Movie

ActionAdventureDramaFantasy

Synopsis

With another Wave happening in a week, Naofumi Iwatani and his party have no time to waste. However, when bat familiars raid Lurolona Village and the Wave countdown comes to a halt, the Four Cardinal Heroes reconvene with the queen, Mirelia Q Melromarc, for a quick briefing. The queen presumes that the odd occurrences are linked to the Spirit Tortoise—a threatening creature that has awakened from its slumber, back to cause havoc once again. A plan to put the Spirit Tortoise to rest is devised—but out of the four men, only the cursed Shield Hero agrees to help. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

862,910 Members

Worth Watching? — Global Verdict

3.9/10

Average Review Score

Recommend It

Reviews Worldwide

International Reviews

SingleH

Not Recommended

This show is a piece of trash, and I’m shocked I or anyone else ever gave it the time of day. The first four episodes of season one are decent, and while the production issues which would later come to plague the series were already rearing their ugly heads even back then—bad CG, bits of clunky animation, and so on—the actual story they told, at least as far as isekai is concerned, was fairly compelling, and the firestorm of internet controversy they ignited was thoroughly hilarious. However, immediately after this, the series devolved into the most generic isekai harem you’ve ever seen, and nothing aboutit is worth anyone’s time for a list of reasons both obvious and egregious. Reason 1: How the fuck are we not bored of this yet? Gosh, where do I even begin? I’m so glad Mushoku Tensei came out between now and the previous season of Shield Hero, because it serves as a nice and easy example to reference when explaining why this very similar anime is, in comparison, complete shit. Isekai as a genre has grown into this unholy behemoth, and almost all of it has been awful, but Mushoku Tensei was a truly refreshing exception. In oversimplified terms, both are isekai anime with an overpowered MC who is, at least ostensibly, easily characterized as a self-insert. However, their execution sets them apart completely. Where Mushoku Tensei actually cared about developing a uniquely detailed fantasy setting whose immersion was only bolstered by the stellar background art, beautiful colors, and hand-drawn detail, Shield Hero relies on the same RPG video game standard we’ve seen used fifteen billion times by now, whose drab, ugly, lackluster banality and endless info-dumping is only made worse by the hideous art design, garish CG, stale environments, and shitty over-designed, off-model character art. It’s an anime that both looks and feels incredibly cheap, and I’m having a very hard time figuring out why this series has received so much attention, even as a light novel. I understand why it grabbed peoples’ attention at first—and we’ll get back to that in a minute—but why didn’t people get bored and drop it after it became so generic and boring? Was the first arc just good enough to keep people around, no matter how awful it got? Because as it stands now, I’m genuinely challenging myself to find any difference between this and the seasonal isekais that nameless studios pump out every season, and I seriously cannot find anything. Reason 2: What the fuck is the author expecting me to see in this man? Whenever a show comes out that doesn’t conform to peoples’ strict worldview, it has become normal to see internet mobs trying to “cancel” such anime. The most common source of this sort of whining and bitching is, as one might expect, lolis. Anime containing loli fanservice or lolis in general will very often find themselves the targets of raging lynch mobs screaming about how they contain or promote pedophilia, and while this may seem like a ridiculous thing to suggest, I must say, as an individual who grew up and lives in a country where the first response to gun violence in schools has always been out-of-touch elected officials blaming the sales figures of Grand Theft Auto V, this method of conflating fictional entertainment with real life social issues is actually a very common thing. However, in the anime community, these people almost always come across as virtue signaling prudes or, as is most often the case, as complete charlatans who don’t actually give a shit and who just want to ignite controversy surrounding a show they don’t like. I know reviews can be taken down for analysis like this, but I’m not technically breaking the rules as I’m not commenting on viewers of this show specifically, and either way, I don’t disrespect the hustle. I’m an attention whore myself, and I’m glad I brought up Mushoku Tensei earlier, because the controversy surrounding that series absolutely reeked of this, and it remains a good comparison for my thoughts on Shield Hero. The protagonist of Mushoku Tensei was an outright sexual deviant, and this became quite controversial not simply as a matter of fact, but also because the series and its characters seemed to go out of their own way to make excuses for his behavior in a way many found discomforting. Personally, I enjoyed Mushoku Tensei for two main reasons. Firstly, it had a clear and impressive amount of effort put into its production, and seeing such love and care from the creators behind it gave me an inherent respect for the series. Secondly and more importantly, it was shockingly and consistency well-written in a way that most anime—and certainly most isekai—are not. But why is this relevant to the controversy, and why is the controversy relevant to Shield Hero? Naofumi is, generally speaking, a good person, and Rudeus, the protagonist of Mushoku Tensei, is not. He’s a borderline narcissist who has great difficulties recognizing his own faults, and whenever he does recognize such faults, he turns into a pouty child who’s incapable of getting out of his own head and improving in real terms. Much more damning is the fact he’s a pervert, and his willingness to cross the physical boundaries of women in his life is only exacerbated by the fact he’s the protagonist of an isekai harem and, quite crucially, knows it. Before being isekai’d, he was a disgusting otaku NEET who spent his days jerking off to anime girls exactly like the one’s who he now inhabits a world surrounded by, so his tendency to instantly view and treat the women he meets as sex objects is frankly gross. I could go on, but hopefully you get BOTH of the points I’m making here. Point one is obvious: Rudeus really is a scummy guy. But the second point is what I’m really getting at: Rudeus is a real, fleshed-out, well-rounded, flawed character, NOT a self-insert. He has some positive qualities, and he has what some might consider to be a relatable backstory, but he is far too complex and unpleasant of a character to be broadly considered a “self-insert.” In comparison, Naofumi was a real character for about four episodes, and ever since those first four episodes (which were not the most brilliantly written pieces of literature in the first place), he has been a classic, hollow, lifeless self-insert, and this is where the controversy becomes relevant, because what is a self-insert? Why is it used as a derogatory term? A self-insert is a protagonist who the author deliberately designed to be as generic and unremarkable as possible, while simultaneously being as relatable as possible, but only by means of the most inoffensive, broadly applicable, and unchallenging personality traits imaginable, all for the soul purpose of creating a clear and inviting non-character for the audience to project themselves onto to achieve maximum escapism when watching a show, which itself is also deliberately pandering in whatever way. This is usually considered to be a negative way to construct a character, because not only is it cynical and manipulative, but because it is simply a recipe for an awful script. If you’re watching anime because you want to actually watch an anime and not insert yourself into it for whatever indulgent, masturbatory reasons you may have, and you actually want to be treated to quality storytelling, then this approach to constructing a protagonist is obviously contemptible. Naofumi going from a brooding, expressive, angry MGTOW to some generic light novel man and falling squarely into this self-insert trap can be criticized on these terms, but watching this season, I’ve started looking at this show from a slightly different angle, because this show features slavery. And that’s fine. I mean, slavery exited in real life, so why shouldn’t it exist in fiction, right? My reaction to these kinds of things being included in anime has always been to simply shrug it off and ask, “Who gives a shit?” But then I started to truly appreciate the angle Shield Hero was taking. In the first four episodes of season one, back when (despite not being the best anime ever made or anything) the show was actually decent and able to be invested in, the initial handling of slavery didn’t seem particularly eyebrow-raising to me. Regardless of the inherent evil of the institution, he used it to rescue Raphtalia from a horrendous situation, and her thankfulness didn’t seem inappropriate to me. When taken out of context, sure, presenting a character as being happy to be someone else’s slave might make you question the author’s intentions, but in context, it worked given the nature of the setting, the circumstances of the story, and the personalities of the characters. But what happens to this dynamic when the characters lose their personalities? What happens to this dynamic when the protagonist goes from being a desperate man raging against a corrupt system maliciously rigged against him, using whatever means he could and taking advantage of whatever institutions were at his disposal to gain victory, to a generic, unchallenged, deadpan self-insert with an afterthought of a personality? And most of all, what happens when this dynamic becomes unnecessary? What happens when new waifus willingly becoming slaves just becomes a fun little gimmick of the story? At what point do we start asking ourselves if, actually, the slave harem was the author’s fetish all along, and at what point did he expect his audience to self-insert with his Ottoman Sultan harem-having slave-driving protagonist? Reason 3: What is even the fucking point anymore? (Spoiler: there is no point.) The plot of this season picks up pretty much exactly where season one left off. There’s lots of boring, generic new characters to replace some of the side characters from the previous arc, and while the main cast obviously remains the focus of the story, everyone feels like a complete husk of whatever they once were. Filo, for example, has always been a hollow character, so I guess calling her a husk isn’t much of an insult, but Raphtalia lost any spark of life she previous had and has devolved into your standard mid-class pandering waifu, and as I’ve discussed now at great length, Naofumi is a self-insert. Just stoic Mr. Isekai Man who everyone loves and who can do anything. They info-dump the plot to come, then it comes, and there’s a new setting, so they info-dump all that, and life goes on with a string of unexceptional, over-the-top, villain-of-the-week monstrous perverts for white knight Mr. Isekai Man to save all his women from and gain the love of everyone. If I’m to bring Mushoku Tensei back for one more comparison, I guess it should be: what is the fucking point? Mushoku Tensei is about Rudeus coming to respect himself on his own terms while also learning to value the bonds of family which he in his past life was too self-centered to grasp. Shield Hero was, at one time, briefly about learning to love and trust in an unfair world you never understood and which valued you less than dirt. Its theme was poignant and empathetic. But those days are over now. They were over in 2019 when, over the course of a single episode, the series transitioned from betrayal and redemption to atrociously animated sequences of the villains humiliating themselves with goofy retard music playing clumsily in the background. Season one started decently, and quickly descended into mediocrity and failure. Season two is just mediocrity and failure from start to finish. Thank you for reading.

Episodes (13)

Filler Recap

Click an episode to read its synopsis.

Community Discussion

Mcsuper

Not Recommended

After watching this season, I can safely say, Malty is the reason why I even finished Season 1. The biggest problem with Shield Hero is that it just isn’t as satisfying to watch anymore, because the revenge plot is done, and now it’s just a generic isekai. I’m sure the studio and animators realized that, so what did they do? They proceeded to milk the living heck out of Raphtalia and create some fan service, because they know there are many people watching this show just for her. I had low expectations coming into this season, because I didn’t think Season 1 was that goodto begin with, especially in the second half. Somehow this season still ended up being disappointing. This season of Shield Hero was paced poorly, was uninteresting, the characters got even worse, but it did have one saving grace, and I’ll highlight that down below. My grading criteria: Story: /25 Art: /10 Music: /10 Characters: /20 Enjoyment /15 Thematic Execution /20 STORY: 5.5/25 An awkward mess would be an understatement. Granted, I didn’t expect a whole lot from this season, but this was not good. I’ll talk briefly about the two main arcs of this season: The spirit tortoise arc. Absolutely atrocious, and I’m sure most of you agree. I started the arc and the first thing I wondered was who Éclair was. I looked back at the previous season, skimmed through wikis, and I found nothing about her. So, you’re telling me she just showed up? YUP! That was the first sign that this was getting extremely rushed, even though I’ve never read the light novel. I don’t blame them for rushing this though, because it’s just a boring arc, and I can see why this rushed it, but you can’t introduce an important character without letting us know who she was beforehand. The biggest problem to me was how they deviated from the plot of season 1, which was fighting the waves, and seeing the video game mechanics in play. This time, there’s just this random tortoise thing that’s supposedly a danger to the world, which felt so random. After a few episodes of meandering about doing a whole lot of nothing, Naofumi and company face off against Kyo Ethnina, who is officially one of my least favourite villains of all time. The way he just shouts so annoyingly, but honestly has the same intelligence as people in Team Rocket from Pokemon is just near unbearable. All he does is shout arrogantly, and when he gets defeated, WHOOP-DEE-DOO, he has yet another trick up his sleeve. Very poor character writing, and one of the lamest villains I’ve laid my eyes on, Malty was actually frustrating to watch, in a somewhat good way, and vastly superior to Kyo. Next, we have the New World arc, which started off decently, but once Kyo came back on the screen, I realized that it’s still horrible. The first few episodes of this arc were the best of the entire season, and those were the episodes where virtually nothing happened, and they were exploring the Infinite Labyrinth. Obviously, the writers knew that the series was struggling at this point, so how should we save the story? SMOL RAPHTALIA IS DEFINITELY THE ANSWER TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS!!! Yikes. Though, the reason for my increased enjoyment to start this arc was the addition of the Cardinal Hunting Hero Kizuna, who was a fun and bubbly character with at least a little personality. Another reason is that Shield Hero finally got back to its roots and focused on levelling up and gaining items, which was the best part about Shield Hero in Season 1. Twists and turns happen, the gang eventually reunites again after episode after episode of absolute nonsense and Raphtalia not leaving the screen for more than two seconds. The villains were uninteresting, and the ending of the arc was rushed heavily as well. Overall, just hugely rushed. The development of the characters was poor, the villains were lame, and the amount of plot holes was crazy. ART: 4.2/10 Huge step down from Season 1, and it became abundantly clear that Kinema Citrus was already setting their sights on working on Made In Abyss Season 2. Character expressions were awkward, fight scenes took place in stills, and the Spirit Tortoise looked like a huge, heavy pile of CG. Yikes. MUSIC: 8.4/10 I will say, Kevin Penkin is still the saving grace of this show, and the music is pretty good in important scenes. Looking forward to his work in Made In Abyss Season 2. The opening was not as good as the first two, and the ending was alright. CHARACTERS: 5.5/20 Uninspiring, boring, and just stock characters. Maybe they’re kinda cool in fight scenes, but what could you tell me about any type of reasonable character development? Let’s go over some of the characters. Everyone’s favourite character, Raphtalia! I’m convinced she’s just here since the fans love her. She can fight, and keep Naofumi level-headed, but that’s no different from Season 1. The romance is just there because you just gotta have some kind of a harem in an isekai for the fans to be happy. When the story gets bad, they just show some smol Raphtalia, and expect the fans to be satisfied. Let’s talk about Filo and Rishia now. Filo barely got any screen time, and there was no development for her, she’s just there. Rishia got my character development this time, by being more brave I suppose, and building up her skills. Her plot armour is crazy though, as not even Kyo’s gravity attack can oppose her. The question though is, why was Rishia wearing that Filo outfit in the tortoise arc??? I mentioned Kyo earlier, and how bad he is, so let’s talk about our saving grace, Kizuna. Definitely the best character in the series, because she’s strong, and has a pretty fun personality. Still a very bare-bones character that would benefit from some development. Would love to see more of her. Finally, let’s talk about our protagonist, Naofumi. He seems like a smart guy right? To be honest, he’s just an average protagonist, but he looks smart because everyone around him have very low intelligence, and rely on him to do the heavy lifting, though we do see this theme quite a lot in other shows as well, it just seems more noticeable here. He’s a solid character, but his only intriguing aspect is when he gets angry and the wrath shield tries to take over. I still don’t understand how he can attack when he’s supposed to be a defensively oriented hero. ENJOYMENT: 2.5/15 I found myself completely checked out at times, and there was little to no elements that had me enjoying this season. THEMATIC EXECUTION: 4/20 What this show does, is fix bad thematic execution, with what the writer and director thinks is good themes. For example, if a fight was underwhelming, or if the story was convoluted, they’d try to fix it with some fan service. If the plot was boring, they’d try to spice things up with a hint of romance. It just doesn’t work. No themes were executed well, as a lot of things felt forced and rushed. OVERALL: 30.1/100 Definitely the worst show I watched in the spring season. The story was massively rushed, the characters were uninspiring and bland, the villains were lame, and I didn’t enjoy it at all. I even heard that they didn’t follow the light novel very well from the readers. It’s a shame, though I kind of expected this, since the second half of the first season gave me signs that the story would go downhill, but I didn’t expect that this would be this appalling. The production and animation overall was very janky as well. The saving grace for this series was definitely Kizuna and Kevin Penkin’s composing. I believe that Season 3 might be a bit better than this season, but I’m not going to be expecting much at all.

193 found helpfulJun 29, 2022

jahver

Not Recommended

The Rising of Shield Hero Season 2 is one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had to sit through, and this is coming from a Yankees fan. How do you even manage to fuck up a sequel to one of the most popular LN adaptations of all time this badly? Say what you want about the first season of Shield Hero, but it was hard to deny it was all the rage back in 2019. As early as the first episode’s airing people were either ranking it among their Top 10 or throwing shitfits over it. There’s not much to say about Season 1 that hasn’talready been said by thousands of others. Shield Hero is the definition of low-hanging fruit at this point. It’s juvenile shlock with terrible characters and endless plot contrivances that has no idea what it wants to be. I hated it, but at the same time I kept coming back. At the end of the day I had fun watching it week to week, laughing at the comical amounts of edge, tonal whiplash and stilted dialogue. Season 2 on the other hand strayed so far from my expectations I was left speechless by just how consistently fucking terrible it managed to be every episode. It’s not bad in the entertaining sense, it’s bad in a way that just leaves you incensed. So much of it fundamentally fails on every level that you’d think this was the result of some kind of corporate sabotage scheme put into place by the vengeful author of another terrible isekai series, angry that his internet fanfiction turned legitimate franchise was overshadowed. As you can probably guess, Season 1 left off on all the plot threads that kept people watching (the rape accusation, the “other universes” nonsense, etc.) resolved in the most unsatisfying ways possible; now Naofumi the Shield Hero/wholesome slave owner and his harem of walking cliches have pretty much accomplished all the goals that were set in the first season, or the first 5 volumes of the novels. Here’s the issue: the whole point of the "rising" of the Shield Hero was already shown in the first season. There’s nowhere else to go from here, but considering there was still 17 volumes left to cover, a second season is pretty much a given. Guess what Kinema Citrus decides to do? Rush through the following volumes, completely skip context to new characters and story developments, and drag out what fans already consider to be the worst arc in the series with a decreased animation budget and worse directing. Great. Of course most viewers won’t know any of this supplemental info at first, so they’ll be immediately let down. I couldn’t think of a better way to make sure 70% of viewers drop your series within the first 5 episodes. The Spirit Turtle/Kyo arc is (from what I’ve heard) incredibly boring enough in the novels, so I have no idea why the studio chose to turn it into even more of a pointless slog. I couldn’t tell what the worst part of this season was, the endless scenes of characters spouting prosaic dialogue at each other for minutes on end, pedestrian attempts at developing characters or the stale, repetitive fight scenes that only exist to hook the audience back in after the other 2 put them to sleep. Director Masato Jinbo doesn’t have that bad a record, working on stuff like Shakugan no Shana S2 and Yuru Camp. The animation is considerably less polished than Season 1 and there’s an embarrassing number of off-model shots, even during still frames or any one of the thousands of mind-numbing talking scenes. Looking at all the shoddily drawn characters is more stimulating than actually listening to them converse. It’s a direct contrast to Season 1, which looked leagues better than this. In Season 1 characters were hardly ever off-model for 25 episodes, and the worst I can say about the animation was that it relied too heavily on CGI models for a lot of fight sequences. The background characters even looked like humans instead of stick figures most of the time, and it's sad that I have to praise it for doing the bare minimum that most anime can't even seem to accomplish these days. What’s the problem here? Did they not care? I’d have to guess that condensing the volumes of the story this season covers into a 13 episode season gave the staff less time to refine everything from adapting the light novels to a television format to making sure it actually looked halfway finished. This was probably the decision that sealed Season 2's fate. On the topic of characters, one of the biggest blights on this season is the new character Rishia. She’s so fucking annoying. I thought people were overreacting before I started the season but yeah, she really is one of the least likeable characters ever written. 99% of her screentime is wasted on her obsessing over one of the heroes who wants nothing to do with her (understandable), crying for some reason or just being dead weight in fights or emotional scenes. Season 2 opts to skip most of the scenes establishing her and make her feel like a genuine addition to the cast and just skip right into her training, making her feel like she was awkwardly inserted into the story at the last moment. You’d think a character like this would have some kind of arc or emotional resolution but she NEVER IMPROVES. She’s obnoxious and stagnant enough to the point Naofumi calling her out during his rage scene feels completely justified instead of mean-spirited. The reason I reserved almost an entire paragraph for her is because she’s a major character in the season, and you’d better believe they try to force you to like every time she’s onscreen despite the fact there’s absolutely nothing to like. Naofumi and his harem are as insipid as ever. The other new characters from parallel universes range from uninteresting to background scenery. Glass, the mostly silent rival to Naofumi from the first season, gets ruined as she becomes another sidekick for Naofumi. The arc villain Kyo is a bland, two-dimensional prick with about as much likeability as Rishia. Season 1 at least had the smart idea of making all the villains comically over the top, unapologetically evil scumbags so you could enjoy how awful they were, and get some satisfaction when they finally go down. Kyo is not only unbearably annoying but also has no depth to him. Filler villains in Naruto have more complexity than this guy, who’s supposed to be a major player in the Shield Hero world, as he’s the illegitimate Book Hero as well as being from a parallel world. He appears, conducts a little evil in the background, makes some evil swords (ripped off from that one Bleach arc for some reason) and gets defeated in one of the least exciting climactic battles ever animated. You really think nothing of him the entire season and forget everything about him once it’s over. Shield Hero Season 2 is an unbearably ugly, passionless and aggravating sequel to a series that didn’t really need any further continuation. I actually feel like I was too hard on Season 1 in the past, because despite it being tasteless, ludicrous and offensive to everyone, it was entertaining. It was fun, ridiculously grimy shit you got invested in because it always managed to rise to some absurd new level of stupidity. Season 2 has nothing of value. It insults fans of the light novels and the manga by removing key elements of the story. It insults casual viewers by being an ugly, vacuous waste of time. There is nothing redeeming about The Rising of Shield Hero Season 2 and it should not have been made. There was no passion put into the production at any level and it absolutely shows. The best thing you can say about this season that it’s a massive letdown and the worst thing you can say probably breaks several MAL guidelines. I’m not even a fan of the series yet I still feel like a part of me died watching this.

122 found helpfulJun 29, 2022

ThatAnimeSnobRE

Not RecommendedWell-written

The first season of the Shield Hero had a big impact in the community. Half of it was praising it for its bold take on an isekai protagonist who is wrongfully accused, and the other half was shiting on it for being full of cheap tactics for engaging the viewer through rage instead of quality writing. As the season kept going, more and more people were joining the dislike side as one by one everything that made the initial episodes good was being replaced with the same generic crap that plague all isekai and turned a once (supposed) subversion of the formula into yet anotherpower fantasy. By the time the second season began most didn’t care about it, but were still hopeful it would return to form. The source readers kept telling them all sorts of crazy shit are going to happen next which will blow their minds. So, they added it to their plan to watch lists and made it the most anticipated show of the season it came out (MAL statistics wise). What they got was something that was vastly inferior in every aspect.Here is a quick summary: 1) The revengeporn, the main reason everybody was watching it for, is over. Naofumi got his revenge when the princess got punished back in the first season. Everything that followed that felt hollow. 2) The protagonist lost his cool edgy side where everyone hated him and he didn’t trust anyone. Now he’s another generic self insert power fantasy for antisocial otakus. 3) The pacing became ridiculously fast, thus not letting the antisocial otakus to enjoy the harem. 4) The animation is far worse and uses a lot of horrible CGI. 5) Even the source material readers openly admit that the turtle arc is garbage. 6) Better isekai came out during the gap between the two seasons (Rezero, Mushoku Tensei) making even the fist season to seem like crap in retrospect. 7) The anime became yet another generic harem isekai. And on top of that it’s about a slave harem that keeps excusing slavery by making it seem like the girls love being slaves. And now for a more detailed breakdown: The Shield Hero at this point can might as well be called the Harem Slave Hero, since the attributes of his shield change at the drop of a hat, while his gathering of cute underage girls who rush to be included to his party after being abused by some evil slaver continue as normal. The mental gymnastics for excusing such an immoral act come down to not presenting it as a bad thing, since this way the girl becomes stronger very fast. It’s something nobody else does although it’s a cheat code for becoming super powerful in a few months. The whole concept is eye-rolling since slavery is legal in the show and the slave girls are joining willingly because every other male in the show is either incompetent or an asshole. Plus, as much as they keep saying slave crests are way too expensive to be used many times, the protagonist uses them all the time without having any financial problems. Even if he had problems, he could ask the queen to pay for the expenses. He is the hero who is destined to save the world after all, why does he have to pay for anything? Meanwhile it’s neither immoral nor expensive when they use a slave crest on the king and the princess without being slaves and against their will if that way they can ridicule them for standing against the protagonist. Basically, when he does it it’s perfectly fine. When someone else does it then it’s evil. The first half of the season is about fighting some turtle monster that nobody in the audience gave two dimes about. The whole thing was done in a very rushed way with far worse production values and no real personal investment as far as the good guys are concerned. For them it was just another side quest which through videogame shenanigans stopped the normal quest to defeat the Waves. For as long as the special event monster is alive there is not going to be another monster attack. Good. Just don’t kill the monster and the world is saved. The end, the heroes can go home now. Unfortunately the protagonist has become a saint at this point who no longer does missions for surviving in a kingdom that hates him. He just does missions on command, so when the queen tells him to kill the monster, he agrees in a second. As for the other heroes, they refuse because there is nothing to gain from it. And I don’t mean loot, I mean actually achieve something that will stop the monster attacks. By leaving this monster alone they no longer have to worry about the other far more powerful monsters. Obviously the show makes them seem uncaring for not wanting to do the wrong thing, just for making the protagonist to come off as heroic once again. Before he gets to do anything against the turtle, another girl begs to be his slave. The show excuses it as her being sold to an ugly one dimensional rapist who smirked with the evil things he kept doing. Once she was saved by the Bow Hero she instantly fell in love with him, since what a better way to excuse being a slave to someone than love at first sight? The cute girl instantly wants to be a slave of the hero so she can help him. And by help she means become his waifu. But the Bow Hero is a retard who doesn’t let her join his party because she is weak, although the slave crest would make her super powerful in no time. This is where the Shield Hero jumps in and does the logical thing. He makes her his slave. Because in this show women can be helpful only by being slaves. Then the battle with that turtle thing happens in a completely dull way. The other three heroes are once again proven to be incompetent so Naofumi can show off how amazing he is once again. Then they get captured immediately and out of screen because the animators skipped the battle. In fact they skipped half the source material because they wanted to move to more interesting stuff as soon as possible. The heroes from another isekai are back and they became allies out of nowhere. They want to destroy the world but they also don’t want to team up with the villain who wants to do the exact same thing. This sudden change in alignment happened out of screen because they skipped the buildup where they slowly change the way they see things. The new bad guy is the Book Hero, someone who came out of nowhere and with no build up to his plans. He just wants to destroy shit and acts like a one dimensional evil rapist so the audience can instantly hate him instead of pondering about his legit reasons for wanting to destroy the world. Nah, we can’t have nuance in our crappy power fantasy for incels, just make him come off as a jerk so the protagonist can beat him up with no remorse. The queen of the chocobos appears out of nowhere and fights the turtle without ever explaining how she knew about the battle and why she came in this specific moment. She just pops into existence at this convenient moment for a convenient attack at the convenient weak point of the monster. If it comes off as lazy writing it’s because they skipped the part where she is informed about the whole situation and comes to join the fight. Meanwhile the rest of the nobody soldiers are outside and are doing absolutely nothing because they are useless. This part is not rushed and they skipped nothing. They always were useless. Then the new slave waifu saves the day with a power up she gained out of screen because they skipped the training. Then harem lead and his underage nymphets get teleported from one isekai to another isekai. Isekaiception. This has the effect of making them lose all their powers. Imagine working hard to get somewhere and then losing everything just because you moved to a different area. The recent slave girl for example can no longer perform those broken martial arts from the previous episodes, and essentially loses all her character development. Also what does losing everything means exactly? You forget how to fight or how to cast spells? Your equipment magically goes back to wooden starter weapons? This videogame logic is really bonkers because it literally makes your knowledge and skills and muscle memory to be nothing more than numbers that can be taken away just like that. A positive thing is that the raccoon girl is back to her loli form, since that is her actual age and that is what all the perverts watching the show want to see more off. The negative side is that you are reminded the protagonist had groomed a little girl that he bought as his slave and she is madly in love with him as thanks. Because this is what light novels are all about. Anyways, they explore the world a bit and find another cute and very young looking girl who in half an episode is already in love with the protagonist because he helped her out. It’s almost like this is a videogame datesim, isn’t it? Let’s ignore the fact that she is supposed to be isekaied as well therefore she is not an NPC but an actual person. And let’s also ignore how his other harem slave chicks are presented as not jealous for having yet another girl to antagonize with for the attention of their slave owner. After that the harem pedo slaver and his possessions begin a new adventure in a new land. The fans of this abomination were very pleased with the twist because Naofumi is no longer overpowered, and the ridiculous stupid heroes with the evil bitch princess are not around. They were hopeful the next episodes would be good again. Too bad they forgot the main reason everyone was watching the show for was for the false rape allegations, how everyone hated the protagonist, and how they were getting boners at the thought of him getting his revenge. None of that exist anymore and the show has become a generic isekai about a slave owner and his underage nymphets. They spend a lot of time in figuring out how the new setting is different from the previous setting. That means a lot of infodumps about the worldbuilding. And by worldbuilding I mean explaining how the videogame terminology of the second isekai is different from the videogame terminology of the first isekai. That’s as far as depth goes in this show. You would think that if you are in a different world with different rules then the plot will also be different. And it isn’t. It’s still about one dimensional rapist villains enslaving and torturing cute girls. That’s what happened to Filo. No matter the setting the author can’t write anything other than helpless slave girls and tormenting slavers. The protagonist is of course the only exception since despite being a slave owner he treats his harem in a nice way. He also makes sure to punish the slaver, save the girl, and then adds her back to his harem as thanks for rescuing her. No matter how much the Shield Hero tries to reinvent himself, he immediately relapses and crawls back to his incel power fantasy addiction. Because that is the target audience for this show. Since we are in a completely different isekai with a completely different magic system, it makes sense that the plot will not be the exact same as in the first isekai. And that is why the three heroes of the second isekai who were presented as powerful and capable at first, end up being completely worthless idiots who are in constant need to be saved by the person they mocked. You know, like the other three heroes of the first season. Then there is Raphtalia, a weak and victimized character who ends up being super awesome and constantly winning in situations where she’s supposed to be weak compared to everyone else. You know, like Naofumi in the first season. Unfortunately the lolibait grows up in a single episode and gets sexualized, proving that she was always there to be groomed as a little girl. You know, like in the first season. She loses her slave crest for the second time and while being finally free to be herself and not part of the harem, she runs back to her slave owner and wishing to be dominated. You know, like in the first season. There is also a one-dimensional rapist mini boss who acts evil for the heck of it and gets owned by an otherwise weak and victimized character for some sweet-sweet revengeporn. You know, like in the first season. And that is how the author of Slave Harem Hero proves how creative he can be by constantly writing the exact same plot over and over again. And then comes the final episode where we get the big finale of the second season. Our heroes have the hardest battle of their lives as they fight the Book Hero… Not. They defeated the final boss an episode ago, very easily. The last episode is just softporn for those who keep saying it is not a harem. Here we are with a team consisting of one male slaver and lots of female slaves who cosplay for his amusement. They even lift the skirts of little girls for showing more skin. When asked why they are doing it it’s because they openly admit the protagonist is lolicon and bare feet make him very excited. Then they spend the rest of the episode in cockteasing him into choosing one of them as his prime waifu. And when they are asked if what they are doing is indecent, they reply by making it seem like it’s not indecent. There is nothing wrong with a man buying little girls and mating with them. And that is what Slave Hero is all about. Can’t wait for the next amazing arc when he buys more slave girls who will love him just because he bought them. And remember, it is not a harem, it is a subversion of isekai because the protagonist is not overpowered and everyone hates him.

27 found helpfulJul 5, 2022