Anime Review: The Rising of the Shield Hero Episode 1

The Rising of the Shield Hero

Studio: Kinema Citrus

Genre: Fantasy/Adventure

Stream: Crunchyroll, VRV

New season, new isekai. Look, people, we all knew this was coming. In the last few years “anime” and “isekai” have become almost synonymous, and while I could make an entire article on why I hate this trend I won’t bore you with it today. Instead, let’s talk about The Rising of the Shield Hero, the latest anime from Kinema Citrus (Made in Abyss, Barakamon, Code:Breaker).

After reading a book in his local library, university student Naofumi Iwatani is transported to the kingdom of Melromarc along with three others as the prophesied four heroes who wield the Cardinal Weapons: a sword, a spear, a bow, and (of course) a shield. While the former three weapons are respected and revered the shield is looked down on as being weak, and it doesn’t help that Naofumi himself is seen as the least charismatic and least knowledgeable out of the heroes. When Naofumi is later falsely accused of a crime and shunned by his former allies and kingdom but still required to fulfill his duty as a hero, he sets off on his own to become stronger.

Something I really admired about this anime right off the bat is how hard our MC has it in this world. In most isekai series, the protagonist is a loser who gets transported to a world where they are suddenly thrust into the role of the beloved hero. The Rising of the Shield Hero rejects this completely; Naofumi is an otaku before he comes to Melromarc, and once there he’s ultimately worse off in a lot of ways. We have an isekai with an underdog protagonist who we want to see rise up and prove his adversaries wrong as well as get vengeance on those who wronged him. While this isn’t necessarily a new concept (Kazuma from KonoSuba is similar in this regard) it’s still rare enough that when it happens it’s a refreshing take on the genre.

This episode was a whopping 45 minutes as opposed to the standard 22-minute format, and this gives a lot of time to show Naofumi’s entrance to the new world and his fall from grace. While we don’t get a lot of focus on the other characters in the story, we get enough information and set up to become invested enough to watch the next episode. The real core of the show is Naofumi and his journey, after all, and so far it’s the main thing that sets this series apart from other isekai.

The overall production of the show is well done, with clean animation and nice sound design. I feel like it’s hard to fully judge the production value off of this first episode because we didn’t get an opening or ending theme and there wasn’t too much action in this episode, but from what we got it looked and sounded good. Kinema is a studio that has produced a number of great shows, so I have high expectations for this series in terms of presentation quality.

To summarize: this is exactly what you’d want from a first episode. We got an introduction to most of our core players, the new world and its properties, and a hint at the primary conflict. What’s more, we also got a decent enough hook in the protagonist and his underdog status. If The Rising of the Shield Hero can deliver on the expectations it set up, I’d say we’re in for a good time.