Tate no Yuusha/Shield Hero Anime General Discussion Thread

[Lukes YGO & WS on YT]

Spoiler for Episode 1 Comments/Feedback:

After watching the 1st episode I can tell this is going to be really good.

I hope that bitch and hero gets what they deserve for betraying Noifumi like that, now he has mud as a reputation for doing absolutely nothing.

I love how he can intimidate others with those weak monsters.

Looks like he might have found a new partner though through this slave trader.

[BWTraveller]

Originally Posted by Twi

^ All the other heroes acting like idiots while ours just so happens to learn the hard way doesn't endear us to him or make it any better in the future. Poor rivals plus antagonists who aren't A.) Clever or B.) Subtle means there's not much of a challenge to be found in dealing with them or getting one over on them. It's like a light Revenge story, and if that's not your cup of tea then its not going to draw you in.

Just because those four are fools doesn't mean the guy has it easy or that he won't face challenges or enemies who really do pose a serious threat. Not to mention that, while an idiot who thinks the world works a certain way and ignores evidence to the contrary may be easy to personally defeat one on one (or three), that hardly means they make poor antagonists. He has no ATK and thus can't kill them himself, and given the situation he needs them to remain alive and participate in the fights against the waves. Having to fight against idiots may be easy, but having to face real threats with selfish, arrogant idiots as allies is most certainly not. I don't think Myne is personally a serious threat meant to be the main antagonist; there's a heck of a lot going on outside of the petty scheming of a king and a b****.

[LG-MAX 2.o]

The series is a social critique of how the world will be in a few decades if something is not done to contain the extremes of the SJW side. Of course, fighting for people's rights is a wonderful thing, but when there is not a research team within those organizations to filter out what is true or false and accept everything as true. This in the end will lead to social injustice, which changes is just the target.

The story of Meredith Maran should be used as an example. Her father never forgave her for it. And I agree with him.

[The Green One]

Hate to break it to you but there will never at any point in existence be any true equality when it comes to sex crimes. Be they real or fake. There will always be disagreements. Always. There will be extremists on both sides. Both sides will have good points. Both sides will have not so good ones. Both sides will on occasion take things too far.

[Tenzen12]

Originally Posted by LG-MAX 2.o

The series is a social critique of how the world will be in a few decades if something is not done to contain the extremes of the SJW side. Of course, fighting for people's rights is a wonderful thing, but when there is not a research team within those organizations to filter out what is true or false and accept everything as true. This in the end will lead to social injustice, which changes is just the target.

The story of Meredith Maran should be used as an example. Her father never forgave her for it. And I agree with him.

Japan really isn't on any side of social "justice". They don't play that game, much less feel need to be reactionary about it. Shieldbro is just about being self-insert edgelord underdog by all means necessary (by time when novel were released SJW wasn't trendy even on west yet anyway).

By all means call out on SJW crap, but don't make anything and everything you see shoehorned to your narrative. That's what they do and they suck so much.

[Twi]

Originally Posted by BWTraveller

Just because those four are fools doesn't mean the guy has it easy or that he won't face challenges or enemies who really do pose a serious threat. Not to mention that, while an idiot who thinks the world works a certain way and ignores evidence to the contrary may be easy to personally defeat one on one (or three), that hardly means they make poor antagonists. He has no ATK and thus can't kill them himself, and given the situation he needs them to remain alive and participate in the fights against the waves. Having to fight against idiots may be easy, but having to face real threats with selfish, arrogant idiots as allies is most certainly not. I don't think Myne is personally a serious threat meant to be the main antagonist; there's a heck of a lot going on outside of the petty scheming of a king and a b****.

No, you don't understand. An antagonist does not mean a person to beat or kill in a fight. It is just a person who is actively opposes or is hostile to them. By this definition you have the king and princess, the other three heroes, and the other antagonist of the first arc which counts as spoilers so I'm not saying.

Him having no ATK is an interesting gimmick in that it forces him to rely on party members, but that doesn't matter considering there's no merit to fighting any of them. What does matter is the fact that the series is largely him cleaning up their messes and showing how much better he is than them because he does things that should be common sense and has half a brain. He doesn't do anything clever, he just so happens to be the one who has the highest level.

A protagonist is as good as the antagonists they overcome. And there might be a lot going on outside of king and b***h, but the story doesn't draw attention to that until well into it and we still have to deal with the other heroes just being stupid or petty throughout it.

[LG-MAX 2.o]

You know?

There various comments on twitter, facebook and youtube that say that this anime promotes misogyny. But this is ridiculous. It is much more plausible to say that it promotes Misandry, because it is incredible as with the exception of the protagonists, the number of stupid and unfeeling men in this series is much greater than that of women.

[Tenzen12]

It support misogyny around as much as any other webnovel where mc buy slave waifu who worship him just for not being total dOckhead. Which I would say is plenty untasteful concept with or without politics involved.

Well by definition Misogyny means dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women. Which I don't think author or any of characters really feel, but author idea of perfect relationship to wish for is misguided at best.

[GreyZone]

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

It support misogyny around as much as any other webnovel where mc buy slave waifu who worship him just for not being total dOckhead. Which I would say is plenty untasteful concept with or without politics involved.

That's false in this case though, because the attitudes of the characters in this regard are consistent with their personal experiences, the culture/religion of the communities these characters are from, as well as the lore, escpacially in the case of Raphtalia.

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

Well by definition Misogyny means dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women. Which I don't think author or any of characters really feel, but author idea of perfect relationship to wish for is misguided at best.

Mirelia says hello. Once she gets properly introduced, even just the very idea of "misogyny in this story" should disappear. Considering this is a two-cour series, we should definitly get to that part, at least.

[Tenzen12]

I did say it's not about misogyny, didn't I? All I critised are wet dream of silly teenager. That author is able get some characters right, doesn't mean all of them are. Mirelia is of course pretty great.

Also I don't think any personal experience of characters should warrant this or could make it more tasteful

[GreyZone]

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

I did say it's not about misogyny, didn't I? All I critised are wet dream of silly teenager. That author is able get some characters right, doesn't mean all of them are. Mirelia is of course pretty great.

I disagree. It's exactly the characters that the author got right. The problem of this series is that the story is only so-so (though based on the manga the LN seems to have improved on the WN quite a bit) and that the writing in general has very big flaws, escpacially in regards to plot induced stupidity. Just to give a few examples:

- Naofumi played an MMO before coming to the new world but he sometimes acts like he never played any video games in his entire life or doesn't even appear to understand what a game even is, just to "contrast" him and his real-world view as opposed to the "this is a game world!" view of the other heroes

- How no one managed to connect the dots in regards to the legendary weapon improvement methods to be interchangable during their first hero conference just because their respective "help menues" didn't say it makes every single one of the four heroes look like complete and utter idiots, including Naofumi himself

- The Slavery seals become obsolete whenever the plot demands it, which means that every time some form of mindcontrol is used on one of the slaves the slavery seals just conveniently stop functioning so that the game-like "confusion" or "rage" status effect can apply to any slaves as well without them just being instantly knocked out by the slavery seal instead

- No characters EVER check if someone they "killed" is actually dead, though I guess the saving grace is that this kind of plot induced stupidity doesn't just exclusively apply to the protagonist's team, but also to antagonists at times

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

Also I don't think any personal experience of characters should warrant this or could make it more tasteful

I don't think the slavery stuff has any actual impact on the story other than the initial bit with Raphtalia and the "correction effect" of the slavery shield later on. If there is any section in particular that was distasteful other than that, please point it out.

[Kuroageha]

Opening theme

YouTube

https://youtu.be/i1F-wkJpkro

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

[Galaxian]

I really like the opening, but it's very spoiler-heavy.

[BWTraveller]

Originally Posted by Twi

No, you don't understand. An antagonist does not mean a person to beat or kill in a fight. It is just a person who is actively opposes or is hostile to them. By this definition you have the king and princess, the other three heroes, and the other antagonist of the first arc which counts as spoilers so I'm not saying.

Him having no ATK is an interesting gimmick in that it forces him to rely on party members, but that doesn't matter considering there's no merit to fighting any of them. What does matter is the fact that the series is largely him cleaning up their messes and showing how much better he is than them because he does things that should be common sense and has half a brain. He doesn't do anything clever, he just so happens to be the one who has the highest level.

A protagonist is as good as the antagonists they overcome. And there might be a lot going on outside of king and b***h, but the story doesn't draw attention to that until well into it and we still have to deal with the other heroes just being stupid or petty throughout it.

It's still quite excessive in my opinion to call it a glorified revenge flick. It's a story of redemption and misfortune, of how far down one can sink when circumstances are stacked against them, how hard it is to come back and the people it takes to do so. I'd say the other heroes etc. aren't really major sources of conflict and weren't meant to be; they were merely meant to be sources of futility. The real conflict is his personal despair and rage at the unfair and impossible situation. Revenge frankly wouldn't work with that conflict, and would even go against it. Not every story about a person who's seriously wronged is built around revenge.

Also, I wouldn't say this is "about" or "supportive of" misogyny OR misandry. There are good and bad men and women. Just because some women are jerks or some women fall for men for flimsy reasons doesn't mean it thinks women should be servants or that women are bad or anything negative about women, just like its having men who seriously don't understand women and jump to conclusions and say and do incredibly stupid things, to the point of sometimes seriously hurting innocent women, doesn't mean it's suggesting that men are inferior or bad in any way. Both sides of the coin have very good people and very bad people, and there can be good points in the bad and bad points in the good, just like normal people.

Finally, I think the level of intelligence that should be expected is kind of overestimated. From the outside looking in there may indeed be a lot of points where we think "WTF is wrong with these people" but really they have significantly less reason to make the connections we make. A guy who's played an MMO may recognize some things, but even if he has played a few games if they're completely different from what he's now experiencing or he hasn't really confirmed that it's got anything more than a couple minor similarities to games then he's not going to pick up on things that quickly. And if people had played a lot of extremely immersive games that indeed do resemble the world too much, it's not that surprising that they'd be firmly set in their worldviews, and quick to dismiss any view that doesn't match what they personally can see and remember.

[Twi]

I called it a "light' revenge story. Not glorified. Redemption implies that he has done something that he feels ashamed of and is looking to make amends, when he was framed and wants to get back at the two who were responsible, which are the king and princess. Redemption is not what he's going for here because in his mind (rightfully so in this case) he hasn't done anything to merit needing it with those two. The only time he has done something warranting redemption is when he found out that playing with fire doesn't burn him alone.

I said nothing about misogyny or misandry, so I'm assuming that's addressing the others. As for the level of intelligence, common sense should not be a rarity. Screw the game logic alone, if you are in a setting where your life is literally on the line and you go about acting like its a game, you have officially crossed the threshold of too dumb to live. Or in the Spear Hero's case, too strong to die despite it.

We're just not going to agree here on anything because, just like you mentioned you couldn't see why others were complaining about it, I can't see these merits you found in it. I mean, I still read the manga because I liked it starting out, but you're clearly getting something out of this I'm just not and I don't think we'll be able to change each other's mind on it.

[BWTraveller]

Maybe "healing" would be a better term than redemption. He's in a dark state and it's looking to get darker, and it's about him getting out of this bad place. Either way, I feel like calling this a "revenge story" is like calling Erased a "whodunnit": it has some minor resemblance on the surface but viewing it that way completely misses the point. Satoru from Erased wasn't there to catch the bad guy, and Naofumi's story is not about getting back at those who wronged him, and if you watch either of those shows expecting that to be the plot or the conflict you're going to wind up disappointed at how much it "fails" to deliver that which it didn't mean to deliver in the first place.

And no, it's not just "common sense" to insist that you're clearly not in a game or a dream or anything of the sort when you find yourself in a place that makes absolutely no sense by your understanding of reality but closely resembles a game. In fact there have been very good fantasy series written by American authors as well in which one of the plot points for a long time was the hero's belief that he's in a dream and the question of what it means morally for him to insist on that conviction, as well as the redemption and healing after he realizes that it's real and what that means about his situation and actions. Again, it may seem like "common sense" to us on the outside who know we're looking at fiction, but to a guy who has a firm separation between the game and real world it'd be difficult to recognize that anything in the world is different from the game they think they're in. I'm not saying those guys are smart, I'm just saying that they're not all that unbelievable.

[~Yami~]

Spoiler for ep 1:

First, this is a brilliant adaptation... it exceeded my expectation

I like Ren and Itsuki design... they are not designed as irritating person. I never hate Ren as much as I hate Itsuki and Motoyasu.. for me, he is just another Kirito-type person with high pride, which is his only downfall. But so far, they are designed properly and looks like person who acted based on his assumption.. deep down, they are kind

about

Spoiler for Mely:

b*tch

, yep! thank you for delivering us one of the worst and hated characters of all time... She acted perfectly... disgustingly...

Armor-guy is also an awesome character.... while the best is of course Naofumi. His characters become very likable after he ditched his naivety. I love the alchemist part in this series, so I loved to watch how Naofumi grind his shield up

About

Spoiler for tanuki:

best waifu, Raphtalia

, yep! that black-shadowy eyes are great...

I have gone through one of the most hated part of this series (there are some but this one is the worst), so I'll stay to watch this anime until the end... I have high hope!

[Stark700]

Preair (episode 1). It's up on Crunchryoll now for subscribers.

Spoiler:

I think it's a pretty neat start considering the way they introduced the world fiction content and some character building already. We meet Naofumi whose life changes drastically after being summoned as a hero. Might have to get used to his voice but it definitely suits him as a protagonist. The part about the shield plays a major part to his character gimmick. Some of the other heroes gets some cameos but we'll find out more about them soon.

So he gets asked to save the world so no doubt this story will also focus a lot on that. And since he finds out the hard way about not trusting in people now, I'm also curious to see how the anime will focus on his character development with others along the way.

The OP theme song is pretty catchy and animation quality remains consistent.

[HandofFate]

the music score is really good when it calls for it.

[Ultragunner]

oh boy, this is gonna be the “Goblin Slayer” aka “controversy” of the winter season, isn’t it?