Premieres July 2025. Check out the ANN article for additional information. Synopsis for the source novels from AniList:
Naofumi Iwatani, an uncharismatic Otaku who spends his days on games and manga, suddenly finds himself summoned to a parallel universe! He discovers he is one of four heroes equipped with legendary weapons and tasked with saving the world from its prophesied destruction. As the Shield Hero, the weakest of the heroes, all is not as it seems. Naofumi is soon alone, penniless, and betrayed. With no one to turn to, and nowhere to run, he is left with only his shield. Now, Naofumi must rise to become the legendary Shield Hero and save the world!
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Is this the show where the girls want to be enslaved?
Yup. S1 was good until the last couple episodes. That is to say, it was good enough to overshadow its negatives. Haven’t touched it since.
The isekai genre as a whole has grown since then and it just doesn’t fair well compared to the competition.
Ever since I started reading books I’ve felt like isekais really only have a starting concept and nothing more. Is there a single one that’s actually managed to make a full arc with an ending?
Mushoku Tensei has the best chance. It’s super cringe at the beginning but it has genuine character growth.
I’ve actually read the first couple of light novels of that series, and while it feels much more ad-hoc than other books, things actually seem to have a direction.
The MC is a pedo creep through the first 48 episodes, when growth?
It’s worse. The MC’s love interest is an enslaved child who only ages up because the MC forces her to fight and “level up.” Apparently in the novel she even regresses back to a child at one point lmao. Nothing weird to see here!
I know fans of this show claim the slavery aspect is super nuanced, but it seemed super sketchy in the anime.
That is about as misleading as you can get Jesus.
The slavery is werid yes but to TLDR MC is royally screwed over
myby the literal royalty and quite literally his only option is to purchase a slave to fight for him (he can’t fight). She expects to be abused but he’s not a horrible person so she’s treated like a normal party member beside one occasion where he orders her to fight a monster dog which she struggles with due to trauma. He quickly resends the order and tells her to run away.Demi humans (like her) physically grow when they lv up which is somewhat strange but up till now hasn’t been used in a way to leer at her or anything like that. This is such a werid show to get into such a fuss about. Have you even heard of Redo of Healer? That shit is fucking vile
It’s a wish fulfillment anime.
I wish I could own a slave and be morally correct while doing so.
Is an odd wish.
Also, imagining yourself being falsely accused of rape is a pretty standard chud stress fantasy.
I implore you to watch at least the first season (after that plot line is resolved there’s not much of a hook to stay engaged).
Shield heros hook is at its core a revenge type story where the revenge is that the people who fucked him over are fucked over in very nearly the same way. The king and princess have their status revoked (they are now commoners) as well as their names changed to Scum and Bitch/Whore respectively. The with fulfilment here is not slavery, (Naofumi goes out of his way to rescue slaves) but getting back at the people in power who ruined your reputation knowingly because they simply didn’t like you. Once that arc ends there’s not much of a hook, the public sees Naofumi as the only competent Hero (which he’s always been), he has great party members and he’s slowly overcoming the trauma of being royalty fucked so hard by the royalty (beginning to trust people again). Honestly I cannot see the slave stuff going anywhere but Naofumi finally moving past his trauma and truly freeing his slaves as he no longer is so insecure about being betrayed again.
Is that wish fulfillment? Maybe for you but my kind of wish fulfillment is more along the lines of Konosuba or Tensura.
Wild, lmao. How does even age work in a world where your maturity is tied to levels?
No idea. Only the demihuman characters work this way. Nobody gets old old from leveling either. I would understand it better if it were just physical progression, but the added insult of the slave character in question getting passed around from slaver to slaver while being stuck with the mentality of a child is just straight up fucking bonkers. IIRC she even loses the slave crest that binds her to the MC but she insists she undergo the process of being enslaved to him again because it “strengthens their bond” (LOL.)
Yeah, that was what I was referring to when I said the girls want to be enslaved. I think I heard that she also convinces another girl to be enslaved to the MC to make her a better fighter or something.
They’re still making this shit, huh?
I tried watching S2 but there was nothing interesting about the show once the revenge plot (the story’s entire premise) was concluded. Just another average OP isekai fantasy.
With weird pro-slavery undertones!
And the weird “she’s mentally five years old but it’s fine she’s mature for her level”
Yeah, the anti-power fantasy thing was the entire selling point, now it’s just not interesting enough for me to care. The characters are better than the average isekai i suppose but not particularly profound otherwise, the animation is fine but not amazing, the issues generally aren’t as big as other isekai (even the game mechanics were explicitly a function of the relics iirc), but without the twist there is nothing interesting there to make the show stand out from anything that isn’t a shitty isekai.
If you are completely addicted to the concept of isrkai it’s one of the better ones to watch, but otherwise meh.
Hope its better than the Turtle Arc. That really hurt the show.
Was that season 2 or 3? It’s been so long I can’t remember.
It was the first part of Season 2, and the second part of Season 2 was when Raphtalia was separated from Naofumi. The second part was way better than the first part.
It only gets worse.
The series keeps finding bigger sharks to jump over.
Some people might like it, I think it’s pretty awful.
I stopped last season after it became clear their enemy was a giant turtle. Did it get any better?
No
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