The Rising of the Shield Hero, and Raphtalia's arc
A guy summoned into a game-like world as the useless Shield Hero, the companion whose growth is the real story, and an old-school leveling grind I loved. I just ran out of time before the later seasons.
Some spoilers ahead.
The Rising of the Shield Hero was a good one. I’ll be upfront that I didn’t make it past the second or third season. It was just too much for the stretch of life I was watching it in, and I ran out of time and space for it rather than losing interest. But I really liked what I saw.
The setup
The main character, Naofumi, gets pulled into another world as one of its hero summons, and he draws the short straw: he’s the Shield Hero, the one everybody treats as useless because a shield isn’t a sword. He gets betrayed and smeared early on, so he starts the whole thing alone, broke, and with a chip on his shoulder, having to claw his way up from nothing.
Raphtalia
The part I loved most is the girl he ends up partnering with, Raphtalia, a demi-human with animal ears and a tail. When he meets her she’s enslaved, sick, shy, and terrified of basically everything, because no one else would travel with the disgraced Shield Hero. And then she grows. Over the show she turns into her own person: confident, capable, a real fighter who chooses to stand beside him rather than being made to. Watching her go from that frightened kid to someone fully herself is genuinely amazing, and it’s the emotional core of the whole thing for me.
The world
I also just loved the combat style and the world it lives in. It’s very old-school, very World of Warcraft: he’s leveling up, scrounging for money, hunting down better armor, his shield gaining new powers as he goes, all that classic RPG progression. It scratches the same itch a lot of my favorites do, where you get to watch someone start at the bottom and grind their way into something formidable.
Generally a good one. I’d happily go back and finish it if I ever find the room.