About

The Rising of the Shield Hero is a Japanese light novel and manga series that was later adapted into an anime. The novel follows the hero, Iwatani Naofumi, a fighter from a parallel dimension summoned with a legendary shield to protect the parallel world. He is quickly betrayed, falsely accused of rape, and shunned from society, filling his thoughts with vengeance.

History

The light novel was first written by Aneko Yusagi and began on August 22nd, 2013 as a web novel.^[1] The series has regularly updated and has twenty volumes as of January 9th, 2019. A manga for the series began on June 23rd, 2014, and has run 12 volumes as of January 9th, 2019.

Anime

An anime adaptation of the series produced by Kinema Citrus and directed by Takao Abo was announced on June 22nd, 2017.^[2] The series premiered on January 9th, 2019.

Detractors of the show took issue with the false rape accusation driving the plot.^[3] Rumblings of the issue started before the show first aired. On December 26th, 2018, Twitter @ActionZaku posted several tweets about the issue, criticizing Crunchyroll for taking the show on (shown below).

The controversy was further stoked by AnimeNewsNetwork^[7] reviewers who panned the show for the false rape accusation plotline. The harshest critic, Nick Creamer, forewent giving a number rating and wrote "burn it and salt the earth." He also wrote:

In context, Shield Hero's premiere did every conceivable thing in its power to communicate that this was the latter case. But this author isn't just angry at women--his bitter paranoia extends to basically everyone around him.

A lengthy rebuttal to the reviews were posted by the Unnecessary Exclamation Mark blog,^[8] which also got over 800 points on Reddit.^[9]

Online Presence

The series has its own wiki^[4] as well as a page on MyAnimeList^[5] where it has a rating of 8.5 out of 12,000 votes. The series also has a dedicated subreddit^[6] with over 1,800 subscribers.

Search Interest

External References