Why The Rising of the Shield Hero's Anime Is Better Than the Original Light Novel

[Demelza]

The LNs are on sale on Bookwalker, if you don't mind their annoying drm system too much. Volume 1 is half price, all the others have 20% off.

It's where I bought the first volume actually! Looks like the print editions are largely out of print for the earlier volumes, so I'll probably pick up some more from Bookwalker and just continue collect the series digitally going forward.

It suggests women can be bought and she gets in love Also it’s kinda sexist by saying women are believed instantly when things like MeToo prove they ain’t.

I do think context is very important here and as others say, if anything the series is sexist against both genders. That doesn't make it right but it certainly doesn't make it quite as bad as it comes off. As others have said slaves of both genders can be bought and the only reason the woman in this series who falsely claims rape is believed is clearly explained. Although it might not be satisfactory, I don't think the author intends it to be sexist and is just using well established tropes.

Also it's really worth remembering that this is a series from 2013 (2012 for the web novel) and Japan has a very different culture to ours. Both ours and theirs has changed and continues to change a lot since then.

Ugh...Motoyasu gets his own story...he’s a bloody idiot.

He is. The most annoying one at first, but he is surprisingly immune to almost everything, which gives him some sense of a bird-brained innocence. Especially after the other heroes, which seemed even worse to me after their arcs and in comparison, Motoyasu became an, essentially goodhearted, but really just kind of braindamaged moron. (And he might indeed be damaged at that point, if he wasn't so to begin with in other ways.)

Honestly having read that one side story about Motoyasu I really want to read his side stories lol. I kinda have a soft spot for idiots like him who have no awareness of anything whatsoever, but have their hearts in the right place. Do I have to wait before I can read his side series or can I drop in whenever?

 

[Luna]

Honestly having read that one side story about Motoyasu I really want to read his side stories lol. I kinda have a soft spot for idiots like him who have no awareness of anything whatsoever, but have their hearts in the right place. Do I have to wait before I can read his side series or can I drop in whenever?

Well, somewhat spoilerlessly to the main plot (and only about the WN anyway):

Spoiler

There is some big baddie in in WN who is way too OP and just goes off and "kills" just about every hero. Heroes that they are they get magically saved by their weapons (Naofumi gets send home for a short while, which was nice, because the little brother mentioned very early on, actually does appear after all) and gets a choice. (Naofumi ultimately chooses to return.) Motoyasu, who is, well, a but nuts, picks something else, so he ends up in some other world, where he can redo stuff. (Which is why his spinning off is called Yari Yuusha no yarinaoshi, which translates to a "The Redoing of the Spear Hero". So he gets to do some adventures there. Apperarantly it involves time loops, so the redoing is the title is quite literal. I haven't read it yet, but the WN main story has Naofumi and Raphtalia return and collect the other heroes. When Motoyasu's turn comes he's stuck in his world and Raphtalia goes to fetch him, whereas Naomi goes ahead to set things right(er) where they left off. Raphtalia arrives with quite some retard with Motoyasu's in tow and she says that getting Motoyasu turned out to be rather tricky. She doesn't say too much about it, but she appears mentally really tired and Naofumi makes some comment about what she must have gone through in a world to Motoyasu's liking.
Of which there inklings, that it must be questionable as they have sneaked into his room, before the big baddie stroke and he has had some wild fantasies over his idol Filo.

So, TL;DR, as I haven't read it I can't actually say, but if the spin off has exactly the same Motoyasu as the the WN at that point, that Motoyasu went a bit nuts, after some betrayal issues with his groupie women (obvious fall to come) and he got really depressed. for unwittingly cheered him up and he gets completely infatuated with Filo, even more so than the beginning, sees all women as pigs, except for Raphtalia after a while, because he sees her as something like the fiancee (or so) of Naofumi, whom he now keeps calling father in law, because he raised Fillo and is therefore something like a daughter of his.

Hm. Now I feel inclined myself to go ahead and get it read myself already. Guess I have something to do on the next weekends if I can wiggle off some free time.



Also kind of surprised it already went OOP. I'm pretty sure the first few volumes were still there last autumn, when I recommended it to somebody else. oo

 

[crashmatt]

Question, are they following the WN or LN as I've just read that spoiler and it sounds massively stupid.

 

[Luna]

WN and LN are more or less the same in the beginning and I think the anime won't be getting further than that part anyway.
But if they introduce a jewel nerd, or even further down a fishing nerd, you'll know it's the LN.

Motoyasu is massively stupid. What's more entertaining about it is how the characters react to this wandering phenomenon you can't stop as little as you can stop the weather.
Bit actually every other hero is stupid, just in a different direction.

 

[Vrad Zechs]

Here just to comment on one part.

The Novel itself is a revised version.
The original material was a web novel version before it got popular and greenlit for novel publishing.
I have 3 books from the novel and I have the full web novel version.
There are differences as well as retcons and even additions.
However, maybe (to me anyway) the web novel seems more linear and straightforward than the novel version. The first novel itself is actually quite short and (to me) is actually incomplete. To me, it's as if the novel was written to end on a cliffhanger (which it was for the book).

Also, there are parts where it is very gruesome and very offensive to current standards. I am quite curious of how the novel will portray that part when it gets there, which will however be quite far into the future. To those who wonder, I'm referring to the part where Malty gets her just desserts (for a moment anyway).
I assume probably around book 8 or 9.

 

[Vrad Zechs]

I can never understand why. Yeah, they're horrible things, but they're things that happen. Do these same people think murder shouldn't be used as a plot device due to sensitivity to people who have friends and relatives who have been murdered? War crimes? The Holocaust? Hell, even deaths of soldiers in war? Like we're fine with depictions of people being bloodily shot, sliced up or rounded up en masse and gassed to further a plot but sexual assault is too far? I don't know how much interesting fiction we'd be left with if we stopped exploring the awful side of humanity out of sensitivity to people who've been victims in real life.

Thoughtful and interesting read though @Demelza. Inflammatory comment added, exit stage left.

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Edit because I can't help myself and this got me thinking, if anyone who liked the post previously wants to unlike it, I understand.

I do find it interesting the incredible significance society attaches to depictions of sexual assault or sexual violence in fiction when just outright violence itself seems to elicit nowhere near the same level of soul-searching or condemnation from critics. Not anime, but I'm currently re-watching The Sopranos - Almost every major character in that show has committed murder or at least violent assault. Yet the audience feels for them and often roots for them because we see every side of them, they're not just murderers, they're other things too like parents, children and friends. The horrible acts of violence they commit doesn't totally define who they are as characters or people. It's difficult to imagine the audience having the same reaction however, if instead of murderers they were rapists. Because that particular horrible act does seem to define any character completely in the minds of audiences or critics, regardless of whatever else they might do or be.

Now in no way is this a defence of people in real life who commit rape or murder, but it's interesting to me that as a society we can't seem to explore fictional characters who commit sexual violence in the way we regularly explore characters who commit other kinds of violence (the only writer I can think of who has done this successfully is Stephen Donaldson in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant). If as a society we consider sexual assault verboten in fiction and immediately reduce any character to being solely defined by that experience, whether rapist or victim (I've seen people who'd call themselves feminists write scathing criticisms of female characters being raped in fiction, as though that's essentially tarnished or ruined the female character, which also says something very interesting about how people view rape victims, defining them solely by that experience also). I dunno. It's weird. Rambling and a bit off topic now. It's a horrible act, but why is it so horrible we can't even confront and examine it rationally in fiction like we do the other equally horrible dark sides of humanity?

Just to say one thing, the seemingly biased treatment is probably due to the fact that eventhough murder is just as horrific a crime as sexual assault is if not more, for a murderer, their victim got off easy (this is subjective) because dead is dead.
Your life stops there, too bad for you but at least no more pain for you. Sexual assault however leaves their victim alive, damaged and traumatized.
They linger around giving rise to guilt to the surrounding people for not doing better to protect them in the first place.

I'm neither a rape apologists nor am I a murder apologists.
But this is probably 1 factor that influences the difference with which we treat murder or killings and sexual assault.

(Morbidly) Interestingly however, in history, BOTH slaughter AND rape was at a time an effective tool to cow a subjugated populace after conquest.

 

[Gaspar]

Sorry to say, but I feel the entire comentt a little too ... moraly uptight?
1) The novel do have loopholes in the rape argument and trial against the MC. Partly explainable later, but yes, logicaly faulty of mass stupidity.
2) The part of "rape in novels and slavery is soo bad and should not apear" feels weird tought. The topics are really heavy and all, bad obviously. But that does not make a tale or history bad for it. I mean how you use a topic is how you shoud judge it. In special the slavery in this novel is crude, but well played, in fact it pales with the true slavery that humanity played. It sometimes surprise me how many people, in special people of the first world, forget that they were the guys that did that and in the worst grades. The novel is almost kind in comparison.
3) The web novel in fact was a little better in that point in fact, the MC was cruel, at least a little more bitter and vengeful, but not too much. In any way the MC is not a bad guy, just warped.

I sugest you read the web novel and look back. Its a little better played because the MC trully gets warped there, the valley is deeper.

 

[Lambadelta]

Using the web novel in defense of a light novel makes no sense.

A Light Novel release generally de-canonizes the web novel because they usually all change/edit events due to the act of a Editor.

for the 2nd point. Depicting Slavery is fine if you don't just use it as a cheap gimmick to surround the main character with females, which he has absolute control over. There is no deeper meaning to it, and it doesn't explore the subject of slavery well in any regards. It's purely just a weak method that Revenge style isekai stories take to introduce a party (usually mostly female) to the Lonely and Anti-social main character.

Shield Hero imo is a poorly written isekai, which just plays to the type of people who either like somewhat edgy revenge stories, or people who the main character appeals to because they were also hurt by someone, and have trust issues so theyc an understand the main characters plight.

I honestly wish for an end to Isekais like these, and a return to more traditional fantasy stories.

 

[thedoctor2016]

After how well this has done especially for CR. Looks like these Isekai will never end sadly.
I just find it ironic SAO S3 did okay while this did very well and I can tell which is worse.

 

[Luna]

I wouldn't ever say that shield hero is being written brilliantly or anything, but I do find it entertaining for a light read. It's just a simple easy quick read you can do at any state of exhaustion. And it never tries to leave that light entertainment territory either. The WN gets really edgy dark at times, the LN seems to flatten some of that out. Meanwhile the LN also tried to fill out some holes, some for the better, some not so much. (That volume about that girl in that China dress was a bit of a drag.) And also goes to be squeezed into LN volume formats. It's interesting somehow just to see the changes evolve. And some ideas are pretty hilariously dorky.
But I supposed the main appeal of it is still that the character has to actually work his way up and the story has a villian. I also liked the occasional cynical jabs at its otaku self awareness, without making the otaku part Naofumi's only identity. (Didn't expect that after his self-introduction in the first volume. He doesn't come off as a hardcore nerd all that much.) He also stays to have some genuinely questionable behaviours flaws which ensure some level of hilarity as well.

(Also I do like the irony of you get a more brainless Loli girl and it legitimates itself by simply being a somewhat stupid bird.)