The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 3

Episode 11

This feels like a situation where Shield Hero is trying to present a more nuanced philosophical debate but not doing any legwork to justify it. That's not what bothers me the most, though. What bothers me is that there is a straightforward yet emotionally gripping story here with Itsuki and what he's doing. However, what the show is highlighting to us and what it is actually saying feel like two completely different things.

So Itsuki's whole thing is that he wants to be a champion of justice, which he's felt ever since he was young. From what I can gather, he comes from a Japan where people are gifted with supernatural powers and go to school for that. However, he was ranked so low that he developed an inferiority complex. This backstory has a lot of vagueness because it's not communicated well (I don't know what the whole deal was with his mom), but the foundation is there. Maybe there was a time when Itsuki did care about being a champion of justice, but at a certain point, it wasn't about that anymore. His interpretation of justice never evolved past when he was in middle school, and that narrow view of justice ended up being intertwined with his sense of inferiority.

So he comes to a fantasy world, gets smoke blowing up his butt, and thinks he can do whatever he wants because now he has the power to justify his immature brand of justice. Itsuki's arc should be about him growing up and realizing that, eventually, his actions weren't about being heroic anymore. They were about making him feel better about himself, especially after he screwed up with the tortoise incident. He needs to paint everyone else as evil to justify his actions. He keeps screaming that other people are wrong but not what they're wrong about. That is all solid.

The problem is that the resolution seems more about explaining how justice is complicated than highlighting the escapism that Itsuki is leaning into. In many ways, his arc should've been similar to Ren's, where Ren realizes that his actions have consequences and that he needs to own up to them. But I don't feel like we get that here. Rishia keeps talking about different types of justice and how she needs to defeat the Bow Hero with her form of justice. This doesn't make any sense to me because I don't know what they're talking about. Rishia spent so much time talking about how Itsuki saved her and how much she owes him, but she never really went into what she learned from him outside of the fact that he was just there for her.

This arc could've been about how, despite his childish demeanor and inferiority complex, Itsuki still technically saved somebody in the form of Rishia. She should've been there as a reminder that he was a hero of justice to at least one person, and if you can do that for one person, then you could potentially do that for many people. But that rarely comes up, even though it's right there screaming at the story in the face. Instead, Itsuki keeps doubling down so hard that he ends up having a psychotic break by the end. And then there's a lot of vagueness regarding how he's incompatible with the bow he's using, so is he even a hero?

There isn't much time left before the season ends, but I'm perturbed that this is all we'll get from Itsuki for a while. Ren's character arc wasn't done right after he joined Naofumi's party, which was the most well-handled aspect of the entire season. But now that it's technically achieved its goal of getting all the heroes together, I wouldn't be surprised if it just jumps into the next central plot point, which I assume will be the Phoenix. That's something that has been built up since the first episode of this season, and it would suck if the show stops just short of actually introducing that conflict.

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The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.