I started writing this post just a few days after watching the last episode of The Rising of the Shield Hero but never finished it until now. Sorry about that 😀 It wasn’t a perfect anime by all means. As always, there were aspects of it that were open to criticism, however, overall I still enjoyed watching it.
Isekai isn’t really one of my favorite genres. It’s an interesting and pretty common literary genre, to be sure, but not really one I feel strongly about either way. Still, I was drawn to Shield Hero‘s premise after learning about it through Anime Feminist’s January 2019 review of episode 1, and probably wouldn’t ever have watched it had it not been for that.
Still (with apologies to Girlfriend Reviews) this isn’t a review of The Rising of the Shield Hero or Anime Feminist’s review— although I might touch on some of the points they raise or allude to. This is a post about the social and personal lessons I found from watching Shield Hero.
The Big Picture
One of the major social lessons one can draw from Shield Hero is about the abuse and misuse of power. Three images come to mind: King Aultcray Melromarc XXXII, First Princess Malty Melromarc, and Biscas T. Balmus, the Pope of the Church of the Three Heroes. Each of them, for their own reasons, embark on a campaign of persecution against the Shield Hero Naofumi Iwatani and his party.
The effect of their campaign/s is obvious: they hampered Naofumi and his party from effectively accomplishing their task, which was to grow stronger and more effective in fighting the Waves that threatened Melromarc and the rest of the world. They were prevented from accessing necessary resources— mainly the Dragon Hourglass, which would allow them to upgrade their classes and abilities, but also the trust of the people, though Naofumi did earn that through his actions.
In contrast to the misuse and abuse of power, then, we have to remember the importance of responsibility. The trust that the people around us have in us means that we have to be responsible and live up to the good image they have of us.
Connected to all that was the disinformation campaign launched against Naofumi and his party.
They were attacked by guards affiliated with the Church of the Three Heroes, and their attempt to defend themselves was manipulated to make it seem as if they had attacked and kidnapped Second Princess Melty Melromarc, the heiress to the throne. Lies were spread about his abilities, such as his shield supposedly having the ability to control minds. The sobriquet given to him by the people he had helped, “Our Savior of the Heavenly Fowl,” was twisted to make it seem that he had given himself the title and was now the head of a cult threatening the social order.
Disinformation is powerful when effectively done, and we should be aware of it, especially in this age when “fake news” seems to be more prevalent and effective than ever.
Last for now, but certainly not least, there’s the issue of false accusations.
Immediately after Naofumi arrives in Melromarc, there’s already a cloud over his head. People are already biased against him, questioning the necessity of calling the Shield Hero. Even Naofumi himself is dubious about being the Shield Hero— after all, he says, a shield is more armor than weapon. So when Malty Melromarc, the First Princess and the only volunteer to join his party, comes forward accusing him of attempting to sexually assault her, there’s an immediate outcry, the accusation follows him wherever he goes, and he’s ostracized in this new and strange world.
I suppose it makes sense that the anime’s depiction of a false accusation would be controversial in some circles. Sexual assault is undoubtedly a heinous crime. However, I believe that this anime’s depiction of a false accusation, and the controversy around it, teaches us two important lessons.
The first and most immediate is that we have to find better and more productive ways of discussing false accusations.
In these discussions, I’ve found that two of the most common points often raised are (1) That less than one percent of accusations are proven false, and (2) That false accusers make it more difficult for real victims to be believed.
The main problem with the “less than one percent” argument is that it doesn’t address the very real problem of people being accused of a crime they didn’t commit. Whether or not less than one percent of accusations are actually false, it doesn’t mean that Emmett Till, Christopher Miller, Jay Cheshire, Kato Harris, and all the other victims of false accusations aren’t victims, or that they haven’t suffered. The falsely accused are victims, too.
And if so, false accusers should receive proper punishments, too.
And while it might be true that false accusers may make it more difficult for real victims to be believed, again, it ignores the problem of the immediate victims of false accusations in favor of focusing on other issues. Their needs have to be heard and addressed as well.
The second lesson is somewhat more abstract, but no less important: it’s about the importance of justice in society, particularly with regard to law.
We might think of society as a web of relationships between people held together by promises. In this line of thinking, fulfilling promises means doing justice— to ourselves and to the people around us.
A false accusation, in Scriptural language, is “bearing false witness against our neighbor.” And who is our neighbor?
In the context of Jesus Christ, “our neighbor” means those are like us, who think like us, and maybe even who look like us. But “our neighbor” also means “the alien living among us”— the foreigner, the weirdo, the different, the outcast, which is what people who are falsely accused turn into.
A false accusation is a false promise. It attacks the web of promises holding society together. Sometimes, it uses law, which promises justice, as an instrument of injustice.
A situation like that means that the injustice has to be corrected, and that the principles and ideals underpinning our society aren’t set aside in favor of convenience or expediency, but rather, that they should be strengthened, that when we fail to live up to the things that principles promise, we don’t set them aside— we hold them up even higher than before.
That’s what the big picture looks like.
The personal
Closely related and interconnected with the big picture are the lessons Shield Hero has for us in our everyday lives. The first one is unintended consequences. They’re everywhere— in anime as in real life. Five examples:
- The King, Malty, and the Pope mount campaigns persecuting Naofumi and his party— and end up potentially hampering his ability to be more effective, turning the people against him, turning him against the world he’s supposed to save, and forcing him to adopt his provocative, trollish public persona and to purchase the demi-human slave Raphtalia so he has a party member.
- Motoyasu Kitamura, the Spear Hero, introduces a Bio Plant to the Southwest Village in order to help alleviate the famine there— it ends up overrunning the village and creating more problems.
- Ren Amaki, the Sword Hero, slays Gaelion, a dragon near Dragon Village— and then fails to properly dispose of his body, causing a plague as it decomposed.
- Itsuki Kawasumi, the Bow Hero, overthrows a corrupt and oppressive government in the Northern Territory— and inadvertently causes a whole humanitarian crisis with people fleeing the turmoil.
- Anime Feminist publishes a review of Shield Hero episode 1— and then gets me interested in watching the show and then eventually writing a post about it.
See? Unintended consequences all around 🙂 Good intentions aren’t always enough, and the consequences of our actions might not always be apparent. We should always take that into account.
Naofumi’s party also shows us the importance of friends in our lives.
Naofumi, as the Shield Hero, is unable to wield any other weapon. He has to rely on Raphtalia to be his sword and, later on, on Filo and Melty to aid him in battle and outside it. Their aid becomes indispensable in his journey, from simple things like Filo pulling the cart, allowing the party to carry more items and travel further and more often, to larger things like Malty’s social position and Raphtalia’s loyalty.
That isn’t to say that we should only value friends for the things they can give us or do for us— that’s not what I’m saying at all 🙂 Rather, what I’m saying is that friends are important in our lives because we are stronger together.
And as a friend of mine also points out, another lesson we can draw from the journeys and adventures of Naofumi and his party is:
tis not the number of times you get knocked down
tis the number of times you get back on your feet
He adds, “But renaming the King and the Princess to ‘Trash’ and ‘Bitch’ is also nice.” 😀
Lessons from imperfection
As I said earlier, The Rising of the Shield Hero wasn’t a perfect anime. There was much in it that I and other people could criticize. However, a work of fiction doesn’t have to be perfect to teach us things. It can teach us things in spite or even because of its imperfections.
The teaching strength of a work of fiction comes from itself, but we shouldn’t discount our ability to find diamonds in the rough, to sift through sand and find nuggets of gold, and to find things that hold true, in Melromarc as it is in real life.
Aletheia Observer signing off. Be careful out there 🙂
-A.O.
P.S.
I thought it’d only be apt to use one of the ending themes of the series here.
Aletheia Observatory 