Rise of the Shield Hero Season 3 – Episode 11

This feels like a situation where Shield Hero is trying to present a more nuanced philosophical argument but isn’t doing any reasonable job of justifying it. However, that’s not what bothers me the most. What bothers me is that there’s a straightforward yet emotional story here about Itsuki and what he’s doing. However, what the film highlights to us and what it actually wants to say seem like two completely different things.

So the whole thing Itsuki wants is to be a fighter for justice, something he has felt since he was young. From what I can gather, he’s from Japan, where people are gifted with supernatural powers and go to school for it. However, he was ranked so low that he developed an inferiority complex. There’s a lot of ambiguity to this plot because it’s not clearly communicated (I don’t know what the whole deal with his mother is), but the foundation is there. Perhaps there was a time when Itsuki truly cared about being a fighter for justice, but at a certain point, that no longer mattered. His interpretation of justice had never progressed before when he was in middle school, and that narrow view of justice eventually became intertwined with his feelings of inferiority.

So he goes to a fantasy world, gets smoke blown up his ass, and thinks he can do whatever he wants because now he has the power to justify his brand of infantile justice. me. Itsuki’s arc should have been about him growing up and realizing that, in the end, his actions were no longer heroic. Their purpose was to make him feel better about himself, especially after he got into trouble with the turtle incident. He needs to demonize others to justify his actions. He keeps shouting that other people are wrong but not about what they are wrong about. Everything is certain.

The problem is that the resolution seems more about explaining the complexity of justice than highlighting the escapism that Itsuki is aiming for. In many ways, his arc should have been similar to Ren’s, as Ren realizes that his actions have consequences and he needs to acknowledge them. But I don’t feel like we have that here. Rishia continues talking about the different types of justice and how she needs to defeat the Bow Knight with her form of justice. This made no sense to me because I had no idea what they were talking about. Rishia spent a lot of time talking about how Itsuki saved her and how much she owed him, but she never really went into what she learned from him other than the fact that he was just there. because of you.

This arc could be about how, despite his childish attitude and inferiority complex, Itsuki still technically saved someone in the form of Rishia. She should have been there to remind him that he was a hero of justice to at least one person, and if you can do it for one person you can do it for many. But that rarely comes up, even though it’s right there screaming in the story’s face. Instead, Itsuki continued to double down to the point where he eventually suffered a psychotic break. And then there’s a lot of ambiguity about him being incompatible with the bow he’s using, so is he a hero?

There’s not much time left before the season ends, but I’m worried that this is all we’ll get from Itsuki for a while. Ren’s character arc wasn’t completed right after he joined Naofumi’s group, which was the best handled aspect of the entire season. But now that it’s technically achieved its goal of bringing all the heroes together, I wouldn’t be surprised if it jumps into the next central plot point, which I assume will be the Phoenix . That’s something that’s been building since the first episode of this season, and it would be terrible if the show stopped at just introducing that conflict.

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

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