Yeah, pretty much. I was heartened by the idea that the popularity of this trash seemed to be waning... then it suddenly kicked back up again.
I think the one area in which this review could scratch a bit deeper is the foolishness of everyone hating the protagonist for no reason just so he can justify his persecution complex, including his supposedly-experienced fellow gamers who should know better. And also that the hatred for women extends to much of society, hence the attaction for various shallow, entitled mediocrities who feel the world owes them and the only possible reason there could be why they aren\'t sitting on a pile of women and gold is that people they should loathe are keeping them down for no reason.
Finally, I think there\'s something to be said for how stupid and juvenile his revenge is on her. You hit the nail on the head when you said she\'s not unintentionally sympathetic because she\'s a hollow caricature, but just reading about what happened to her after I stopped paying attention because the show wasn\'t any good was unintentionally hilarious. Changing her name to something degrading? Literally marrying her off to a serial killer that everyone knows is a serial killer who just pops into the story for a second to marry and murder her then pops right out again?
I don\'t think that the isekai genre in general is to blame; plenty of other work in the popular genres of the day were exactly the same kind of shallow power fantasy, just delivered through different vectors: kung fu and cyberpunk movies rather than video games. I think the difference is that hateful trash like this (which existed back in the day too, Genocyber anyone?) is popular rather than a cult hit among fringe groups of misanthropes, and even then is only popular because it has appealing character designs and is being marketed towards a mass audience rather than a small niche.
But, this too shall pass. The red tide of a toxic cultural stream runs not forever, but suddenly it fails.
Seriously, this is a shallow understanding of Shield Hero including the fact there are plenty of female characters that don\'t fit your descriptions. Also a lot of the women he woos are overage. Inspiring a wave of hateful isekai hardly. There were several revenge isekai. Heck, Shield Hero shows and deconstructs the revenge fantasy many times. Also the story is him about letting go of his hatred and moving on. And interesting enough the heroes and king get better as they develop. Again that\'s selectively cherry picking the story and arrive at a false conclusion.
Everything I wrote came from the manga and anime and that's what I saw. If there is a better story in the light novels that follows this crappy beginning, I'm not terribly interested in forcing my way through 20 light novels just to get there. What I saw in the anime was a jerkass hero triumphing over a bunch of shallow morons just so he could destroy the enemy he can only refer to as "Bitch". Legally changing someone's name to such comes off as the writing of a a 14 year old, not a professional author.
The other heroes are lame, the villainess is lame, and the conflicts are cut-and-dry. Maybe it does get better, but I don't imagine the quality to get better overnight. Watching The Three Stooges trip over themselves while Naofumi uses one of endless number of capabilities to triumph over practically everyone else is not something I'm really interested in watching until the moment dawns on the author to maybe give someone else the spotlight.
Literally marrying her off to a serial killer that everyone knows is a serial killer who just pops into the story for a second to marry and murder her then pops right out again?
... What the heck?! That actually happens?! It sounds like a bad fic...
Because it is. *rimshot*
Sure sounds like it. Also, I gotta agree with Immortal Bear regarding the defense. While Growing the Beard absolutely is a thing, I\'ll say what I already said about the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon: if you have to sit through several seasons worth of crap for the show to actually get good, there the \"it gets better later one\" excuse isn\'t enough to justify its flaws.
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Hating its Way to the Top.
The Rising of the Shield Hero (RSH) is the Count of Monte Cristo, if nobles grabbed some random on dude on the street, gave him the title of Count and allowed him enjoy the luxuries for a day, then kicked him in the balls and took everything away, with said character swearing revenge on them all. In other words, it's hilarious. Revenge and isekai don't mix well, because revenge stories require certain build up of pathos before the fall, while isekai immediately hand over the gratification of being unique and powerful, when the person was so much less in the previous world. Its dumb that the protagonist acts like he knows nothing but anger and despair, when a week prior, he was just an average college student browsing a library.
Some people say this show might be good without Naofumi falsely being accused of rape, but when you examine the other aspects of the show, its as generic as fantasy can get. "An ancient evil is rising again and only heroes can save us". When I watch the anime, I feel like I'm watching the opening to the Shining Force game I played back in the 90s. Which brings us to the driving force of the series, hate. The main character's primary motivation for doing anything is to get back at the "Bitch" that ruined his life by accusing him of rape, by which I mean the new brief life of power as opposed to the nearly twenty years he discarded at the drop of a hat. Overall, it doesn't really fit with the general setting. Hate works with stories of despair and depression, such as Berserk and Shingeki no Kyojin. However, even in those examples the plot points out how this behavior is flawed and self-destructive. RSH is more light-hearted, but staunchly obsesses over this hatred which undercuts the more light-hearted content in the series.
It would be one thing if hatred was just Naofumi's hat. A thing that the other hero characters would have to work around while they traveled on a quest. But the author really wants the audience to empathize only with Naofumi, so he transforms the remaining heroes into a mean girls posse with the competency level of the Three Stooges. Naofumi is persistently angry, juvenile, and obsessive, but these qualities don't translate into flaws the way you'd naturally expect. He is rebellious yet enforces order, vindictive yet empathetic, described as a lone wolf yet draws harem members like a magnet pulls iron. The author puts a lot of positive traits on Naofumi, without significant build up, and in a bizarre form of balance forces the negative traits on the other heroes, to the point that I wonder how any of the other heroes can even dress themselves let alone do anything. For example, while Naofumi travels with several underaged girls, it’s his rival Motoyasu, the spear hero, that is explicitly and unashamedly, a lolicon. Villains in the series exist to be hated, lacking sympathetic or cool traits fueling Naofumi's desire to purge the world of those he does not agree with,
The show has an uncomfortably negative perspective on the female gender. The most significant female characters are conspicuously underaged and submit Naofumi's directions on a regular basis. Meanwhile, the female character that is closest to Naofumi in age and one of the only ones that is independent is Malty, a shallow villain that hurts the protagonist early on and is then repeatedly used as a punching bag for Naofumi's gratification. I wouldn't say she's unintentionally sympathetic, as she's more of a caricature then anything else, but her general lack of capability and being a target of Naofumi's ire makes me wonder if she's a placeholder for women and female traits the author disliked in real life.
Watching The Rising of the Shield Hero is a show tailored for persecution complexes. People as a whole are either against you or supporting you and such characters seem to act in extremes. It tries to normalize persistent hatred and makes other characters act worse to make an unlikable protagonist look better by comparison. It's bright and colorful, but the burning hatred that underlies the surface sucks any enjoyment the series has to offer. I've become less and less involved with anime and manga in recent years, and while part of that can be blamed on me having less time, seeing Shield Hero reach the top of the charts and as well as inspiring a wave of new manga involving spiteful, shallow protagonists has also contributed to me keeping my distance.