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The Best (and worst) Anime of Winter 2019

From critics' lists, the summary for Best/Runner-Up:

Mob Psycho - 3 votes (all best)
Run With the Wind - 2 (1 best)
The Promised Neverland - 2
Boogiepop and Others - 2
Mysteria Friends - 1 (1 best)
GeGeGe no Kitaro - 1 (1 best)
Meiji Tokyo Renka - 1

I'll leave my worst unnamed, but in short, I have never gone from loving to hating a series so fast. There are elements of it I would still very much enjoy, but the way it handled one plot point was such a massive turn off, and it's not the sort that can just be ignored in my book.

"human slavery as its primary plot mechanic" is so wrong though... the primary plot mechanic is still being summoned into the world and fight off waves. The slavery use is more a subsidiary of that because he has no other options. Still think people get stuck on that themselves and over inflate it in the show more than the creator does. Is the slavery element ideal? No. But his whole circumstance is not ideal. Honestly, people also who haven't realized in the LN and the Manga it shows how horrible slavery is (with slaves being abused, not by Naofumi, though that's web novel stuff and web novels are almost never the same of the final product and much later as well as other circumstances) so it's not like it's saying 'SLAVERY IS GREAT!'. Seriously, people gotta realize their bias.

Shield Hero isn't what I'd call great, btw. It's just 'ok'.

Honestly surprised none of you talk about 'how bad Wataten is' then cause that has pedophilia creepiness. WHile most of it is cutesy/wholesome, Miyako is creepy with Hana. That would bother me more than the slavery aspect in the way it's used in Shield Hero.

GodEmperorLeto wrote:

"human slavery as its primary plot mechanic" is so wrong though... the primary plot mechanic is still being summoned into the world and fight off waves. The slavery use is more a subsidiary of that because he has no other options. Still think people get stuck on that themselves and over inflate it in the show more than the creator does. Is the slavery element ideal? No. But his whole circumstance is not ideal. Honestly, people also who haven't realized in the LN and the Manga it shows how horrible slavery is (with slaves being abused, not by Naofumi, though that's web novel stuff and web novels are almost never the same of the final product and much later as well as other circumstances) so it's not like it's saying 'SLAVERY IS GREAT!'. Seriously, people gotta realize their bias. Shield Hero isn't what I'd call great, btw. It's just 'ok'. Honestly surprised none of you talk about 'how bad Wataten is' then cause that has pedophilia creepiness. WHile most of it is cutesy/wholesome, Miyako is creepy with Hana. That would bother me more than the slavery aspect in the way it's used in Shield Hero.

Um, yeah, agree here. Reading those responses on the main posting, it made me wonder if they had watched past the first episode, let alone watched the same anime I was watching. The whole "slavery" thing didn't really come off as slavery at all, to be honest with the way he treated them, and the fact Raphtalia actually still sided with him after the controlling mark was removed kinda shows there is more to it. To me, even her getting it reapplied seemed more her idea of a bond with him than master-slave relations. But that being said, it isn't even the central point of the whole story, and neither is the Malty situation either.

But yeah, I guess it is seeing medium with your own personal bias than actually paying attention to the story its telling...

To be clear, I don't hate this show. It's more that I feel like my dad whenever I did something stupid – I'm disappointed in it. At the outset, Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka was set to delve into the consequences of war on the soldiers' psyche. Asuka, in her magical girl identity as Rapture, fought in a bloody, vicious war and now in her late teens is suffering from PTSD. She's trying to distance herself from her experiences while still struggling with them, and it made for a really interesting difference from other dark magical girl shows. The balance between Asuka and her fellow magical girl survivors – War Nurse Kurumi is totally unhinged – was thoughtful, and if that had to be balanced out with fanservice, that was okay. The problems came when torture scenes

Everything here is the same thing I've seen from countless other people trying to defend Shield Hero. "He's nice to her so it's *okay* that she's his slave" is a common theme in many of these kinds of stories. I said before that the story constantly bends over backwards to justify Naofumi being a garbage person who does garbage things and this is just more of that. "There's a bunch of awful slaveowners out there but this one guy is a-ok because of reasons!" is pretty much implying that there is ever a time where slavery could ever be considered okay. He could easily just free her and hire her as a bodyguard or a servant or whatever but he can't because muh trust issues.


And you know what, I could forgive *all* of that if the narrative actually committed to Naofumi being an incredibly warped person and not someone we were supposed to find heroic, but it doesn't. We're supposed to find him a misunderstood victim who does nothing wrong, and everyone *else* is actually an unlikable twat who can never do anything right so Naofumi can look like a super cool guy who always saves the day.

It's all just super lame and trite.

As for comparing this to Wataten, at least that show's problematic aspects can be glossed over in favor of it's good points, and those problematic aspects don't show up as often as you would think, especially later on. But Raphtalia's very existence is a *constant* reminder of where Shield Hero's priorities and beliefs are, and even if you wanted to ignore those elements, the rest of the show doesn't really have much else to offer, just bland isekai flavor that's been done in countless other shows, often better.


But this isn't a Shield Hero thread so this will likely be my only response to this.