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The Best (and worst) Anime of Winter 2019

Where were this objections when he applied the slave seal on Filo?

zrnzle500 wrote:

Where were this objections when he applied the slave seal on Filo?

Wait, when did this ever happen? Yes, Naofumi acquires Filo from the slave trader, but I don’t recall Naofumi, as soon as Filo could have a human form, going back to the trader and applying the exact same seal as Rapthalia.

KuroiEr wrote:

Honestly, I am so sick of this toxic idea that every protagonist must be a paragon of virtue. That every story must be a one dimensional morality play that beats you over the head with it's message. Everything must be boring, sanitized garbage. Because grown adults, apparently, can't be trusted to know that slavery is bad.

There is no such toxic idea. Nobody is asking for every hero to be a "paragon of virtue" and, beyond the shonen action level, flawed heroes are routinely very popular - and that's something that hasn't changed much over the last 40 years.

Besides, I would argue that your complaint doesn't even apply in the case of Shield Hero. Naofumi is, basically, a paragon for persecution complex sufferers. Everyone who isn't actively supporting him is bad, anything he does is justifiable by his circumstances, he's the only truly competent one, and so forth. The writing isn't even trying too hard to convince anyone that it's not a straight-up power fantasy for the persecuted. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing - and remember, I'm reviewing it week-to-week and giving it a B/B- average, so that means I'm at least finding it tolerable - and it's certainly going to be popular, but it's also the kind of thing that some are going to reject pretty hard. And that's even without getting into the whole slavery thing, which naturally isn't stirring any problems in Japan because they don't have a dark history with it like most of the Western world does.

I've used this example before, but if you want to see an example of a character somewhat similar to Naofumi who is handled much, much better (to the point that the series is adored for how it's done and is rarely or never found objectionable), take a look at The Twelve Kingdoms sometime.

Unrelated note, you going to be dropping a hot revier of Kotobuki any time soon, now that it's concluded its run?