The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 4

Episode 11

The look on Naofumi's face in the screenshot perfectly summarizes my reaction to this episode. I don't know how this show managed to speed through backstory, family drama, divine intervention, and a resolution to said drama within the span of fifteen minutes, but somehow we got here. I'll sound like a broken record, but maybe this big conflict between sisters would've had more emotional weight behind it if any of this was properly set up or if Sadeena herself were more of a prominent character. Oh, she's been around, and she has mentioned how her family is incredibly screwed up, which is part of the reason why she left, but similar to how the show suddenly became about the white tiger siblings during the first half of the season, the show is now suddenly about these two whale sisters.

I like the twist about Sadeena not even knowing she had a sister to begin with, but it feels like that was done to create a convenient circumstance where Sadeena doesn't really need to feel guilty because she didn't realize she was leaving anything behind. It would've been way more tense and dramatic if there had been some lasting guilt that could've crescendoed during this moment. But instead, we have to discover the information and then come to a resolution in the middle of this annoying fight. I don't feel any tension because what's going on in the fight feels really shallow. Sadeena is pleading with her sister about how she shouldn't have to listen to their family anymore, but I feel like we're not being empathetic to Shildina's circumstances, considering she spent most of her life being treated like garbage and suffers from a massive inferiority complex. You don't just resolve that in a few minutes. You could argue that this was foreshadowed with the heavy drinking, but that came off as more character quirk than anything else and considering that a majority of the raging conflict was brought about because of a drunken stupor, it feels like the show is trying to pull a slight of hand with the way the way the characters are interacting. Why have a scene where it looks like Shildina is sobering up and not really remembering what happened during the fight? It negates whatever meaningful conversation she and her sister were having.

This isn't even getting into the second half of the episode, where it feels like things are just happening. I am sure this is foreshadowed more in the original light novel, but we have yet another new character introduced who is definitely taking more time away from Raphtalia. We are now speed running our confrontation at the capital before the season wraps up, and I'll place all my money on this not being a satisfying conclusion. We're still taking the focus away from the character all of this is revolving around, we're introducing even more supernatural elements and laws to the world for the sake of speeding things along, and I still don't even know how this arc is going to end without fundamentally changing the entire dynamic of the show moving forward. I have no hope that this will be any less than either a boring slog or a massive train wreck, and I hope for the latter because at least that will be more entertaining than whatever we have gotten so far.

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The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 4 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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