The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 4

Episode 9

Wow, I felt almost nothing but irritation while watching this episode. On the one hand, you could argue that this episode is perfectly reasonable. I'm seeing Raphtalia's growing influences on the people and political tensions are rising. I even got some fun character moments between Naofumi and others. But in actuality, this is an episode that is arguably all about Raphtalia yet she barely gets any screentime or anything substantial for me to cling to as a viewer. Why would you start setting up all of this intrigue about what she is going to do as an emperor for the people or whether or not she's going to take that position in the first place and do absolutely nothing with it? We are almost at the end of this season, and I feel like the show has barely moved a single inch.

Instead, let's introduce ANOTHER character to the cast that has an incredibly obvious backstory and who is infatuated with Naofumi for practically no reason. Let's keep her identity secret for the cliffhanger at the end of the episode, even though it was incredibly obvious that she was Sadeena's sister from the minute she appeared on screen. I was begging the episode to subvert my expectations and just get to the point as soon as possible, but instead the show has to drag this whole thing out for over twenty minutes. There could've been intrigue there and I can see the show setting up a parallel between Sadeena and her sister. But it doesn't hit home because of the way the show has recently been treating Sadeena's character.

Even though she is from this land, the show is super selective about whether or not she ever remembers anything about it. It's like she has selective amnesia because sometimes she'll give us exposition about the land's traditions and how things are run, but then she'll turn around and act like she doesn't know anything or she forgot about it because it's been so long. It would've worked a lot better if the show had made her lack of remembering some kind of trauma response. I remember she feels some kind of guilt and they make it clear that her race had to take on a bunch of dirty jobs in order to uphold tradition. So why not focus on her duty as the guardian to keep the focus on her and Raphtalia while creating a parallel to her relationship with her sister?

No, let's spend a chunk of the episode focusing on Atla, who is genuinely getting on my nerves. She is such an entitled brat who keeps belittling her brother who keeps trying to have her best interest at heart. I don't blame her brother for wanting to spoil her considering what she had gone through, but you would think she would be more grateful or more compassionate towards him. Even if you wanna make the excuse that she is a rash teenager, it's not interesting or entertaining to watch. It's also really ironic that the most Raphtalia gets to do or say in this season was helping these damn white tiger siblings.

So I'm left with an episode that sides steps a bunch of interesting conversations that it goes out of its way to set up for the sake of introducing more harem characters to drag the pacing out for as long as humanly possible. There is nothing in this season that is as egregious as season two or some of the worst bits in season three. But my God is this starting to get boring. When you remove the action, it really highlights that the story doesn't actually have anything substantial to say, which is a shame.

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