Highlights
- The third season of The Rising of The Shield Hero has a fast-paced story, which can be both a positive and negative aspect for viewers.
- The quick pace of the story can hurt the viewer's watching experience, as it feels like important events are being rushed through, causing confusion and reducing enjoyment.
- The showrunners may be rushing through the storyline to reach the next major event in the light novel, the grand battle against the Phoenix, due to the limited number of episodes in the season.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Rising of The Shield Hero Season 3, Episode 3, “The White Tiger Siblings”, now streaming on Crunchyroll.
When it comes to the overall story, the third season of Rising of the Shield Hero has been doing a rather good job thus far. It’s not as compelling as the first season, but it’s still quite interesting nonetheless. That being said, there is one glaring issue that keeps appearing in every episode of this season. A problem that is painfully clear for everyone to see, especially to those who have read the original light novel or the manga adaptation. It has to do with the pacing of the story.
Faster Than a Speeding Bullet
The third season of Rising of the Shield Hero has an incredibly fast-paced story. Normally, having a fast-paced story is the golden standard for a shounen series, but a problem will arise when the pace is too quick. But what’s so bad about having an ultra-fast-paced story?
Well, there are quite a few reasons why it’s bad, and the chief among them is it hurts the viewer’s watching experience. Rather than giving the viewers the chance to enjoy every intense and meaningful moment in each episode, it feels like they are blazing through the story. The anime speeds through every event that is supposed to be a milestone for the story. And, that can cause some confusion and reduce the overall enjoyment.
In this episode alone, Naofumi meets the White Tiger Siblings, purchases them, heals the little sister, takes them to the village, lets them play around with the other demi-human kids, talks about the dwindling resource issue with Melty, flirts with Nadia, goes on a trade expedition, a group of slave trader comes to the village, skirmishes ensues between the bad guys and the kids, Naofumi and his group hastily returns to the village, defeat the bandits, and then sold them to the slave trader in the demi-human country of Siltvelt.
A lot of things are happening there. At the very least, the events that happened in this episode could’ve been split into two episodes. The first one focuses on the White Tiger Siblings and their new life in the village, which allows the viewers to get to know more about them. The second one focuses on the slave trader's attacks on the village, which allows the viewers to see how dire the problem of the demi-human slave trade truly is.
This is also a great way to separate this mini-arc into two distinct tones and atmospheres, with the first one focusing on wholesomeness while the second one is all about action. But, the showrunners had to cram everything in one episode for some reason.
Off To a Rocky Start
This blazing pace issue has already been quite noticeable since the first episode. In the source material, the story spends quite some time discussing what Naofumi would do after defeating the Spirit Tortoise and fighting against crazy enemies in the different dimensions in the previous season.
He would purchase the remaining demi-human slaves in Melromarc, like in the first episode, but he would’ve spent much more time with them as they tried to rebuild the village. The decision to go to Zeltoble would only come after Naofumi realized that he needed more manpower to help the rebuilding effort. It should’ve been a short and meaningful arc, but instead, the first episode cuts all of the necessary story points and goes straight to the next arc.
Furthermore, according to the light novel and the manga, the time that Naofumi and his companion spend fighting in Zeltoble’s coliseum is supposed to be intense and exciting. After all, it is this series' mini-tournament arc. This is the time when fans get the chance to see how Naofumi, Raphtalia, and Filo’s combat abilities evolved after such chaotic and difficult battles that happened in the second season.
What the viewers got instead was the second episode, where Naofumi’s group sped through three or four battles before finally getting to fight against Nadia. The battle against Nadia alone should’ve been a dedicated episode because there are so many things happening in that fight, such as Nadia’s shocking combat prowess when using her lightning spear or the surprising revelation about Nadia’s identity as a demi-human and how much it changes her fighting style. What fans get instead is an episode where all of those things are crammed into one single episode.
What’s The Rush?
Unfortunately, there are no clear answers as to why they are speeding through most of the important story points like this. At the time of writing, there’s no clear explanation from the staff nor even any acknowledgment regarding the pacing issue or the compressed storyline.
That being said, there is one possible explanation for the strange decision behind compressing the source material and telling it at such an absurdly fast pace. This is merely an educated guess, so please take it with a grain of salt. The most plausible explanation is that the showrunners want to push the story to the next major event in the light novel as soon as possible, which is the grand battle against the next Guardian Beast, the Phoenix. Unfortunately, the third season only has 12 episodes to tell the story, so they have no other choice but to rush through things like this.