The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 3

Episode 12

This is it? This is how we are ending season three of the series? All right, I definitely wasn't expecting them to take this route but I'm not really surprised either. I originally expected something a bit lighter with a lot of downtime. Sure, there would be some setup for what was gonna happen next but I thought the thing that was gonna happen next was us dealing with the Phoenix. You know, that thing that has been constantly talked about and built up in the background this entire season? Instead, what we end up getting here feels like the first episode of a season four that has not been confirmed at the time of this writing.

Instead of the Phoenix being the next immediate threat, where instead gonna go backwards and retroactively add a whole bunch of lore to Raphtalia's backstory where apparently she is next in line for the throne of a country that we have never heard of till this point and the way we find out about this is one of the stupidest things I think I've seen in this entire franchise. Remember Sadeena, the woman that got introduced at the beginning of the season and then quickly faded into the background? Turns out she was actually Raphtalia's bodyguard meant to ward off constant assassinations on her life since Raphtalia's parents ran away to avoid potential political assassinations. Since even before Raphtalia was born, she has been under constant observation by random ninjas who are waiting for her to do something vaguely obscure like put on a priestess outfit and taking that as a declaration of war. This feels like fanfiction.

There are so many immediate holes with this story I don't even know where to start. First of all, are these ninjas so skilled that we are led to believe that not a single person in this entire village noticed that they were under constant observation? We have knights, mages, ki masters, monsters, monster tamers and even Cardinal Heroes in one small village on the coast and not a single person noticed? Also, if these assassins have always been observing Raphtalia, they had numerous opportunities to kill her. I don't even buy the excuse that they probably didn't do it for the sake of not accidentally setting off a war because Raphtalia was put into numerous dangerous situations that could have easily been covered up. Hell, Raphtalia spent a significant amount of her childhood as a slave where she was already on the verge of death. And speaking of Raphtalia's childhood, it is established that Sadeena was a bodyguard for Raphtalia in the very village Naofumi turned into his own nation. Did Sadeena never think to revisit this town after the Shield Hero took it over? I feel like she could've reunited with Raphtalia a whole lot sooner because it's not like her serving underneath the Shield Hero was ever a secret or anything. Oh and we get no real explanation for why NONE of this was brought up before it actually became an issue.

This is so dumb. I think my patience has finally reached its limit with this series after I gave it numerous benefits of the doubt. The fact that this is the note we're ending on feels so weird because I know what they're doing. This episode started with Sadeena asking Naofumi what he thinks of Raphtalia and he makes it very clear that he considers her like a daughter. I will bet all the money in my back pocket that this entire arc is solely there in order to reaffirm Naofumi's relationship with Raphtalia just so we can establish a romantic relationship between the two which I don't think I will ever feel comfortable with giving the fact that Raphtalia's age and maturity level have always been weirdly contextualized throughout this entire franchise. At least for now I can wipe my hands of this. Season three was definitely a marked improvement over season two but that really wasn't saying much.

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The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.