Quote from: Omega;1072053Wow? Box deleted his replies?

Quote from: Snowman0147;1072076I think he did.

I did due to a combination of prescription drug use addling my brain and my views flipping back and forth over time. I finally managed to settle on the centrist position.

90% of anime is mediocre garbage, but weaboos rate everything highly just because. This show is mediocre at best and gets way more attention than it deserves due to the current political climate. Some in the left thought it promoted disturbing views, which prompted some on the right to watch it out of spite or because they were victim of false witness.

Probably the most accurate and hilarious summation of the first episode controversy was this quote I read from gamefaqs:

QuoteFor at least a decade it's been a meme that those wretched feeeeemales get favored by the courts to the point where they will literally ruin your life by accusing you of rape as a joke (according to this paranoia fantasy). That was back when t hose types were calling themselves mens' rights activists.

This plays into that with every beat: the innocent guy who just wants a cute girlfriend being used, losing all his money, and being accused of rape and having his reputation ruined in the process. It even uses the classic 'society is REALLY a matriarchy nevermind that the rulers are all d00ds' angle.

Really though the guy was a total goober who mumbled to himself how much of a thot an indistinct sketch of a princess was and if the other heroes were in on it it was because he came off as a clueless buffoon.

I'm going to write unmarked spoilers now.

Shield Hero doesn't handle the false accusation well at all. Not only is it part of an evil conspiracy, but the princess is later revealed to be a demon in disguise. Every woman who isn't a literal monster or a sheep buying propaganda only ever helps the Shield Hero.

The show's own statements about a matriarchy forcing blind obedience to the women bearing false witness is invalidated by the revelation that the demon princess was using mind control the whole time. It was a kangaroo court, not a depiction of a real trial. According to the kingdom's laws, bearing false witness like that is punishable by death. If a man rapes a woman, he gets executed. If a woman lies about getting raped, she gets executed. That definitely isn't how it works in real life.

This invalidates the arguments of those defending the show's use of the "false rape accusation ruining a man's life" plot point as a realistic depiction of the modern "matriarchy." If the show was actually about depicting a strawman of a man-hating matriarchy, then it would not depict the uncorrupted matriarchy as a competent egalitarian system which rescues innocent men from the depredations of evil women.

So the show doesn't support the politics of either side. It doesn't demonize matriarchies as man-hating hellscapes and it doesn't depict non-psychopathic women as lying whores. Using it to advance a political agenda just made both sides look stupid.

The real tragedy is that such terribly written drek got popular in the first place. The hero is painfully bland and the villains are soulless caricatures.

Here's my suggestion for how the series could have been improved with a little depth: the princess was a brainwashed pawn who gradually realizes Naofumi is not a devil and from there she ultimately dethrones her father, reforms the church, institutes a democracy, abolishes slavery and generally becomes a better person from the spoiled brat she started out as. Meanwhile, Naofumi becomes increasingly jaded and deranged with the state of the horrible world around him. He absconds to the beastmen kingdom and learns the other side of the story, becoming the beastmen's messiah and living god. With the best of intentions, he starts a holy war that lasts for years and kills millions.

But that would require actually thinking through why characters behave they do and why people could fight without being evil. Not every author can be George R.R. Martin.