Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari

Alternatives: English: The Rising of the Shield Hero
Japanese: 盾の勇者の成り上がり
Author: Aneko, Yusagi
Type: Manga
Status: Publishing
Publish: 2013-08-22 to ?

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4.2
(52 Votes)
51.92%
25.00%
11.54%
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Alternatives: English: The Rising of the Shield Hero
Japanese: 盾の勇者の成り上がり
Author: Aneko, Yusagi
Type: Manga
Status: Publishing
Publish: 2013-08-22 to ?
Score
4.2
52 Votes
51.92%
25.00%
11.54%
11.54%
0.00%
0 Reading
0 Want to read
0 Read
Summary
Stories of old tell of four otherworldly heroes—wielding the sword, spear, bow, and shield—who defended the land from wave after wave of calamity. With the fate of the world in balance, the kingdom of Melromarc summons these legendary figures; in modern-day Japan, the call is answered, and the unwitting heroes are transported to this fantasy universe.

Thrust into Melromarc and given the title of "Shield Hero," otaku Naofumi Iwatani is labeled the weakest due to his lack of offensive capability and apparent inexperience. When the heroes part ways to start their journeys, he only has one willing companion: the beautiful princess Malty Melromarc. However, she soon betrays him, steals all his money, and accuses him of taking advantage of her.

For his alleged crimes, Naofumi is branded a criminal and made outcast of society. With hatred filling his heart, he sets out alone, vowing vengeance against those who wronged him.



Note: This entry is for the light novel only.
Tags
fantasy
Reviews (52)
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Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari review
by
Kiriyin8
Apr 02, 2021
Well, so far I can just say that this series is WAY better than what I've watched of the SAO series and if they ever made an anime out of it, I would totally watch it.

Art: The drawings are BEAUTIFUL, I only wish there were more so I could enjoy them on a more constant basis. The writing quality is... well... it's not the best. There are a number of typos (though that may just be the English publishers). But at least it's not unreadable.

Story: The story is fairy average. Some otaku gets dragged into another world, and he's kinda upset about it. Though this has an added twist. This otaku (the incredibly lovable and relatable Naofumi Iwatani), instead of being worshipped for his prowess in battle, he gets the worst of the four weapons (the shield), and then gets framed for a crime and turned into an outcast and is basically regarded as a criminal by everyone except his slave, Raphtalia. Though the story is also pretty obviously giving itself the opportunity to go on as long as it wants. With the whole 'we don't know how long these attacks will go on for' thing.

Character: Naofumi is an incredibly relatable and likable protagonist. He's innocent of what he's accused of, but no one will listen to him. His often declarations of hatred of the people who framed him are incredibly realistic and I know that I often think exactly the same way when thinking about people I hate. I also give them mean and offensive nicknames. Raphtalia is an incredibly important character. She's the one who gives Naofumi a reason to keep going and keep trying to protect this world where everyone hates him and thinks he's a criminal, though she starts out as his slave.

Why this is better than SAO: It's NOT A HAREM SERIES!!! Even though we have two main females and one main male and both of these females are 'subservient' to the protagonist, there is no romantic elements so far at all (keep in mind I've only read 43 chapters at the time of this writing). Naofumi repeatedly states that he is attempting to be a parental figure to both Raphtalia and Filo. And also the characters are interesting and not 1 dimensional (I do not judge those who like SAO, this is just my opinion).

I definitely recommend this series to anyone who likes Light Novels or video-game like fantasy series (so, if you like Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? you'll probably like this).
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari review
by
jd2001z2
Apr 02, 2021
Read the first vol of the Light Novel and didn't continue.
Went and read the manga adaption and fell in love.
DONT READ THE LN! IF YOU'RE INTERESTED, THEN READ THE MANGA

The short version- The writing is abysmal and reads more like a shitty first draft of somebody who has never read an actual novel in their life and only reads manga.
The manga, thankfully, translates the story much better because of this and is overall a much better experience.


The full version-
As I said above, the LN reads like a poor attempt at a script for a manga. Its riddled with tropes unacceptable in the writing industry and barely tolerated in the visual medium of Manga. The writing is at the level of a junior high school kid and gave me frequent painful flashbacks to my primary school days of writing short and terrible stories about vampires and angels.
It constantly breaks genre rules (and I don't mean in an innovative or subversive way) and just honestly lacks the grace and experience to execute the relatively good story.
Its hard to quite pin point just what went wrong with this LN. The poor writing, terrible execution of ideas, the clear lack of actual knowledge of books. Maybe its all of it.

But it has potential! And we see that in the premise and eventual adaption by the manga. The mangaka is clearly an experienced artist, and takes the good elements of the story, improves upon them and then translates it into the medium it was really meant to be in. The art is gorgeous like the cover, it forgoes the unnecessary protag introduction (which was frankly so bad, it made the protagonist unlikable from the get-go, which didn't help when the entire story is about feeling bad about him and wanting him to get the better over his enemies), and executes the tropes its diseased with in a decent way.

I understand why people might prefer the LN. It uh for lack of a more polite way to say it, it gets 'to the point' really fast (somuchsoitsrushedcoughcough) and the language is simple/easy to read (meaning you aren't choked by unnecessary prose or flowery writing). The pain the protag is forced to go through is *just* enough to make you sympathise with him and root for his eventual triumph over his enemies.

But. If you actually read books regularly, then you'll likely struggle like I did to get past the frankly insulting standard of writing and execution in this LN.

So, READ THE MANGA.
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari review
by
Bubuful3
Apr 02, 2021
This is probably the most horribly written light novel I have ever had the chance to read. The issue stems from it's extremely strong start, up until volume 4, then the plateau up until volume 8, and then the sharp drop-off in quality as you slowly begin to not only see the faults in this book series, but see them repeated over and over again with absolutely no progression in the story past volume 4, or at least it doesn't feel like there has been any meaningful progression for the past 9 volumes, even if there is it's so weak that it's nearly impossible to catch.

Let's start with the biggest offender: action scenes. Almost half of every volume is combat, but unfortunately it's completely terrible. Each enemy is stronger than the last, or the main characters have a stupid curse or something is happening to make them weaker. On top of that, every enemy goes through 3-4 different phases and refuses to give up in the most boring way possible. It's so anime and is absolutely horrible on a written medium. You can skip half of each volume in action scenes and miss absolutely nothing in terms of plot relevance. On top of all this, every action scene plays out the same way, over and over again: Naofumi is kicking ass. Enemy pulls out some item or some technique that makes him weaker. Naofumi's party gets through it. Enemy yells "I'm not done yet!" x3, Naofumi's party hits this guy a billion more times. Finally goes down yippy yay that's the 5th antagonist in 3 volumes that have just been killed off after being introduced not even 50 pages ago!

Second point leads from the first. Antagonists. Either they are dumb as bricks (the other heroes), or so eye-rollingly bland you just can't wait for them to be dealt with. Either that or they're just creepy or maybe they don't even have a personality, like the final antagonist from Volume 13. On top of that, their motives are all completely shallow and are just there for Naofumi and his OP party to beat up after anime-style fighting the same way you've read 50 previous times. Either way, Naofumi's enemies are boring and one-dimensional.

Next up is the MCs group. All character growth has completely stopped, and on top of that all the characters are shallow. Atla, a relatively recently introduced character is consistently violent and just annoying but the author is trying to create some kind of romance rivalry with Raphtalia or something? It's not like either one says anything more than one-liners at any point in time, nor does anyone else. I find myself getting annoyed with the amount of characters and their obnoxious habits or ridiculous behavior. There are also so many characters now that the author doesn't have the skill level to juggle properly, and they are, on top of it, all stereotypes or cliches from Japanese Media. It's just "yandere #11" that you've already seen and there's no progression there. And I don't even want to get started about the actual good characters, like Melty and Filo, that just get abandoned for almost entire volumes and replaced by characters I honestly couldn't care less about but the author seems to want to force them down my throat. It's just awful.

Now we have Naofumi himself. The first person perspective eventually becomes a crutch to get the author out of writing anything complicated, since he uses it as an excuse to ignore important details, entire conversations, or just anything he wants. I'll give it to him, though, it's consistent to the point where it is now an obstacle to the story instead of the good trait it was in the first 4 volumes. Naofumi's personality and obsession with his pet, which literally comes up every 15 pages as a way to relieve his stress with the other characters, is just as infuriating as the characters he's ignoring.

Finally we have plot. Since volume 8 the story has gone into a lull. The author has spent 5 volumes covering about 2 months worth of time in Naofumi's world, and this is where all these problems stick out like a sore thumb. I'm not excited for the rest of the story anymore, if between each big event we have 6 volumes of trash to take care of every time.

So yeah, I thought it was great until it was obviously awful.
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari review
by
mard802
Apr 02, 2021
This story though.
So much epic.
The entire story is a bumpy ride of trials, emotions, and survival with no end to the hero's' efforts in fighting along the fine line of right and wrong, good and evil. With comedy thrown in at every turn to go along perfectly with the protagonist.
In this story I don't sit back and think... "what the heck!? This would never happen."... or ... "yeah, right. Sure."
When I consider being summoned to a new world and being loathed from the get go, this author has done a beautiful job of how I imagine it would go. Or at the very least, the story has convinced me in believing that this is how it should go.
In this novel, the hero and those around him do not seem indestructible because they aren't. This isn't Game of Thrones in which everyone you love dies, but neither is it some teeny bop story with a writer too worried about losing fans to put the fear of losing a character in their readers' very soul.
"I've been summoned as the hero and in one move I'm going to blow you away because you're in my way," does not exist in this story. Effort is needed for success and effort is given. There IS a harem, but there ISN'T and this is my most favourite part about this story. There are plenty of women to choose from but they're not blatantly drooling over the protagonist like some teenager-going-through-puberty's wet dream.

My complaints: Some characters I had difficulty understanding. I'm not sure if it's just Japanese standard or if it was lost in translation but I feel the author could have done a better job conveying a handful of the characters' personalities, attitudes, or reasoning a bit better. There are scenes with a bit too much dialogue. Other times, I feel quite unintelligent as they explain some mechanic or another of the world which results in being practically unnecessary information later on. That last part might just be because I am unintelligent, but I'd rather think I'm not. There also seemed to be a bit of conflict recycling going on throughout the story to the point where you good expect what was going to happen for the next 5 chapters. But even then, there were still parts of those 5 chapters which kept you reading to avoid risking some growth period for the protagonist and the others in the story.

Sword Art Online introduced me, properly, to the the 'Entering another world' theme which I don't know the proper name for, or if there is one. But Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari has successfully hooked me on the theme with this story and I will eagerly hunt down other stories like it to satisfy my newfound craving.
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari review
by
waistofthyme10
Apr 02, 2021
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

This...is...soo...bad...

Having read way too many LNs, WNs, and VNs, I stumbled upon this and thought "Hmmm, high score, lots of content, I can't wait to get lost in reading this!" Little did I know the poor souls who came together and upvoted this must have done so not realizing there are better things....like almost anything else... even Naruto filler has more substance...

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Story
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So the generic premise is that this story is a power fantasy of revenge centered around an MC who is betrayed/mocked for being weak trash. This by itself is fine. The problem is that the writing reads more like a train of whimsical thoughts than it does any sort of well constructed novel.

This story takes in an MMO like setting. The power fantasy build up begins when the MC realizes he can use materials to upgrade his shield. However as he "unlocks" many types of shields we are given little to no description of what they do outside of their names. As the MC has a shield and can't do damage this might initially trick the reader into thinking maybe the story will revolve around becoming a tank while his friends do damage.

As things move along the entire concept as a whole is dropped as he quickly unlocks a OP OP shield which can do OP OP damage making you question why so much time and effort was wasted on describing a system that served no purpose and throwing the initial concept out the window.

No effort is put into world building outside what is immediately concerning the MC's party. The story takes random directions with little for the reader to grab onto regarding any sort of goal outside of occasionally defeating the enemy presented to the MC.

For example at some point the MC whimsically decided to establish a slave village consisting of some people the MC rescued. This causes the story to suddenly revolve around village building for many chapters with no connection to the previous events. Once it feels like the MC, as well as the author, got bored of that fantasy they move on with the adventure with little reference to the arc's events and having served 0 purpose outside of showing the MC as "an asshole with a heart at times, but still an asshole"

Action scenes in general are incredibly confusing and hard to follow leaving the reader struggling to get a sense of relative scale, positioning, and power in general. Most important fights are simply resolved by OP OP protagonist with some vague edgy suggestions that he is becoming tainted with more OVERFLOWING EVIL each time he uses his powers.

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Characters
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The motivations of the MC himself are totally scatter brained.(Also immune to love) His motivations transform from revenge/survival to "now i'm a bad-ass without a care in the world and can do whatever I want (AKA edge lord)." That is about all can be said about the MC. However this itself isn't the end of the world as some novels have intentional hollow MC's so that the reader can more easily envision him/herself in their shoes.

However the real nail in the coffin here is that the rest of the characters all all 1 dimensional and many are 0 dimensional serving no purpose w/ no characterization outside their introduction to existing in the novel.

The supporting characters in the MC's party consist of females whom he has saved and as a result they are blind to his entire lack of character. Of course they are in love with the MC with occasional shifts to their point of view which rather than revealing a creature capable of any sort of thought, instead focus entirely about their struggle to make MC senpai notice their love for him. In terms of power they are also rendered completely useless in contrast to the MC making their presence more of a cheer leading generic harem.

The antagonists in the story are several with a new, more powerful one arising from somewhere when the previous one is defeated by the MC. Their motivations are often vague and extremely generic "evil" with no additional details. Hell for how much of an asshole the protagonist is it leaves you confused why the evil antagonist didn't ask the MC to join forces.


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Conclusion
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I think it isn't too far off to say this reads like a ill conceived fan fiction. I found it impossible to get lost in reading as there wasn't one character more complex that a Ham Sammich. The situations lacked any interesting originality. The direction of the story is totally unclear most of the time outside of the whimsical concerns of the protagonist. I could only imagine the only reason someone might get into this is because they have never read anything else. Would not read it unless you can only understand 1d characters.
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari review
by
opensoul13
Apr 02, 2021
This is my first review ever. Also this review is for the light novel (not the web novel). NO SPOILERS.

I started reading the light novel the moment I finished watching the first episode of the rising of the shield hero and all I could say is wow. It was really nice reading the light novel.

Story 10/10 Enjoyment 10/10
The beginning was as usual where the a guy gets summoned into another world, but as it progressed, our imagination will be different from what would happen. We might expect the MC to be the strongest, but that won't be the case, so you can expect a hell of a ride when reading this. The level of detail given by the author about the world the MC goes to in words is excellent and also easy to understand. Also the action scenes which happen in the novel is so exciting it makes you want to keep on reading the novel and progress to the next volumes. Some of the wordings in some scenes are really nice that it makes you want to read that scene again sometimes.

Art 9/10
There is not much art in the novel, but each of the art given is really well detailed and really nice to look at.

Character 9/10
There are different characters as you progress through the light novel with unique characteristics which makes it much exciting to read as well. Also the character development overtime is really good.

Overall 10/10
I really loved each and every volume of the light novel. Not even 1 volume was boring. All of it was extremely interesting to read. I have not read the web novel, so I can't tell how it was when compared to the light novel, but upto what I know, the web novel diverges in terms of plot at one point (not sure where exactly), so you can expect a different experience reading the light novel when compared to the web novel. Also if you are new to reading light novel like me, then you can definitely start from this one.
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