Sad news to report today for fans of The Rising of the Shield Hero anime. The last time we heard from the staff behind this series, season two of the anime was full steam ahead and was ready to air in October 2021. At least that was the case until Thursday, July 8th, when an update from the staff was published to the internet revealing that complications had arisen.
In the staff’s statement, they announced that they will postpone the second season until spring 2022. The reason given for the delay was the ever-popular excuse of “various reasons” with absolutely zero clarification offered or expected.
A controversial dark fantasy series, The Rising of the Shield Hero started as a light novel series written by Aneko Yusagi on the increasingly popular Shosetsuka ni Naro novel site before it was picked up by Media Factory and released commercially with illustrations from Seira Minami. The novel series is up to 22 volumes in Japan as of June 2019 and 20 volumes in English as of June 2021.
The first season of the anime began airing in January 2019 and ran for 25 episodes, though it faced an uphill battle at first with many critics and fans decrying the series for using slavery as a theme, among other things. There is no word on if this delay of the second season will also cause a delay of the already announced third season, but it seems likely.
The Rising of the Shield Hero is a series that I had to give multiple chances to before it finally stuck with me. I distinctly remember trying it once it first aired, and then again a few months later and tuning out within only a couple of episodes. To this day I still don’t know what made the third attempt stick, but I finally got through the first season and enjoyed what I saw. While I would never refer to it as an Anime of the Year contender, it was a solid dark isekai story that intrigued me enough to watch the second season, so I join the lot of you who are bummed by this news. I just hope that the delay means an increase in quality from both an animation and storytelling standpoint.
Source: Anime Eiga
