Season four of Rising of the Shield Hero continues where three left off. Naofumi is on the move as the nation of Q’ten Lo is after Raphtalia; however, they have to stop by Siltvelt on the way there. A nation that sees the shield hero as a god. You would think that would make passing by this nation easy, but Naofumi has to navigate a very delicate political environment with him at the center. That’s all before tackling an entire nation.

Story wise this season is divided into two halves. The first half is all about Naofumi’s struggles dealing with the nation of Siltvelt as his every action is monitored and everyone is trying to use him for some kind of political gain. It creates a unique tension that is new to the series and it’s fun to see how Naofumi uses his wits to navigate this situation. Additionally it ends up adding some incredible backstory behind some newer additions to the main cast Fohl and Atla. I’ll admit I ended up being more attached to their stories than I thought I would as we already had some emotional moments with these characters last season but those ended up being elevated here.

The second half of the season is the conflict with Q’ten Lo. So to be honest my feelings on this are a bit more mixed. I loved how it gave us a lot of backstory behind Sadeena, another new character from season three. Then you have Ralphtalia essentially play the main character as the conflict centers around her becoming the next emperor of the nation. It’s nice to see Naofumi take a back seat as the cast is rather large and it’s great to give more of it time to shine.

The part that I found a bit weak was how the conflict ended. You had some incredible battles leading up to the final conflict but outside of one they were pretty quick and most of them were one on one fights. When dealing with a war with a nation I had the expectation of big climatic battles where our main characters were fighting an army. Instead the last two or three battles were one on one battles. While they did do a great job making the stories of Sadeena and Ralphtalia hit well it also lessened the significance of the threat of Q’ten Lo. When the conflict was resolved fairly easily it didn’t live up to the hype the ending of season three gave it.

Now I still greatly enjoyed it. Both halves of the season did a great job with character, lore and world development. It elevated new and long standing characters in a much needed way. The only real flaw of the season was how the conflict leading up to the season was resolved in a bit of an anticlimactic way in comparison to how it was built up.

Overall I feel like this season was set up to look like it was going to be conflict heavy when really it was more lore based. I am happy with where the story is going but that disconnect was noticeable and had an effect on how I looked at the season as a whole. Still excited as the trailer for season five at the end has me looking forward to what’s to come.