This is why he is manipulated and tricked. Iwatani was already discriminated against from the beginning and never managed to get on equal footing to his peers. The Sword, Spear and Bow heroes are regarded as powerful warriors, get the girls and shine in the spotlight when they achieve brave feats in battle. However with Tate Yuusha, Iwatani gets the opposite treatment than what we’ve grown to expect. Tate Yuusha no Nariagari has something I have been looking in an isekai anime since it was exactly what I wanted to see tackled in this type of story- what happens if the summoned character despises their situation? One could argue that Sword Art Online attempts this, but only in the Aincrad arc it seemed, and even then the characters seem to still make the best out of their life in the game and experience happiness. He is set up to fail from the beginning, because even if he becomes strong like his fellow heroes the public opinion of him wouldn’t accept that he an equal. This is because he was chosen as a shield hero, a decidedly inferior class due to the lack of offensive abilities in combat and as we later learn, apparent lack of knowledge about fantasy worlds because apparently Iwatani hasn’t played enough MMO’s. It is then revealed that he is one of four legendary heroes that has been summoned to a world in danger of “The Wave” and he is a “Shield Hero.” However during the first confrontation with King Melromarc we already see the predisposed feelings the people of this country feel towards Iwatani when he is ignored and not taken as seriously as the other heroes. The story begins awfully standard with a seemingly average young Japanese guy named Naofumi Iwatani getting summoned to another world after reading a weird novel in the public library. The opening scenes of “Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari” starts off with a powerful first arc and delivers exactly what it wants the viewers to expect moving forward. It’s obvious to understand the baseline appeal of isekai storytelling just at a glance, but sometimes we get something different that approaches the subgenre in a refreshing way that makes us look at the tired tropes and reconsider our declaration that the subgenre is objectively awful. Despite this once the gimmick has lost its novelty factor the story will often devolve into a power fantasy featuring an overpowered main character and an endless stream of new girls for his ever-growing harem. Sometimes we have them getting reincarnated as a non-human race, starting over as a child, or as a villain adding more “originality” to their own take on isekai.
It has become a bit of a meme now to see a weird gimmicky isekai story about an average Japanese guy getting hit by a truck and getting reincarnated in a traditional RPG-esque world with the same tired tropes after that. That said, the oversaturation can be seen to have benefited the subgenre by forcing authors to be more creative with their isekai stories resulting in a lot of gimmicks. Isekai is a weird subgenre since it has experienced a huge surge in popularity in recent years, and as a result we have an oversaturated genre with not just anime but manga and light novels.
I suppose one could consider my first introduction to this style of storytelling with Sword Art Online, that is if we consider it a true isekai but that’s besides the point. During the early fall when “Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken” started airing I got a bit obsessed with isekai again.
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