‘The Rising of the Shield Hero’ Season 4: Will It Happen?

The Rising of the Shield Hero is an anime series adapted from Aneko Yusagi’s light novels. It was announced at the 2019 Crunchyroll Expo that the series would receive a second and third season. Directed by Hitoshi Haga, the third season features the return of the previous staff and introduces music composers Alfredo Sirica and Natalie Jeffrey. The story follows Naofumi Iwatani, a laid-back Japanese youth summoned to a parallel world as one of the Legendary Heroes tasked with battling inter-dimensional monster hordes. The third season of the show is currently underway, and fans want to know whether there is going to be a fourth one, which is what we are going to tell you in this article.

What do we know about a potential Season 4 of The Rising of the Shield Hero?

Back in 2019, the Kinema Citrus studio produced a 25-part anime series based on The Rising of the Shield Hero light novel series. It was directed by Takao Abo, and the main writer was Keigo Koyanagi. The series’ music was composed by Kevin Penkin. The series aired in Japan from January 9, 2019 and was released via streaming on Crunchyroll, including with English subtitles.

Interestingly enough, the first episode of the series was received largely negatively by the relevant media. Genre elements that were viewed as boring and worn-out have been criticized. In particular, the episode was perceived as misogynistic because of its depiction of a simulated rape. However, the anime was a great success with audiences, and its popularity meant it was able to double the sales figures of the light novel and manga series, which is why the series continued and is quite popular today.

During the Crunchyroll Expo on September 1, 2019, it was announced that the anime would be receiving both a second and third season, the former which aired in 2022 after several delays, while the latter is still ongoing.

Now, what interests us here is whether there will be a fourth season of The Rising of the Shield Hero later in the future. Officially, we still don’t know, as no one has confirmed (or denied) that the series will continue. As far as the content is concerned, there is still a lot more to adapt, so that is always a good sign, and the series is popular, so we assume that fans demand more.

All of this means that a fourth season of The Rising of the Shield Hero is highly likely, but we’ll have to wait a bit more for an official confirmation.

When could Season 4 of The Rising of the Shield Hero potentially be released?

As for a potential release date, we don’t really know much. The Rising of the Shield Hero began broadcast in 2019, when the first season aired. The second season was delayed until 2022, but due to the pandemic and everything, this made sense at the time. The third season premiered in 2023 and is going to end in December of that same year. The structure is as follows:

Based on that and our knowledge of the anime industry in general, we think that if a fourth season is confirmed, it will most likely premiere not before 2025, as it takes some time to produce high-quality content that the fans of The Rising of the Shield Hero are used to.

What could The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 4 be about?

At this moment, we do not know how far the fourth season of The Rising of the Shield Hero could take us because we don’t know how many additional chapters of the original light novel series the season could potentially adapt. In order to properly assess that, we will first have to wait until the third season is over, which is when we will know the starting point of a potential fourth season.

Based on the second season, which had a similar number of episodes, we can confirm that it adapted roughly three volumes of The Rising of the Shield Hero light novel series. The third season is probably going to adapt a similar amount of content, meaning that the fourth season could probably start with volumes 13 or 14, but this is only a conjecture at this point.

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