Premieres July 2025. Check out the ANN article for additional information. Synopsis for the source novels from AniList:
Naofumi Iwatani, an uncharismatic Otaku who spends his days on games and manga, suddenly finds himself summoned to a parallel universe! He discovers he is one of four heroes equipped with legendary weapons and tasked with saving the world from its prophesied destruction. As the Shield Hero, the weakest of the heroes, all is not as it seems. Naofumi is soon alone, penniless, and betrayed. With no one to turn to, and nowhere to run, he is left with only his shield. Now, Naofumi must rise to become the legendary Shield Hero and save the world!
That is about as misleading as you can get Jesus.
The slavery is werid yes but to TLDR MC is royally screwed over ~~my~~ by the literal royalty and quite literally his only option is to purchase a slave to fight for him (he can't fight). She expects to be abused but he's not a horrible person so she's treated like a normal party member beside one occasion where he orders her to fight a monster dog which she struggles with due to trauma. He quickly resends the order and tells her to run away.
Demi humans (like her) physically grow when they lv up which is somewhat strange but up till now hasn't been used in a way to leer at her or anything like that. This is such a werid show to get into such a fuss about. Have you even heard of Redo of Healer? That shit is fucking vile
It's a wish fulfillment anime.
I wish I could own a slave and be morally correct while doing so.
Is an odd wish.
Also, imagining yourself being falsely accused of rape is a pretty standard chud stress fantasy.
I implore you to watch at least the first season (after that plot line is resolved there's not much of a hook to stay engaged).
Shield heros hook is at its core a revenge type story where the revenge is that the people who fucked him over are fucked over in very nearly the same way. The king and princess have their status revoked (they are now commoners) as well as their names changed to Scum and Bitch/Whore respectively. The with fulfilment here is not slavery, (Naofumi goes out of his way to rescue slaves) but getting back at the people in power who ruined your reputation knowingly because they simply didn't like you. Once that arc ends there's not much of a hook, the public sees Naofumi as the only competent Hero (which he's always been), he has great party members and he's slowly overcoming the trauma of being royalty fucked so hard by the royalty (beginning to trust people again). Honestly I cannot see the slave stuff going anywhere but Naofumi finally moving past his trauma and truly freeing his slaves as he no longer is so insecure about being betrayed again.
Is that wish fulfillment? Maybe for you but my kind of wish fulfillment is more along the lines of Konosuba or Tensura.
I watched all the seasons!
The main character does free slaves, but his companions voluntarily re-enslave themselves to him because he is such a great guy.
He gets screwed over by the royalty, until the queen is back in the picture and then the royalty is totally in his corner and the woman who falsely accused him of rape (the chuds greatest fear) is publicly shamed and humiliated for it (the chuds greatest desire).
The plot serves as a permission structure for someone to indulge in their darker fantasies while still feeling like a moral human.
Also the Queen runs the kingdom.
But you know, from the shadows or something. Because that's how power works. Ignore the king and how it wrecks a lot of plot points.
Like when Melty revealed herself to be a princess and direct agent of the Queen I just gave up on this anime.
Its a lot of weird angst and weird messages here that never made sense to me.
Totally on your side. Super weird that people can watch a show with multiple little girls fighting over the grown ass MC and not understand what they are seeing.