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Do you have to be 'wielding' the shield to activate it. or can it be on your back? The description is not specific on this point. My vote is it does not have to be wielded.
As a move action, an animated shield can be loosed to defend its wielder on its own. For the following 4 rounds, the shield grants its bonus to the one who loosed it and then drops. While animated, the shield provides its shield bonus and the bonuses from all of the other shield special abilities it possesses, but it cannot take actions on its own, such as those provided by the bashing and blinding abilities. It can, however, use special abilities that do not require an action to function, such as arrow deflection and reflecting. While animated, a shield shares the same space as the activating character and accompanies the character who activated it, even if the character moves by magical means. A character with an animated shield still takes any penalties associated with shield use, such as armor check penalty, arcane spell failure chance, and nonproficiency. If the wielder who loosed it has an unoccupied hand, she can grasp it to end its animation as a free action. Once a shield has been retrieved, it cannot be animated again for at least 4 rounds. This special ability cannot be added to a tower shield.
I think it must be wielded to be used.
1. This is not a no-slot item. It occupies a slot. There is only one slot for a shield. The Magical Armor section states: "Usually a character benefits from magic armor and shields in exactly the way a character benefits from non-magical armor and shields: by wearing them." That's pretty incontrovertible. The only way to disregard that would be if the item in question had explicit wording that says it works differently. The Animated Shield has no such wording.
2. Within the item's description: "A character with an animated shield still takes any penalties associated with shield use, such as armor check penalty, arcane spell failure chance, and nonproficiency". You never suffer these penalties for carrying a shield on your back so why would you suffer those penalties for not carrying it on your back? Or in other words, obviously this shield retains some of its weight and bulkiness magically linked to you even while it's flying around, it makes no sense that it would do this if it were never wielded in the first place.
3. Within the item's description: "If the wielder who loosed it has an unoccupied hand..." So the person using it is a wielder. This makes very little sense while the item is flying around doing its own thing, but makes much more sense in general terms that you're always wielding it and sometimes you activate it to make it fly around.
That's three strikes against non-wielding, enough to sway my vote that the shield must be wielded to be used. True, it doesn't explicitly state that fact, which means any DM can make a judgment call and not be "against" the RAW. So, really, just ask your DM.
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OKay well, you dont count as wielding it when it's animated, you just take all the appropriate penalties and benefits. so you can still use two handed weapons and the like.
Overall, I agree with you now that you bring it up. It's the third point that clinches it for me. Here's another question however, do you have to have it strapped onto your arm, or just carrying it (and by carrying it i mean having it in hand, not on your back)? And does using the move action to activate it un-strap it from your arm? and when you use the free action to grab it again, it is not strapped on, since it just says you can 'grab it', correct?
So for an example. would you have to spend a move action pulling it out, then a move action strapping it to your arm, then next round using a move action to animate it? That seems... prohibitive to me. If you can activate it just while carrying it, without having it strapped, that makes it much more useful.
Normally it is a standard action to activate an item, but this item's description overrides that. It specifically says move action to "loose" the shield. Since it's assumed to be wielded, then that same move action is all you need to get it from strapped to your arm to flying around defending you.
It's also a free action to "grasp" the shield to stop it from flying around. That doesn't mean it's automatically on your arm ready to be wielded and I think the item's author would have worded it differently if he meant that, something like: "If the wielder who loosed it has an unoccupied hand, she can don it to end its animation as a free action." The rules already use the word "don" with regard to equipping a shield on your arm, and there's a big difference between "don" and "grasp".
That's the same word count and easy enough to clarify if they had wanted to, so I think the rules are clear - as a free action you grasp the shield in your "unoccupied hand" to end the animation, but this says nothing about donning the shield, so you would still have to use the normal standard action to "don" the shield, as explained in the Equipment section.
To answer your last question, there are two ways to do this:
1. Keep it wielded, "donned", on your arm: At the start of combat, it's a move action to loose the shield and then another move action to draw a second weapon if you're dual-wielding, or a free action to put your off-hand onto whatever 2H weapon you might be carrying.
2. Keep it on your back. At the start of combat, it's a move action to retrieve it and a standard action to don it. Next round a move action to lose it.
Yes, #2 can be fairly prohibitive. Not prohibitive of using the shield, but rather, prohibitive of keeping it on your back. Just wear the silly thing like everyone else wears their shield, then set it loose at the start of each combat and hope you finish it in 4 rounds - if not, well, then you're like every other 2H or TWF guy on the planet with no shield bonus, but only for rounds 5+ in your longer fights. Or give up a round to re-equip the shield and then fight with only a 1H weapon for the rest of the fight and if it goes 9 rounds or more, you can re-animate your shield again.