I loved the first season of this show. Personally, it was a 9 out of 10. It had a cohesive story with a clear end goal for the colorful cast of characters. It had a great introduction, an entertaining journey in the middle, and a satisfying ending. The 2nd season of this show is such a monumental disappointment and failure it's making me write my first anime review.
I personally believe that animation, music, or art they are secondary to characters and story. They're fine here, so I'm not going to talk more about them. Characters and story is what makes me invested in a
...
show so that’s what I want to discuss. Spoilers ahead.
Season 2 in comparison feels completely disjointed with so many side plots that ends up going nowhere and everything that happens becomes so completely predictable. The second season feels like watching a show about serial killer kill all my favorite people and I know that’s going to happen. But I can’t help but keep watching anyway hoping it’s not going to happen because I care about the characters. It ultimately just feels like the killer is the writers and they are keep having cheap deaths and tragedy for the sake of tragedy to make me feel bad. I don’t mind the good guys dying, on the contrary, I actually enjoy watching heroes lose to villains because of their naiveté, which is why I can’t stand Fairy Tail or Boku no Hero. But this show doesn’t do it in a believable or convincing way. It feels like the writers wants the protagonists to lose this season and they bend over backwards to achieve that. It's the first time that I've seen the antagonists have plot armor at every single turn while the protagonists get killed off in all most preventable ways.
Julieta is a normal human pilot but is somehow going toe to toe with Mikazuki despite it being established that the Barbatos and Alaja-Vijnana system is supposed to be overwhelmingly superior in close quarter combat that not even Ein and Gaelio could compete against. But no, Mikazuki just can't seem to get the upper hand many times over. Even if eventually, Julieta gets half impaled or crushed, she still somehow survives despite being left to die in space and only because she gets picked up on a whim by Gaelio.
Iok somehow escapes death like 5 times despite being one of the biggest idiots in all of anime but gets saved by sheer luck and writing. Amida nearly shatters the windows of the bridge of the ship, but doesn't end up killing him. He somehow limps away in a mangled mobile suit from the plumas and the mobile armor despite being slower. He shoots the mobile armor like 3 times to reverse deus ex machina the protagonists because the writers demand they be undermined, oh and somehow gets away every time. He suicide charges McGillis and is surely going to die? No, he's just conveniently not killed despite McGillis having every ample opportunity. In the end he does die to Akihiro but it just doesn't matter anymore and ends up being an unsatisfying "Finally he's dead."
Oh, not to mention that Ein and Gaelio somehow survives despite being stabbed straight through the cockpit back in season 1. They were in Arbrau's territory so it's not like anyone could have possibly come to save them in time even, that is again, if they somehow survived being stabbed straight through the cockpit.
We see the protagonists lose at almost every turn and all it feels like is the writers creating tragedy for tragedy's sake. Instead of feeling like "I can't believe the antagonists did X and Y," to me it just feels like "I can't believe the writers are doing this to make the good guys lose."
This show, without a doubt, has the most blatantly telegraphed deaths I've ever seen. Every single time you see any character moments that expands their personality or explore their backstory, they are inevitably killed off. Biscuit's death in season 1 was pretty obviously going to happen, but I was still rooting for him to live because that was the first.
In season 2, character deaths are almost formulaic and it only feels like the writers are trying to play my emotions, because every time you see any character development, it’s just “Not this again, I guess they’re gonna die.” Every time it's: Take a character > Make them likable and give them some backstory > kill them off in the same or next episode. Aston, a rarely seen character suddenly getting screen time and developing a relationship with Takaki? Surely he’s gonna die. Naze and Amida flashbacks? They are going to die. Shino and Yamagi exploring their relationship? Shino saying "I'm not going to die?" He's so obviously dead. Oh, and he misses his shot to kill Elion because fuck the good guys, right? Even though Elion completely underestimates them and the show has shown that hubris leads to death, but I guess not for the bad guys because plot armor. Oh yeah Hush also dies because he had a backstory lol. On that note, the newly introduced recruits in season 2 like Hush also goes nowhere.
I know some people defends the story by saying its realistic and that the underdog loses more often than not but it's not done in a way that's believable or satisfying. That's why there are so few stories where the bad guys ultimately win. We follow the protagonists and that is who we root for by default. For the bad guys to win they need to have compelling characters and convincing actions. Like Thanos actually. Rustal Elion, on the other hand, is just a mustache twirling villain with zero and I really mean zero backstory or motivation. Not to mention things just keep going his way with no set up. Why did Elion have all the Dainsleif even though they are stored on Earth and that is McGillis's sphere of control? How did he smuggle a Dainsleif into McGillis’s ranks with no one noticing? If McGillis did have Dainsleif then why did no one use it? Also, why did McGillis not pursue the Order of the Seven Stars? He could have secured the strongest seat of the seven stars but it’s just conveniently never brought up again. Tekkadan also could have used defeating a mobile armor to become heroes of Gjallarhorn but nope, it’s never mentioned. In contrary, they’re later painted to be villains and every instantly believes them even though everyone thought they were heroes alongside Kudelia. Also, Dainsleifs are slow ass harpoons there’s no way they should be pin point accurate over a vast firing distance but that’s just an irrelevant nitpick.
As for Orga, it feels like the writers just want him to be an idiot and keep chasing a carrot on a stick for no good reason. If they want him to be a flawed protagonist that ruins Tekkadan for his own personal greed, then it's not done well at all. Why is he just randomly hellbent on taking the short and riskiest route to success? In the past, he often took risky options for Tekkadan because their backs were against the wall. He also had internal struggles between success for Tekkadan and the cost to make it happen. But this season he just doesn't think about consequences and keeps pushing Tekkadan even though they already have everything they could want.
Aston and others' death leading to the closure of Earth branch doesn't do anything to dissuade Orga. Destroying the Dawn Horizon Corps and securing the largest half-metal mine on Mars would set Tekkadan to live like Kings but it's just forgotten. He gets so easily swayed by McGillis's honeyed words to be "king of Mars" even though they already were heroes and treated as such.
It’s hard to talk about Orga without mentioning Mika. It feels like season 2 has completely destroyed what little nuance there is to his character towards the end. They keep flashing back to that same scene of Orga “saving” Mika during their childhood but it’s NEVER made clear what even happened and what drives Mika to think this way. Yes, Mika is a stoic character but I wouldn’t say he’s an emotionless blank slate like some have said. In season 1 we see him get angry when Gaelio and McGillis almost hit Cookie & Cracker with a car. And we saw him get angry at Carta when she kills Biscuit. But in season 2 he has zero reaction to McGillis killing Aston or at Shino and many others’ death. Granted, he doesn’t really know these people as well, but he doesn’t react to Orga’s death either. Instead, we just keep having the same flashbacks and he keep repeating the same lines about following Orga and his life being Orga’s.
We see him having an interest in gardening and perhaps having a peaceful life as a farmer one day, but after being entirely paralyzed on his right side, this path becomes closed off to him as he’s bounds to Barbatos to be able to have move freely. They could have explored that more and about Mika’s motivations. Perhaps he’s not really following Orga’s instructions for a better future, maybe he just wants to kill and is using that as an excuse. After Orga’s death he could have realized that a life in battle is all he’s known and all he can do from now on so he wants to die in battle. But his character really goes nowhere and he was just…nothing to him. There was a lot more they could have done with his character.
It feels like the writers want to portray Tekkadan's destruction as a result of Orga's overambition and greed, but no one in the show ever remarks on it. If anything, he dies a hero’s death saving Ride and they keep following his words of “keep moving forward” even though it’s kinda meaningless and not really make clear.
He did seem to have a last-minute change of heart and worked to make sure the handful of Tekkadan members survive, but the ending too good to be true and the writers seem to backpedal from having a dark ending of having the bad guys win. Elion had overwhelming crushed all opposition but for unexplained reasons ends up making Earth a democracy and giving autonomy to other planets and systems. Even though we have seen him crush rebels from the Dort colonies in the past, which would suggest that he wants to rule with an iron grip. If Kudelia just ends up being the chairperson of the Mars Union despite losing a war for independence, and many surviving members of Tekkadan are working for her, then they kind of did become the king of Mars in the end. But couldn’t they have avoided all this and just done nothing and still arrive to this point? Why would they even work with McGillis in the first place. McMurdo had the connections to make deals with Elion so Tekkadan could have eventually controlled Mars with Kudelia under Teiwaz. It ends up making the entire 50-episode journey completely unsatisfying with an unconvincing ending.
Mar 14, 2022
I loved the first season of this show. Personally, it was a 9 out of 10. It had a cohesive story with a clear end goal for the colorful cast of characters. It had a great introduction, an entertaining journey in the middle, and a satisfying ending. The 2nd season of this show is such a monumental disappointment and failure it's making me write my first anime review.
I personally believe that animation, music, or art they are secondary to characters and story. They're fine here, so I'm not going to talk more about them. Characters and story is what makes me invested in a ... |
