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The first season of The Fruit of Evolution was actually a moderately fun watch. The second season... takes it too far.

This is one of those anime where you suspend disbelief, turn off your brain, and just go with it. You are supposed to laugh where it intends you to laugh and feel where it intends you to feel. For the first season, this worked. It took some effort but it worked. The Fruit of Evolution's use of anime tropes and especially "The power of love and friendship can conquer anything" are blatantly and egregiously in play. So much so that it is easy to believe ... that the entire anime is a parody of the isekai genre and anime in general and that they are poking fun at the blatant overuse of such concepts in most plot lines. But the second season Takes This Too Far.

In the first season we saw liberal use of the "Enemies to friends" trope and "Murderers wanting to be rehabilitated" but in those cases it actually made some semblance of sense. In the second season, the first episode opens with a tragedy, one that tugs at the heartstrings of the audience if they had grown to care about the characters at all. The entirety of the season the audience is led to hope that such a horrible outcome can be avoided and to wait in anticipation for how our heroes will be able to avoid or overcome the dark future that was foretold. However... no effort is made to prepare or avoid or even share this dark prophecy. The secret future hardship is left between the audience and the oblivious protagonist. The final episode is a culmination of all of these fears and pent up anxiety, and viewers of the first episode will feel noticeable deja vu upon watching the final.

Sad to say, the final episode is handled poorly. Plot lines resolve themselves in a very unsatisfying and perhaps even anger educing way that leaves quite a bad taste in the mouth for the series.

Be a silly parody anime, or be a serious anime that makes the audience feel. Don't make the audience feel and then try to resolve their emotions with over the top comedic stupidity that magics away the problem.

Houseki no Kuni is an innovative story, taking place in a beautiful world full of mysterious inhabitants that drive you to want to learn more about them.

The heroine of the story is a happy go lucky screwup that lazes about, generally makes a huge annoyance out of herself, and is seen as largely helpless and useless but good natured. She is, at her core, a likeable screwup.

She ends up wanting to help another character that is an outcast due to physically not being able to be around the others. And you really end up feeingl for both of them and hope for both of them.

Then ... in fairly quick succession two tragic events change not only the tone of the show. But the tone of the main character. There is a several month time skip after the second tragic event. And our plucky heroine ends up seeming like someone that's come out of a war with PTSD. In large part, this is because she has lost drastically large parts of her memory and personality in addition to having great mental scarring.

She still has a good bit of moments where she seems more herself. And her interacting with her former friends brings out more of that old feeling. But she also seems to have this hollow and empty feeling that pervades her interactions when her old self is not peeking through. This apparently leads into further chapters in the manga that delve deeper into this serious character development. But the Anime ENDS right at the turning point.

The anime is good, innovative, and fascinating. But likely too heavy and with too much tonal whiplash for someone expecting a cute plucky slice of life anime set in a unique world.