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Jun 19, 2023
6/10
Vinland Saga season 2 is alright but noticeably worse than its predecessor. While I enjoyed the overall plot and story, I found that the show moved way too slowly, was full of pointless scenes, and could have been shrunken down to maybe 12-15 eps (in which case is could of been an 8).
I loved the overall plot of the story, with Thorfinn rediscovering who he truly is and finding an identity of his own. It’s full of great characters like Einar, snake, and old master who are all great well-developed characters. On the other side, we followed Cannute’s development which was also interesting to see,
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who like Thorfinn, is also trying to forge his new identity after losing his father. While there were way fewer fight scenes, the few left were pretty good.
Unfortunately, this show is really hindered by mini-arcs and terribly slow pacing. Thorfinn’s whole PTSD issues were very boring and lasted about 10 episodes, I think there was one episode dedicated to it entirely where he has a dream with Askelad which I almost skipped. Armheid's subplot with her husband returning was also way too long. The overall thing going on where they show how his insane rage destroyed him was pretty good, but the flashbacks that lasted half the episode were so pointless. This show is riddled with all sorts of boring and pointless dialogue that I wish they just took out. The cheesy dialogue between him and Einar wasn’t helping either. They constantly edge us out with some cliffhanger, and it's to the point where if something interesting happens I almost expect there to be filler-tier content for the next 20min. Very predictable.
I’m sad they made this show 24 eps instead of something shorter, as I feel a lot of people lost interest, so we might not get a third season. Could have easily been solved. I’d say if you enjoyed the first season this is still worth watching, just be ready to have your finger on the right arrow key.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Oct 7, 2022
Like a lot of other people watching this, I saw the main series as a kid, and decided to watch this for lulz. This show compared to its predecessors is lacking in every way. The tennis matches all start with one opponent leading 5-0, then a comeback starts etc. Moreover, they really bombard you with too many characters you begin to not really care about anybody. This show stopped having anything to do with tennis a long time ago, but even if you're trying to see that DBZ-styled tennis you're going to be disappointed, the matches were pretty low energy and anti-climactic besides Akutsu's. OST
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is a far cry from what it used to be, character development is non-existent, and all the off-match episodes may as well not even exist. The flashbacks were also boring, even Genius vs Ova 10 had better ones.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Apr 8, 2022
I don't think there is any better show the encompasses an 8/10 better than this. This show EXCELS in certain aspects, but fails in others quite harshly.
The setup of this show (non spoiler, revealed in ep1) is that the MC is a pitcher who lacks the raw skill a pro athlete would have but is very strategic and intelligent. he's able to read the emotions of the people he's batting against and pitch based off that, along with some other tricks which I won't get into (he also lives to gamble, super rational, never takes anything seriously etc.). Now, anybody who plays baseball is probably
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going to call bs on this, because it is. There's no way someone who exclusively pitches 70mph fastballs could strike out pros non-stop, but he does, and once you get around the basic assumption (which you will pretty fast) you can start to enjoy it. Bear in mind, most anime's require some things to be overlooked to be enjoyable.
The mind games that are used in these 26 episodes were fascinating and had me on the edge of my seat quite often. They were all pretty interesting and I never found them repetitive, or myself 'expecting the unexpected'. If you enjoyed the 'mind games' in anime like Code Geass, DN etc you will very much enjoy this, because this makes those look like child's play. However, unlike the aforementioned, this series is lacking in the other elements of a story and is pretty much carried by mc and the plot.
Nearly every character excluding MC is extremely one dimensional and NPC tier, they're merely props for MC to keep the story going. There were a few good character scenes and I would have like to seen more of that as it balances out the story. I also thought it was crazy how nearly every episode takes place during a baseball match, excluding the first few. We really have no idea what any of these characters are like outside of baseball matches.
The art is pretty bland too, but that's to be expected from anime of this era, it's not to the point where it's distracting bad. The music fits the show pretty well, but it's certainly not something I'd listen to on its own.
Overall, it's a great show for one reason only; the mind games. If that's not your cup of tea, and you like seeing characters interacting face to face in an interesting way, then this anime is NOT for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 3, 2022
This review contains spoilers, but NO manga spoilers.
It really pains me to give the show a measly 4/10, considering the other seasons are 8+, but this season was terrible, and if it wasn't for the strong start it'd be way lower.
1. Bad/no character development and phoney motivations
Mikasa, Conny, Armin, Levi and Jean made the decision to make it their goal to stop Eren (but not kill him?) and in doing so betray all of Eldia, so much so they were willing to kill 100+ members of the military. Something so grand would require some real justification and soul searching, but no, none of that is present.
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Let’s start of with how Conny wants to abduct Falco to save his mom, when this happened, I was thinking to myself “yes! Finally, one of these characters break their do-gooders shounen archetypal behaviour”. But no, it really didn’t amount to anything and it didn’t sit well with me how committed he was to saving Falco’s life, because he truly has zero reason to care about some kid, and the way he was teaming up with Gabby made it more nonsensical. The infamous pie scene occurs, and I realized this show has fully gone to dirt. They literally reunite with someone who has killed 10s of their comrades and there is zero dialogue, just a lame, unfunny joke paired with horrible animation.
Then there’s Jean, he also posses a decent motivation which is if he joins the Jeagerist he will be able to live a comfortable luxurious life till he dies (married to Mikasa, which I thought was really lame lol). Hange and Jean have a heated exchange, in which Jean rightfully points out that if Eren died Elida could very well be destroyed by the world, as they’d have no way of protecting themselves, and that killing Eren is possibly suicide for the entire island (a very major point), but Hange gave no real response to this. In the end Jean has some flashback of Marco and decides he will team up with the guy who killed him (Reiner) and betray his entire nation. No matter how you spin it this literally made NO SENSE, why of all things was it Marco's face which triggers Jean to 'forever be a scout'.
Levi seems to hate Zeke for killing his comrades, yet he seems to have zero qualms with siding with Annie and Reinar who killed way more people. Especially Annie, she wiped out his OG squad and his girl Petra. And Hange's an idiot for thinking Eren sacrifices too many of his own people in Liberia, because don't you all remember Erwin's crazy plan of having Annie and Eren brawl in the middle of Stohess?
It's all just forced to bring about a new protragonist group who will 'save the world' (the world excluding their homeland of course). And to those of you who say, “genocide is wrong”, yes, I very much understand that, and so would anyone looking at it from a bird’s eye view (like us the viewer). But they’re Eldian’s so it’s only natural they’d prioritize their own people’s survival. It’s like, would you let your own family of four die to protect a family of 10? Now ask yourself work you work to actively kill your own family to protect that family of 10, while still professing your love for your family. Their behaviour is just very unnatural and it’s so apparent that my engagement fell. Let's not forget the world wants to genocide Paradis, especially after seeing what Eren has done, it'd be their number one priority, no matter how many times you attack their military alone like what Armin wanted. They would just collect all their energy to rebuilding and relaunching a new attack, and that's the cycle Eren wanted to break, and the cycle Eren's friends (the 'alliance') fail to consider. Genocide is occruing on both sides, so their is no 'no one get's hurt' solution.
2. Jeagerist are a shitty foe
The fight at the port was bad. The fact that Mikasa was fighting 50+ people and didn’t get shot is just massive plot armour. At least in other instances they had well thought out plans to take down people when they were outnumbered (like in Liberia, or when fighting the MPs), but for this they just brute force everything. This show is also trying to demonstrate moral relativism, but they make the Jeagerist all look like psychos when they’re really just trying to defend the island. Floch is also depicted like an idiot who gets beat up by old ladies (also how silly is it that he was one shot by Gabby far away but none of the other scouts took a bullet?). And yes, I know, in this show which demonstrates moral relativism there is no ‘real villain’ but you get what I mean.
It really blows my mind how the fandom hates Floch so much, he's one of the few characters whose actions make sense and are well motivated (aka wanting to protect your own nation to the death and killing off incompetent leaders which Erwin did too)
Other thoughts
The shows animation was top-notch in a few cases like the beginning fight scenes, but the non fight scenes were terrible, way too many still frames. I would have liked to see some new tracks for the OST, as they were starting to get a little repetitive. Ymir’s backstory was also good. Still don’t like the shading style of MAPPA’s compared to WIT, everything is way too flat and the line styles are weak. The last episode was also very well done, AOT handles drama well, but the trajectory of the show seems to remain the same.
But overall, I really didn’t like how a lot of the characters ended up, and it’s not because my personal motivations didn’t align with the characters, but that the characters motivations were just not properly justified which made the 2nd half of the season just awful, I was totally disengaged as opposed to the beginning of the season where I was on the edge of my seat every episode.
In short: “HAHAHAHA ANNIE’S EATING A PIE”
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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