This year saw a lot of even better sequels to already excellent series. KonoSuba 2 was even funnier than the original, Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu moved back to the present and put everything we learned in the first into doubt again while Sangatso No Lion‘s new season is killing at the moment. But we won’t talk about those here. This is for the disappointing sequels.
And I don’t mean something like Rewrite S02: if the first season was a shit storm, why get disappointed in the second? Nor do I mean slightly under par follow-ups to classics like the latest Symphogear, which was decent enough but didn’t live up to the insanity factor of previous series. Since I’m probably the only person that hated the tournament arc in Boku no Hero Academia I won’t even mention that. Even Seiren, spiritual successor to Amagami, though disappointing, is not something I want to talk much about. Other than to note that put too much emphasis on reproducing the latter’s weird fetishes and not enough on the romances.
No, what I mean with disappointing sequels is a series like Kino no Tabi, though technically a remake of the original 2003 series rather than a sequel. For this series they got the fans of the light novels to chose their favourite stories to adapt, which didn’t help with the coherence of the series and then adapted them in the blandest way possible. Most of the charm of Kino’s adventures was lost this way, while there were whole episodes without Kino even showing up other than in cameo. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t what I wanted or expected from a new Kino series.
Worse though was Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul. The original Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis was a cheerful fantasy adventure, which, because it was adapted from a mobile game, had low expectations hung on it when it first came out, but which turned out to be something special. It wasn’t perfect, as every time the series returned to its nominal plot rather than focus on the misadaventures of Favaro and Kaisar it became a bore. The new series, by focusing on a new protagonist just living her life in the capital, at first seemed to avoid that particular pitfall, but that only lasted four episodes, if that. From then on it’s all about the struggle against Lord Charioce, who plans to destroy both demons and angels to create a new world for humanity.
Both the plot as the villain I found boring and obnoxious, especially because the latter always won whatever his opponents threw at him. At every turn, he turned out to be one or two steps ahead, effortlessly dealing with the latest plan the heroes came up with. I got so bad I stopped watching from episode eighteen: I still got the last seven episodes to watch. The worst part of it is that Nina, our protagonist, has a crush on him, which doesn’t change once she knows of all his loathsome deeds and plans for genocide. I got the feeling the series was working towards his redemption, and I couldn’t deal with that.
This is the tenth post in this year’s twelve days of anime challenge. Tomorrow: unexpected gems.
