Medaka Box Abnormal

Now that this sequel has ended, so it's time to make a review of this thing and i gonna go straight to the point for every category of this anime, oh there maybe some spoilers that I may have placed: Story: Good 7 . Basically, it still has the same genre and it is still set in the same school with a very lame name," Sandbox Academy"- unless it is a daycare center, who the heck gives a school with a name like that? What's added here are lousy terminologies like Flask Plan, Abnormals and 13 party or Class 13. However unlike the previous season this onehas more action in which the focus is no longer on Medaka (or at least for the most part) instead each member of the student council who were fighting along side her, has a piece of the action and a little bit of the drama. But what makes the action genre in which the group plans to destroy the so-called 'Flask Plan" of this anime good, is that the setting of the action sort of have a slight resemblance of Bruce Lee's "Game of Death" HAAAAAAAAYA!!!! But with a certain twist of course. Art and sound: Mediocre 5. Well, it is still the same art used from the previous season and it still has the same amount of fanservice. There are the usual seiyu's who did the voices of the protagonists and I don't give much of the damn about the seiyu's who did the voices of the antagonists, as for the opening theme....I hate it, the ending theme....I like it. Character: Fair 6. On Medaka, she is still this heroine who is sooo perfect that there is nothing she can't do and won't do thingy as usual, but, in this sequel she underwent the same unwritten rule that every protagonist have to undergo which is that a protagonist have to face such seemly difficult odds in which he/she is nearing defeat which the audience feels the protagonist's suffering and then the climax, the protagonist rose up in victory. Then again the ration of the protagonist nearing defeat in some difficult odds and rising up in victory was not well balance, in fact for Medaka to emerge victorious is seemly too obvious to the point that we the audience don't even felt her suffering and it easy for one to brush it aside. Zenkichi Hitoyoshi- as usual he is still Medaka's Guard Dog and still serving as Student Council General Affairs Manager, unlike in the previous episode here he was now kicking ass and exhibiting his special ability. As usual I'll never understand author, Nisio Isin as to why he as to insist that the character is a practitioner of Savate when his fighting style is no different that any other anime with a martial arts genre. What I like about him is Medaka having feelings for him and seeing him hugging her. Mogana Kikaijima- The Student Council Treasurer, what's good about her was her reaching out to Yukuhashi which to me is cute, she probably the weakest among the group with only a sonic boom as her weapon and being able to breath like a fish (figure of speech). Since this anime has an ecchi genre and Medaka is the most ecchiest, she is more like the runner up of the ecchiest cast of this anime. Kouki Akune- the "Destroyer" I like his nick name, I like the part that he goes fighting this cyborg chick Itami Koga, it is basically nice that he was able to display his fighting ability and be able to do as to what was expected of his reputation. In the previous season of my review, I gave this category a low score, but having seen the other protagonist given their share of the lime light the score belongs to Medaka's subordinates. Enjoyment: Good 7. I admit, I do find the ecchi and the martial arts part of this anime good, frankly that's as good as it get, besides this sequel ended in a cliffhanger in which the last episode was about Misogi Kumagawa, Najima Aijimu and Saki. Overall: Poor 3. Ok, thought the story is good the action and ecchi are alright, the thing about this anime is that it has a lot of useless terminologies that were carelessly used by the author Nisio Isin, terminologies that complicates this anime and manga as a whole, in fact the said terminology "Abnormal" vs Normal vs Special doesn't actually categorize the students in fact even though the character's info mentioned that this character is an abnormal one would be surprise that the said character can be taken down by a protagonist who is normal. It is very disgusting that the author himself uses one conflicting terminology to explain another conflicting terminology. Frankly the author is simply banking on the the main protagonist's ability to be the student council's president as this girl who is the very essence of a perfect and domineering apex bully, of course there is the fanservice that comes with it, but overall with the cliffhanger, this sequel lacks a very good surprising climax . Will there be another sequel? Well, it looks like it.

I'll try to be brief, since this anime doesn't deserve a thorough review. I prefer the first season, as there, the author did not attempt to exceed their capacity until the last few episodes. Here, the story is "serious" from the beginning, making any and all issues glaringly obvious. Firstly, the characters are designed in an irrational way and often behave inconsistently. This both reduces the effectiveness of intentional humor, as well as interferes with "serious" story developments (or let's just call them 'non-comedic' since you can't take anything seriously in this anime). Secondly, special skills and other plot devices are explained with pseudoscience, which ispure torture, as I love science and 'realistic' sci-fi and hate pseudoscience with equal passion. It would be better if the author had just pulled the 'magic' card without trying too hard to explain the mechanism behind any ability or drug or whatever, since they obviously lack basic education on how things work in the real world. If you liked the final episodes of the first season more than those preceding them, you may very well enjoy this season even more. If not, you may want to steer clear to avoid wasting time like I did.

How do you define an "ideal" human being? The perfect human understands his reality. All that we see as art, aesthetic, is just applied excellence. People always have to train to be the best at something, No one is born excellent, Some are born closer to and have an easier time acquiring skill. So, to think of perfection as something unnatural or Godly, would be to misperceive the reality of the matter, right? The second season of medaka box, dubbed ‘Abnormal’ resumes following the somewhat mindblowing conclusion to the first season which saw a complete half revolution turn in the emphasis and plot of the wholeseries. In the second season we are introduced to a world of normal, specials and abnormals. Normals here are defined as everyday folk such as myself and maybe even you, Specials are people who greatly excel in a particular field and Abnormals from their name itself we can guess possess some sort of strange ability and able to achieve great feats that leave us normal folks dumbstruck. One factor I was greatly impressed with about the abnormal abilities was that the series tries to explain to us the mechanics and how these abilities work and unlike most shows that introduce some kind of wild out outrageous and thought provoking phenomenon to do this, medaka box simply uses Biology and Anatomy. The abilities are explained as being born from some sort of efficiency or deficiency of an organ, enzymes or muscle in the body. This greatly enhances a viewer’s experience and even gives the show (dare I say it to a shounen anime) a sense of realism. A scheme is later hatched by the principal called the ‘flask plan’ to perform research on a few Abnormals in the school so as to find out how abnormality works with the main aim of discovering some kind of method to transform normal human beings into abnormals or in other words make them perfect. The scheme itself i’m afraid to say isn’t necessarily original and without a doubt is a slight alteration from the all too familiar concept of a group of individuals who believe themselves greater than normal humans decide to rule over them. The principal also intends upon making this discovery to use the students of the school as test subjects for his experiments which could have adverse effects on them, and upon getting word of this of course, the student council consisting of medaka and co. try to stop the plan. The highschool is divided into 13 sub classes ranging from numbers 1-13 and as it also happens, all the abnormal students are in class 13 of their respective grades. A group of these students have been selected to be the roots of the flask plan called the ’13 party’ and medaka’s objective will be to defeat this group thereby bringing a halt to the project. At the end of the first season we witness medaka defeat Unzen and at the start of the second season we are told that Unzen was a part of the 13 party, however due to his defeat he is unable to participate anymore and Medaka being the one who defeated him is now the most likely beneficiary to take his place. Feeling proud of their abilities most of the students in class 13 hardly come to school but upon hearing of the experiment most of them return with the prospect of attempting to take part but just as Medaka defeated Unzen to enter contention, they also believe they need to defeat her to have a chance to join, therefore presenting medaka’s group with a sizable amount of opponents. This of course was nothing more than to show us indeed how powerful Medaka was when compared to other abnormals and also for the viewer to hold highly in prospect the other members of the 13 party upon their introduction. The school setting itself is seemingly devoid of teachers or any kind of academic activities for that matter. The main base of the experiment itself is an underground base on the campus; the base is divided into floors each holding one member of the experiment meaning medaka has to defeat them floor by floor making the series hold a sort of platform game feel to it which isn’t such a good idea. However giving the modern school setting and having super powered individuals, there will be a need to make use of an enclosed environment to demonstrate these abilities so the writers had a limited amount of choices in terms of location. Gainax resume their duty of animation but however I will admit I’m not a fan of the art style used in the show, the use of extremely heavy pencil lines especially under the eyes give most characters a wild expression making them look as though high on cocaine with only voice actors and changes in facial expression making it otherwise. However when compared to some mediocre animation we saw in the first season, Gainax did a great job with animation on the second season. It has a number of fluid and nicely orchestrated action sequences here and there but these action sequences may seem dragged on a times by no fault of the animation but by characters overlooking a fight giving commentary on almost every little factor, something that should have been kept to a minimum or removed completely. Minami Kuribyashi resumes her role as she again sings the OP, entitled ‘Believe’ and unlike the first season’s OP that had a happy-go-lucky beat and feel to it, this one had more of a melodramatic and serious tone thus accurately depicting the complete shift in emphasis of the series. BGM mostly consisted of instrumentals and the sound director does well to appropriate each instrument well into a scene. Tension, suspense and other moments are most of the time complemented with a nice instrument to get a better feel of the atmosphere but the series still could have done better with its choice of soundtracks. The show also takes pride in its host of very peculiar and strange set of characters with their differing ideals and philosophies on humanity. Medaka herself retaining her honest do-good attitude has this stubborn ideal of believing that all humans have some good in them and will a times go to whatever length to protect this ideal, often times purposely falling into enemy traps which looked to me nothing more than a weak excuse to extend the story. Her tenacious personality may come off as a bit annoying a times but her die hard attitude will leave most people wanting more. Most members of the 13 party will leave audiences absolutely dazzled, just as it’s depicted in the show that normal people see them as amazing or on another level, I have to admit even I sitting on the other side of the screen could also tell. The show uses the personality of these characters very well to keep viewers hooked to the screen and this factor was without a doubt the series strongest point. The beginning of the show I have to admit was amazing but as time went on it started to lose quite a bit of edge especially towards its climax but it was still an enjoyable experience in the end. The series main problem was not as a result of its execution or anything it could help but in my opinion the writers seemingly not giving enough thought or effort into the storyline towards the ending as they did initially and seemed to be running out of ideas along the way and finally adopting cliché basic shounen analogies in the end. Despite all this, it still manages to impress with its fluid animation, applied sciences and extremely strange set of characters. The second season was without a doubt a lot better than the first and with more material still to be animated we can only expect things to only get better in future.

Following on from the prequel, the story picks up straight where it left off, and if you had any questions, they'll begin to be answered. The school is a mess and Medaka starts learning about herself, while we start to learn about Normals, Specials and Abnormals. Right away they aren't afraid to throw in people with abilities, which we're just learning about, so in some ways it feels like a completely different anime with the same characters, but it all starts to come together. The dub voice sync is still a bit off but it's not a big deal. One thing about the battles, is that eventhough they basically kill each other, afterward Medaka or Zenkichi will offer friendship. All most of these people want is to feel normal and have friends, and all they want is to offer that, even after everything. It's one of the charms that I enjoy about this series. This season is in a way completely different to the first like I mentioned before. I feel like the first season was good in it self, but it let down on the build up to this season. Which was better than the first, though the disconnect between them both and the weird flow makes it hard to rate this and review for others. In the end if you've watched the first season, this is worth watching to finish the story. There's a lot more action and can get pretty intense for the second half.

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