Not Recommended
My wish was... what was my wish again? What are we doing here anyway? Selector Spread WIXOSS is the second season of the card game anime franchise WIXOSS, and a sequel to Selector Infected WIXOSS. It is a deconstruction of the card game genre, with focus shifted not on the game but on the psychological plot of the show instead, making it one of the more unique stories around in the anime these days. Does it deserve the praise for being deep and different? This review MAY include SPOILERS from the first season. Plot: Ruko Kominato, a Selector - girl who has the ability to own a living LRIGthat grant wishes - parts her way with Tama, her previous LRIG, after losing the final battle. Fulfilling the wish, her opponent, Iona, becomes Ruko's LRIG in Tama's place. While living her normal life, she is again dragged into the Selectors' world, and vows to get Tama back and fulfill her old wish - returning every LRIG to her former selves.
The concept of WIXOSS was very well done in the first season and was the strongest point of the show. It was a clever and interesting idea of having girls battle each other in a card game to either fulfill your wish by winning, or destroy it by losing. The psychological effect it had on players reflected to the dark atmosphere, and the mystery behind this system kept the audience thrilled.
However, Spread does not do that. Although Infected had its mistakes in storytelling and plot holes, it was pretty consistent. Spread keeps the same mistakes the first season had and made tons more. The end result, to summarize, was a chaotic pile of mess. The plot in this show had no direction. It was supposed to further explore the nature of the WIXOSS system, but it soon went off the rail with multiple sidetracks. Simply put, this anime tried to rely on worldbuilding, be like a fairy tale, and have deep and thought-provoking psychological moments about people's will to sacrifice or gamble for something they seek, but in the end nothing from these things work out.
The game itself becomes even more confusing, and as in the first season, the rules are not explained at all. Granted, the show is not about the game but what's behind it, but you often find yourself scratching your head, not knowing what the hell is going on. This is the polar opposite of other card shows like Yu-Gi-Oh!! or Cardfight Vanguard where the sole reason of the anime is to promote sales for real life cards, and thus having focus of the show on the gameplay. While those anime are criticized for having a bullshit plot, this anime should be bashed for having bullshit gameplay in the same way. It would have been somewhat fine if rules were fully explained atleast once in the show, because the game itself, while not having much focus on, is a vital point of the show.
The problem with the main plot is that it didn't know how does it want to solve this out. Everything seems messy. There are so much things going on that you don't have an idea which are important and which are not, and the story's flow just kept changing randomly. From Akira's internal struggles to Ulith's plan, to Tama's retrieval, to Mayu's "defeat", the show had no consistency and either forgot its side stories (the incest) or tried to square up everything in the end. There's much more plot device characters in this season, mainly because the anime tried way too much at once (imagine Tokyo Ghoul) and just wrote the characters' stories off as fast as they were introduced.
Characters:
The characters of Spread are also much weaker than their Infected counterparts. The main reason is because you get the same amount of episodes (12), and have twice as many characters and twice as many conflicts. While Infected centered on 4 characters, with only 2 of them having a personal goal that the audience could follow, the second season doubles the count and gives almost every character a conflict that needs to be solved.
Starting with the biggest disappointment, it's Yuzuki. She was hands down the best character of Infected and one of the best of the entire year of anime (and I'm not even kidding), and basically made the show alone in the character department. Her incest story with her brother was beautifully told (one of the few instances where incest is done right), and she herself was a vital point of the progression of the story. In Spread, she is put in a useless position, being a LRIG. Since Hitoe seldom fights anyone in the show, we practically don't even see her do anything at all. It's not her fault, of course, but the show simply just coldly murdered its best character.
Aoi Akira, the maniacal Aki-lucky model girl, is one of the main reasons why the show turned out to be so pretentious at points. As a character, she is fine and her loss of sanity is detailed well but boy, she does not fit the show at all. Even with all of this attention thrown at shaping her character, she does nothing to the plot. All she did was just mess up the atmosphere so much it was almost impossible to take this all seriously. Same thing with Chiyori, a girl we saw just once in Infected and who gets a considerably increased amount of screen time. She is the polar opposite of Akira in terms of character, coming out as a childish and funny middle-schooler. Chiyori was a rather interesting look from an another side of the spectrum, bringing in some light in a relatively dark atmosphere, but she also does nothing to the main plot and nothing would have changed if she wasn't there.
Hitoe doesn't change at all from the first season, being a companion and best friend of Ruko. Her character is actually an improve from Infected as she is not a plot device anymore made solely for the purpose of showing the audience what happens when Selectors lose, but on the other side she is still pretty underwhelming and she does not have much influence on the plot.
Iona and Ruko's relationship is the most explored one in the show, but there is one problem with it: nakama power makes everyone friendly and forget their differences fast. The contrast was supposed to be the main point of their relationship, Iona being the antagonist of the first season and Ruko being the nice girl, but that contrast is lost quickly. Iona's motives and her character change are contradicting each other and she comes off as a badly written character, with script writers clearly going for the easy way and just having a different character change for the sake of cooperation to move the plot forward.
Finally, we have the two antagonists of the show, Ulith and Mayu. I can immediately say that the show shouldn't have had two villains. Ulith was the better one, because it was more believable and her story didn't come off pretentious like Mayu's. As I said, one of the main reasons why the plot of the show crumbled is because it wanted to chew way too much than it could swallow, and having two villains at the same time was too much. Although Ulith is the better one, Mayu's story is unskippable and if sacrifices were to be made, the show should have had scrapped the protagonists' struggles with Ulith. Instead we have Ulith story which is forgotten in the end and doesn't have much relevance overall, and Mayu's story (the main plot) which is plagued with plot holes and generally weak.
Writing:
Speaking of weak, we have the writing. Being the weakest point of the first season, you bet it's not a strong one in the second as well. That is true, however it's not as bad as the plot's nosedive. You still have girls crying and whining over the same god damn things, level 5's out of nowhere, stabbing people with a knife on the side of the chest (really, what the hell was that supposed to mean? And the victim is okay at the start of the next episode!). What's worse though is that the show added in such pretentious dialogue (or, rather, monologue) that it was a pain to listen through all of that. Suddenly, the anime turns into a fairy tale that is narrated by one of the characters in the most pretentious way imaginable, with dialogue such as someone "entering me", "I can feel her inside me" and so on. Trying to enjoy the show at this point is something excruciating.
The saddest part is that every single element of the show had massive potential. It was only the lack of focus that led WIXOSS to ultimately fail at almost everything it tried to present. It feels like so much has happened, but nothing of value. The anime is labeled as "psychological", but it has nothing that you could consider "thought-provoking". It's not enough to put some girls being tortured in a dark setting and call it "a psychological anime", you have to have more power in it. However, there are no tasteless fanservice or forced comedy, so the anime has that for it as it doesn't have any distracting elements that don't serve the story telling.
Animation & Sound:
Animation makes up for some of the show's shortcomings though. Choreographically the battles look amazing, the effects look splendid and the art style fits both action and slow paces. My only problem with it was how noses were drawn, it felt like there's no nose but a hole in it's place instead.
However, the sound department was weaker. There's one track that keeps on playing whenever there's a "sad" inner monologue going on, which gets boring pretty fast. The rest of the soundtrack is unmemorable. The battle music is way too dubstep-ish and doesn't fit. The voice acting is okay for the most part, but the fact that there's so much crying and squeaking in this show takes some points away. Chinatsu Akasaki did a wonderful job at voicing Aoi Akira though.
The OP of the show - "World's End, Girls Rondo", while decent, is not as good as Infected's opening (atleast it didn't have ep 12 sound editions to it as the first season's opening did). The ED meanwhile is beautiful and is one of the highlights of the show, and one of the best of the season.
Summary:
Selector Spread WIXOSS needed more episodes. The concept was there, the conflicts were there, the characters were there. There was just too much stuff to solve in 12 episodes. For a psychological anime, it's not deep or thought provoking. For a magical girl show, it is way too chaotic with its' presentation. For a card game show, there's no rules given. The abundance of plot holes and plot conveniences make it really hard to follow the plot.
It is sad that Spread was a disappontment compared to the first season, since I liked the show, and the fact that to an extent Infected succeeded with such a formula was one of the biggest surprises of the year. Unfortunately, Spread just didn't know how to get to the end. Do I recommend this anime? It is a unique show, and it is a deconstruction of a genre, thus having a much bigger value than most of your generic seasonal anime. However, it is not fun at all. If you like something out of the ordinary and uncommon, give this a go, otherwise, don't bother with this and go with Sailor Moon for your magical shoujo anime.
Final Verdict - 4.3/10 (changed as of 01.13 - previously 4.7)
