Ok Ishura is here with more and the first thing to say about it is that the aesthetics became a bit worse. Not the actual artwork though, which actually looks slightly better thanks to the setting not taking place majorly on sand and thus not looking as grainy. The rest though got worse, the noticeable and weak CGI is there more present than before and even on the backgrounds, making them look worse, the animation during fights is not as good, and this season features a lot more human or humanoid characters, so the designs are less inspired than before. The sound effects are stillas good as they were before but the rest of the audio got worse too, the new characters sound and are performed far more typically and at moments silly, and the soundtrack is not as varied as it used to and it doesn’t have the same quality. Don’t get me wrong it is still pretty good, especially the themes with choirs, but not as it was in the first season. The new opening and ending are kinda typical jpop/rock stuff highlighting the new cast, nothing remarkable, but they’re fine.
As for the plot, well, it follows the same structure of introducing characters with some politics in the background, with now some first season cameos thrown around at times.
At the very least the plot now has a clear direction that the audience knows about, and it is actually not ignored. The two kingdoms are actively looking to get the new cast on their files and the tournament, those of which fight amongst themselves even shortly after they are introduced.
In addition, the remaining members of the original party that fought against the true demon king appear to negotiate with or square off against the new heroes, and there is even a new plot point with another enemy faction in the form of the royal army of the old kingdom.
Guns are introduced in the setting and used to arm different armies and characters, though I wasn’t that impressed with it because there was already a character using a shotgun on the first season so what’s the deal.
The bad part has to do with the novelty of the narrative being lost this time, but from what I understand the series will gets to the actual tournament, so the story and storytelling that might have gotten tiresome will hopefully change in the next entry or so, assuming it is done. From what I understand the tournament itself is also very long, so let’s see it this issue doesn’t persist even with the narrative change, again, assuming it is done. There’s still not an ending in sight of course, as the source material is still ongoing.
As for characters, these are the new bunch:
-Kuuro, a gray haired kid-looking detective with seemingly a past as an assassin or something, he has some form of clairvoyance directly tied to his own feelings and instinct and shoots arrows at enemies. He is very cautious and constantly analyzes the situation. He is accompanied by Cuneigh, a fairy sized harpy-like homunculus just there to be cute and help him.
-Mele, a typical gentle giant good with kids and a protector of his village. Also an archer.
-Lucnoca, a winter dragon tired of humans dying for coming after her, so she enters the tournament to face off actual contenders.
-Hiroto. Honestly, I don’t get his deal much, another grey haired kid-looking character that distributes guns an puts characters against each other, basically manipulating various sides of a conflict, if you will. Fortunately, this character gets clearer in the last two episodes.
-Kiyazuna and her “son” Mestelexil. She seems to be an engineer and enchanter of some kind that wants revenge against a sandstorm, and the other character is like a combination of a robot and a homunculus that constantly repair each other and transmutate their combined body with any variety of weapons, including some of our world, when needed. The machine seems to be want to get stronger and fight strong guys.
-Linaris. This is the most mysterious character of the show honestly. A vampire girl that manipulates others by consuming their blood but not necessarily through the conventional way, and also by seducing them. She seems to lead a group of other characters that all together are manipulating events and armies from behind and with their powers, which seem to even be able to disintegrate people and monsters or something? High likely being the most broken contender of the season.
-Atrazek, a particle disintegrator sandstorm that ends up being very disappointing.
-Psianop, a sentient slime that wants to prove the strongest and thus it learned all kinds of martial arts.
-Rosclay, an interesting fake hero helped with radio distributed magic chants coming from other people, but not actually a bad guy, He is a good swordsman but he is just a human entering a tournament full of monsters so what he’s gonna do?
-Uhak, a seemingly blind?, and deaf? ogre that’s not bad, is very quiet and calm unless attacked, and actually seem to have learned to be violent because of humans, ironically. He is also unaffected by supernatural phenomena like
the magic incantations of the other characters, so it would be interesting to see him against the most broken characters that were introduced on the first season.
-Tu, a generic strong hotheaded good spirited high school girl, she bores me.
-Toroa, the most interesting character in the season for me and the only one I gave a damn about for refusing to be used by someone else and for wanting revenge on Alus, from the first season.
And of course some others that don’t matter much. Some details about some characters are lost because at times the subtitles were either incomplete or changed what the characters or the narrator were saying, and even some scenes showing key aspects of them were shortened or skipped and then played as flashbacks as if they actually were shown, but no, they were not.
The main issue about this new cast is being far simpler, less interesting, with more typical backstories than we’ve seen before, and not a single one gets some sort of character arc like Yuno did on the first season. And just like before, there are no really interesting dynamics and interactions amongst the characters once they encounter each other and start fighting.
So at the end of the day some aspects of this season are better than they were on the first but some are worse, ending on about the same level of quality. But I also have to wonder how many people are going to stick with its form of narrative for the whole season before it gets to the actual tournament, which from what I understand will also take plenty of seasons. On the good side for its fans, there will be less people watching the show and the most critical ones about it will leave and the scorings will keep going up everywhere (as long as the studio doesn’t fuck it up), as it happened with this season. Not mine though.
Recommended
Ishura, Round 2 — Now this is certainly a better effort than Season 1, that's for sure. It's interesting enough that despite being similar to Shuumatsu no Walküre a.k.a Record of Ragnarok, novelist Keiso's Ishura goes the road less travelled when it comes to storytelling, albeit in the way that you need some time to get used to its rather unorthodox form. I need not say that if you look closely enough into the series, each episode is just like the said Ragnarok series of introducing character after character for what seems like an eternity. With Season 1 being the preface of the LN's Volume 1 and(parts of) 2 introducing Sojiro the Willow-Sword and the like, at least that had its own branch story of the Shuras involved in the cornering fight of the coup d'état between Aureatia and the New Principality of Lithia. With Season 2 continuing the adaptation of the remainder of Volume 2 and into 3, the story takes an abrupt turn to the outside lands, where Aureatia still lives on the recovery of finding more Shura to advance their cause, as well as the incumbents (now called the Old Kingdom Loyalists) now skirting around the lands to find the purpose of their living, though it's obvious that there's a bigger plot to play with new characters that come and go as the call to gather at Aureatia to determine who's the True Hero, once and for all.
So here therein comes the biggest problem of the series: why are we still getting the exact same infodump about new characters? I did briefly mention this in my review last Winter that this tactic of storytelling gets old fast, especially when there are so many characters to go around and not see the overarching plot of what the season attempts to establish by the end of that count. Looking back at it now, while Season 1 plays mainly towards the division of Aureatia and the New Principality of Lithia (which should be simple to understand), Season 2 plays it in another ballpark of the entire world in general, showcasing more characters, but this time, really compelling ones like Hiroto the Paradox going around as a grey-haired child who's an excellent negotiator with his conversational skills that allow connections with influential people, highlighting that the postmortems of the True Demon King's war have not been quelmed yet and there exist remnants trying to understand what the bigger plot at play is, more than just the gathering of heroes alone. This, to me, is what makes Season 2 a progressively better follow-up than what Season 1 started out with.
Passione and Sanzigen's co-2D/3DCG production have certainly gotten better this time around, with much exhilrating fights like the battles of Toroa the Awful against Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge, whose intense action is foretelling of the high stakes at play.
The only change would of course be the OP/ED set, and as much as Mayu Maeshima's OP and (returning) Sajou no Hana's ED songs try to invoke that change, I find this to be a downgrade overall when compared to Season 1, which had the right amount of edge for a show like this.
Even though we're only just getting started with the Record of Ragnarok themes of an all-out fight, Ishura is a series that has its lore on worldbuilding while simultaneously shifting characters around according to the needs of the scenario at hand. It truly is an eye-watering moment that I initially didn't buy back last Winter, but now I see the appeal of this, that with progress, comes enjoyability. It is a perfect example of how characters overshadow story elements, but don't break out of it at the same time.
Still, you'd have to leave it at Season 3 for the epic battle, which I hope will come pretty soon enough.
