Vinland Saga Season 2

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: ヴィンランド・サガ SEASON2

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 24

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Jan 10, 2023 to Jun 20, 2023

Premiered: Winter 2023

Broadcast: Tuesdays at 00:30 (JST)

Producers: Dentsu, Kodansha, Twin Engine

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: MAPPA

Source: Manga

Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama

Themes: Gore, Historical

Demographic: Seinen

Duration: 25 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 8.81¹ (scored by 312,106 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #32²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #359

Members: 605,530

Favorites: 14,145

Available At

Official Site

@V_SAGA_ANIME

Resources

AniDB

ANN

Streaming Platforms

Crunchyroll

Netflix

8.81

Ranked #32Popularity #359Members 605,530

Episodes: /24

Synopsis

After his father's death and the destruction of his village at the hands of English raiders, Einar wishes for a peaceful life with his family on their newly rebuilt farms. However, fate has other plans: his village is invaded once again. Einar watches helplessly as the marauding Danes burn his lands and slaughter his family. The invaders capture Einar and take him back to Denmark as a slave.

Einar clings to his mother's final words to survive. He is purchased by Ketil, a kind slave owner and landlord who promises that Einar can regain his freedom in return for working in the fields. Soon, Einar encounters his new partner in farm cultivation—Thorfinn, a dejected and melancholic slave. As Einar and Thorfinn work together toward their freedom, they are haunted by both sins of the past and the ploys of the present. Yet they carry on, grasping for a glimmer of hope, redemption, and peace in a world that is nothing but unjust and unforgiving.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Vinland Saga Season 2 was released on Blu-ray and DVD in two volumes from June 21, 2023, to August 23, 2023.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Vinland Saga
Prequel:	Vinland Saga
Side story:	Vinland Saga Season 2: Drowning in the Shadow, Vinland Saga Season 2: Same Old Story

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Thorfinn

Main

Uemura, Yuuto
Japanese

Einar

Main

Takeuchi, Shunsuke
Japanese

Askeladd

Supporting

Uchida, Naoya
Japanese

Thorkell

Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio
Japanese

Canute

Supporting

Ono, Kensho
Japanese

Thors

Supporting

Matsuda, Kenichirou
Japanese

Arnheid

Supporting

Saco, Mayumi
Japanese

Snake

Supporting

Komatsu, Fuminori
Japanese

Ylva

Supporting

Nabatame, Hitomi
Japanese

Erikson, Leif

Supporting

Ueda, Youji
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Fujiyama, Naokado

Producer

Matsumoto, Hitoshi

Producer

Yonezawa, Akira

Producer

Hasegawa, Hiroya

Producer

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Opening Theme

	"River" by Anonymouz (eps eps 1-12)
	"Paradox" by Survive Said The Prophet (eps eps 13-)

Edit

Ending Theme

	"Without Love" by LMYK (eps eps 1-12)
	"Ember" by haju:harmonics (eps eps 13-)

Reviews

Jun 19, 2023

Marinate1016

Recommended

Transcendent. Sublime. Ethereal. I’ve run out of words to describe Vinland Saga season 2. This series has gone far past the normal bounds of anime and has become cinema in the purest sense of the word.

When Vinland saga s2 was announced I was initially skeptical about how it’d be received in the west given its slower paced nature as well as how I personally would like it. Keep in mind everything we saw in 24 episodes this season took place over the course of years in the manga. So it was a much slower process and at times I felt it dragged on.

My worries ... couldn’t have been further misplaced. MAPPA stepped in for WIT and gave an absolute masterclass in direction, tension, adding anime original content which enhanced and perfected many scenes and storylines from the manga, etc. There were several episodes during this season which were literally just characters talking, yet I was so absorbed in them that the 25 minute runtime felt like 5. There may not be as much of the transitional action scenes from season 1, but there’s no shortage of engaging content in this season.

At its core, this season is philosophical struggle. A juxtaposition of two characters. Thorfinn and Canute. While Thorfinn has gone from a violent and angry young man to a peaceful and kind one who wants a world without war, Canute has had the opposite journey. He believes war is the only way to bring peace. As the neutral outside observer, we of course know that neither side is 100 percent correct and that real life is more grey than black and white.

But seeing their character arcs develop independently and then ultimately come to a head in that penultimate episode.. just no words for the job MAPPA did bringing the character drama and emotion to life in this season. The buildup and foundational groundwork that went into everything just to have a perfect sendoff in the final two episodes is something we do not get much in this medium and it needs to be appreciated.

Speaking of the penultimate episode, it’s been years since a TV anime has made me cry. Even longer since a work of fiction has made me cry not out of sadness, but out of appreciation for its sheer beauty. Episode 23 of this season was exactly that and is, as of right now, the best episode of an anime I have ever seen in my 20+ years of watching this medium.

So the story’s great, what about the animation and art? Well, as we’ve come to expect from MAPPA as of late, it’s amazing. So many episodes of this season are full of screenshottable moments and art that makes you want to pause the episode just to appreciate it. During the few key fights we have this season, the animation and choreography are stellar.

I could really go on and on for pages about how great this season is, but I’ll sum it up this way. This is the anime of the year, and I don’t see anything surpassing it. What it lacks in physical action, this season makes up for in character drama and emotional moments. A must watch for any historical drama fan or fan of the medium in general. This is the best this medium has to offer.

Vinland Saga S2 gets the easiest 10 of the year.

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Jun 19, 2023

trebnoj

Mixed Feelings

The core theme of Vinland Saga is introduced in its very first episode: "You have no enemies. No one has any enemies. There is no one that you should hurt." While not everyone agrees with this perspective, many people believe that violence is sometimes necessary, albeit in extreme circumstances. While these individuals may find enjoyment in the first season, they may not appreciate the second season. Season 2 is specifically tailored for those who genuinely believe that violence only begets more problems. This philosophy is considered extreme even in our modern world, but it appears particularly audacious within the Viking world of Vinland Saga.

That being ...

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Aug 25, 2023

Antithesis

Not Recommended

Funny

Vinland Saga is the embodiment of anachronism and the self-fulfilment of the mocked utterance "If you kill your enemies, they win."

Imagine yourself being sold into slavery in 11th-century Scandinavia after brute-forcing your way to the Viking conquest of England’s conclusion as a mercenary. At this point you’re well acquainted with the brutish nature of the Dark Ages and the horrors of mankind--ceaseless wars and raids, slavery, the razing of entire villages, violent wars of succession--and in particular the ruthless 'might makes right' warrior culture of the Vikings which one of your loved ones died at the hands of. Now imagine one day in that traumatic ... life of yours you start preaching 21st-century first-world pacifist ideals as a hollowed-out, depressed slave because of a dream. Then give yourself a pat on the back if you think this is an inherently juvenile and asinine concept that first off could never see ideation in such a context, would never see the light of day even if you could conceptualize it, and would never work even if it did see the light of day; because unlike Vinland Saga, you have at least an iota of a grasp on reality. Vinland Saga Season 2 is not only ugly on the outside as an audiovisual experience but also on the inside as a grossly delusional historical fiction that insists upon itself with pretentious moral righteousness, wanting to have its cake and eat it with its faux philosophising whilst attempting to work within the confines of reality. It is a shounen in seinen’s clothing.

What started out as a half-decent historical fiction that read almost like a gritty epic, with clear direction and dynamic characters to match, degenerates into aimless, feeble meandering with sluggish pacing and lethargic characters that reads more like a rant from the author than an actual story in its whiplash of a shift into a slice-of-life. The seeds of failure, however, were already sown from the very beginning of the series when Thorfinn's father spoke the essence of his philosophy on his deathbed "A true warrior has no need for a sword"--like a true 17th century Bushido-ideal samurai based in 11th century Scandinavia who uses "no sword" in the literal sense of the words as opposed to metaphorically. Whilst admirable that he cast aside his penchant for violence and surrendered a prestigious life of fierce warrior-ship in order to settle down with his wife and children and ensure them a peaceful life, the story would immortalise him as an aspirational wise man for orphaning a son and widowing a wife into misery because he surrendered to a death he could've easily avoided by sacrificing his family and himself for his moral code of pacifism. What if Askeladd--who’d already shown not to be trusted--didn’t uphold his promise, or if Bjorn massacred the Icelandic village anyway? Vinland Saga expects you to take Thor’s unconvincing dichotomy in faith as it begins using this fundamentally flawed premise as the foundation of the Slave arc and Thorfinn’s character piece, and the self-defeating polarity of venerating an ideology that just lead to a family’s demise is foreshadowing for the story's downwards spiral from this season onwards. Thorfinn, seeing how well pacifism turned out for his father and reaping its fruits first-hand, suddenly becomes one himself this season.

Whilst anachronism is Vinland Saga’s biggest problem--how it’s flawed on a fundamental level because its thematic execution conflicts with its own established world due to the author projecting his modern-day moral standards onto a story about 11th century Vikings--its inoperative veer into a medieval farming simulator means the themes it wants to convey here aren’t even made palatable on an external, structural level. The Slave arc lacks a defined act structure and feels like a tedious detour from the prologue, with no narrative drive and momentum. There are long stretches of uneventful moments mostly accompanied by Thorfinn and Einar babbling in a struggle to come to grasp the basic concept of ‘self-preservation’ as the directing in all its unsophisticated artistry (or lack thereof) displays severed heads in order to depict the mental state of a man. All the philosophical ramblings with obvious implications mean pacing thrice as slow as the previous arc isn’t compelling when it fails to be the psychological character-driven introspective it pretends to be. What other stories resolve in 3 episodes, Vinland Saga takes 24 to do without a convincing conclusion. There is no reason for over a dozen episodes to be dedicated to the (bizarrely portrayed) mundane slice-of-life of slaves on a farm, it’s the most astroturfed way imaginable to advance Thorfinn’s already deficient pacifist epiphany; especially when such an overarching theme is something as basic as “Slavery is… bad!” You are taught this in elementary school. This could have been done in less than 3 episodes under the dynamism of the prologue, and Thorfinn’s pacifism would have at least been somewhat more believable in a plot with proper happenings gravitating him towards an active MC role instead of being a glorified exposition dump in disguise for what he’s thinking. The series’ soft reset completely bottlenecks the natural progression of the once hot-blooded plot and characters that the series laid out, and thus Farmland Saga struggles to justify its existence. It no longer moves forward in sharp incremental episodes but wallows in nigh-episodic bloat. The character who suffers the most from this stifling shift in direction is of course Thorfinn, who’s treated like a messianic figure for some reason that the narrative never challenges the ideals of. You can now break down his character arc as Sasuke Uchiha —> Jesus Christ. Honestly, Canute's way of peace is far more pragmatic and he should've been the main character after Askeladd's death.

The plot is also cultivated primarily by poor character drama, unintelligent character decisions, accidental happenings and plot devices, which is why aside from most of the cast being lifeless husks, are also unlikeable. Einar is only angry about no longer being a free man and seeing his family members murdered before his eyes in the immediate moment, and he and the 10 unrestrained slaves being transported by boat by the few Danish raiders never attempt to resist or hijack the vessel. Gardar is introduced to serve merely as a tool for the series to once again unsubtlely preach “Here’s why violence is bad” in a scene that diminishes both his and Arnheid’s character after the two had already received incessant flashbacks that could’ve instead made way for more pivotal moments in the story like a certain reunion not being underwhelming. Even the climax of this arc is an illustration of shallow thematic execution; a culmination of the poor character drama and unintelligent character actions, where Thorfinn displays suicidal levels of restraint that should’ve gotten himself killed if not for the plot armour that the narrative places on his idealism, followed by corny dialogue and an unbelievable resolution that assassinates Canute’s character writing.

"I have no enemies." Bravo Uzumaki Thorfinn.

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Thorfin a pushover? Superninjaboy2 - Apr 27	44 replies	by Koustubh »» Yesterday, 8:44 PM
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Vinland Saga Season 2

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Synopsis

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Characters & Voice Actors

Thorfinn

Einar

Askeladd

Thorkell

Canute

Thors

Arnheid

Snake

Ylva

Erikson, Leif

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

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Recommendations

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Vinland Saga Season 2

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Episode Videos

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

Recent News

Recent Forum Discussion

MoreTop Anime

MoreTop Airing Anime

MoreMost Popular Characters

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-