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Sep 25, 2016
Shokugeki no Souma's characters all have one goal: be the best chef. They all have different reasons for wanting to be the best, as the show will often remind you, but in the end their goals are one and the same. Perhaps that's what makes this second season of Shokugeki fall a bit flat. They're simply not progressing towards that goal for the majority of the show. It starts to make everything feel a bit pointless.
The majority of my complaints for this season come from the tournament arc:
-It barely matters who wins.
Winning the tournament simply shows that you are the best in the class. While
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that definitely aligns with the characters' goals, it also has no significance in the grand scheme of things. The series often reminds the viewer that these are just students we're following by showcasing the alumni of the school who are successful chefs. These constant reminders doom the arc's conclusion into the winner believing they still have a way to go. Of course, the losing characters all have the same thought. If the characters aren't satisfied with the conclusion and there are no tangible results win or lose, it's tough to find purpose in the events. Contrast this with the first season when expulsion was the result for failure and you can see how the intensity was dialed down a notch.
-The fights themselves are tough to follow.
This might be a personal thing, but I'm not extremely well versed in cooking. When Hayama is describing all these spices that I last used to cure status conditions in Star Ocean, I'm stuck just trying to imagine how these things would taste. When you're watching an action show you can tell who's winning by how much damage each side has taken. In a sports show you look at the points. Winning conditions are easy to follow. In Shokugeki it's much more difficult to gauge who is winning the battle. In the tournament in particular, you're often relying on the judges' and crowd's reactions to tell you who's winning. The results of the fights could be switched and I would be none the wiser.
-There's little forward impact on the characters (yet).
The arc gives a little motivation to Souma in the end, but by and large the cast is static. There's nothing inherently wrong with static characters. However, Shokugeki wants its characters to progress and get better at cooking. In that sense, it needs the characters to constantly improve. The best the arc does towards that is getting the characters to be more creative. In the short arc afterward we see some brief glimpses of the cast but no one besides Souma has seemed to change at all... and Souma is pretty much the same anyway. The tournament ends and it feels like the show is just like "Welp, on to the next arc."
Take my criticisms with a grain of salt. Obviously this season isn't a full adaptation of the manga. The results of the tournament might become more important later. It's the fact that there are little immediate results that makes the arc feel unsatisfying.
Thankfully, the following short arc brings the show back to its strength: high-pressure situations that aren't cooking battles. It puts the characters (but focusing on Souma) in a high-pressure situation in which they are quickly forced to improve or else face negative consequences. It's far more interesting and intense. I wish it had been longer.
Art/animation/sound... it's all basically the same as the first season. It's not so bad that you're going to complain. It's not so good that you're going to be awed. It's good enough to get the job done. Frankly, that's good enough for me.
Despite my complaints about the tournament arc, it still had its moments of fun. Shokugeki's cast is fun to watch. So even if what the characters are doing isn't interesting, the cast's exaggerated personalities and silly reactions can make it enjoyable all the same. If you enjoyed the first season because of the cast interactions, then this season will not disappoint.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 4, 2015
The concept of an Event Flag should be nothing new if you’ve watched enough media. After triggering a flag, the plot is set in a specific path. Death flags are the most common example. If a character starts talking about their family or what they’re going to do after the battle, you know they’re doomed to die.
So what if we took this concept *literally*? And then we added a harem? And then we did whatever we wanted with the plot? That, my friends, is Kanojo ga Flag.
Story:
Kanojo ga Flag is about a generic harem lead, Souta, who can see event flags on top of
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people’s heads. He transfers to a new school and immediately starts building a harem. Souta’s harem might as well be the harem to end all harems. It has basically every archetype: Tsundere, Airhead, Older Sister, Little Sister, Student Council President, Trap, Childhood Friend, Princess, Idol, Robot, Baby/Grandmother, Tsundere 2, and Teacher. The harem grows so fast that it becomes pointless to distinguish between the girls. They’re all obsessed with the MC for some reason and that’s really their only defining trait.
It managed to work well enough. When a harem gets so big and it’s clear the girls aren’t actually going to win over the MC, you stick around for the pointless harem antics. Beach episode? Sure. Beauty contest? Let’s do it. Super serious plot? Totally—wait what? Kanojo ga Flag never needed a serious plot but it decided it was going to cram it in anyway. I don’t think the plot twist is necessarily that bad; the show definitely foreshadows it. The problem comes from the amount of time the audience has to comprehend what’s even going on. It’s introduced very quickly and you pretty much just have to roll with it and watch in confusion or look up an explanation. An additional episode might’ve helped solve the problem.
Characters:
There’s nothing interesting about any of the characters. The MC always has a bored look on his face that makes you wonder why any of the girls are so interested in him. The best I can say about the rest of the harem is that they exist. They fulfill their roles in their respective archetypes and in the greater plot, but otherwise there is nothing unique or memorable about any of them. If you’ve seen an anime before then you’ve seen this cast.
Sound:
The voice acting was pretty good overall. Of particular note is Nanami’s voice actress, who was only 17 when the show aired. I think she did a good job for someone so young and just getting into the industry. Akane, the airhead, easily has the most annoying voice in the show. She also finishes each of her sentences with “desu” because she’s cute and I personally find it more frustratingly annoying than anything else. There’s no real standout performances among the rest of the cast, though Kana Hanazawa playing a trap was pretty fun.
The OP and ED were passable. “Nothing special” is the key to Kanojo ga Flag. The same goes for the OST: it did its job well enough while I was watching the show but there’s nothing about it that particularly stuck with me.
Art and Animation:
The elephant in the room is Kanojo ga Flag’s art style. The girls are drawn in a way that make them look several years younger than they actually are. Look at any promotional art for the show including the picture on MAL and you’d probably conclude that they’re (mostly) all elementary school students. Admittedly, it looks a bit better when it’s animated. By the end I didn’t mind it too much. The rest of the art is colorful and fits the mood of the show. When the show goes full seriousness, the art gets darker along with it. There were no significant distracting art errors.
The animation gets the job done. There are no huge quality issues or outstanding animation sequences. This is a harem anime for the most part. It doesn’t need to do anything great so I can’t really demand too much out of it.
Enjoyment:
Kanojo ga Flag is not *good*. It is a train wreck in every sense of the phrase. But it is a beautiful, entertaining train wreck. The show is incredibly fast paced and it does a good job at keeping the audience engaged. It’s so stupid and ridiculous that you can’t help but keep watching. I had fun watching the show from beginning to end and honestly that’s the most important part to me.
Conclusion:
Kanojo ga Flag wo Oraretara will never win any awards for anything. The plot is a mess, the characters are uninteresting, the sound is decent, and the art/animation is bad to ok. BUT I had fun watching it. If you don’t take it too seriously then I think you can have some fun with it.
5/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 28, 2015
Story:
Is Log Horizon 2 filler? Now, let's stop right there. The very fact that I even considered leading off a review with this question doesn't bode well. But, to answer that question: No, Log Horizon 2 is not filler, but it feels like filler. Everything in the show is canon, covering 4 light novels and even going into some material that hasn't been officially released yet. Season 1 adapted 5 LNs, so we're already looking at slightly less source material. Within these 4 LNs + extras of material, Log Horizon 2 decides to adapt 1 of them to only 1 episode, so we're left with
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3 LNs + extras for 24 episodes.
So it should come to no surprise that the first point of contention is the dreadful pacing of the show. The plot moves extremely slow; there were multiple times that I got bored because I wanted the show to move a bit faster and get to the point. Log Horizon was never a fast paced show to begin with, but there were several episodes (especially in the 3rd arc) where it felt like virtually nothing happened. In fact, I might go so far as to say the first 21.5 episodes of Log Horizon 2 were a waste of time. We get 3 entire arcs during those episodes but we never actually see the results of those arcs. The plot feels contrived to the point of searching for something for the characters to do rather than them actually moving toward an obtainable goal. The last couple episodes sort of introduce an interesting goal, but by then it's too late. However, these episodes are actually good. Had we gotten a whole season of this it would have been much better.
But why don't we get any results? Because those arcs existed for the sake of character development. Log Horizon 2 develops Shiroe, Akatsuki, and the kids a little bit, but it takes way too long to do so. Log Horizon's strong suit was never its characters; it was the world and its MMO aspects that made the show interesting. So the fact that we spend so much time on one of the less interesting parts of Log Horizon hurts the show immensely.
While it spends so much time developing the cast, it also introduces a bunch of interesting ideas to the world. But Log Horizon 2 never goes anywhere with these cool ideas. They're shrugged off in favor of character development. Any expansion of these ideas would have been great.
Now I want to talk about the 3rd arc in particular. We follow the Log Horizon kids (colloquially called the Noob Squad) as they go on a quest. It's so boring and unrelatable that I wanted to drop the show, and I almost never drop shows. The Noob Squad is far and away the worst characters in the cast, and getting a second arc (they had a short one in S1) devoted to them is just too much. The slice of life "comedy" parts of this arc in particular are more cringe worthy than anything else.
Characters:
Again, Log Horizon 2 tries its best to develop its characters. We learn about them a little more and maybe change a little bit, but it doesn't really add anything to the show. Again, Log Horizon's strength was never its characters. Perhaps the biggest fault in terms of the cast is its sheer size. With 41 characters listed on MAL, it's unsurprising that the viewer might forget about some of the minor ones, especially when it comes to stuff like guild affiliation. Now, a large cast is not necessarily a bad thing. Legend of the Galactic Heroes doesn't get bashed for its huge cast. But Log Horizon doesn't always know what to do with all its characters, so many of them fall by the wayside.
Shiroe is still the best character in the show, but his screen time is limited compared to the first season. It's really disappointing because Shiroe was the one who most drove the plot forward in the first season. Plus we only get a fraction of the glasses pushes.
Oh, remember Nyanta? Everyone's favorite cat swashbuckler chef shows up for an episode or two just to remind us he exists. Instead we get Tetra, who serves almost no purpose besides comic relief.
Sound:
Log Horizon 2's OST uses many of the same tracks from the first season, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. The songs are good; they usually fit the mood fine and there's nothing really to complain about there. Log Horizon's OP, Database, also returns for another go. Database is a good song, but I don't think we needed 50 episodes of it. Log Horizon 2's OP also shamelessly spoils some stuff from the series again. The ED isn't bad, but the transition into the ED is awful. There are a few episodes that end on a somber or intense note, and then the super happy ED pops in just before the episode actually ends and destroys the mood. The voice acting is fine. The kids' voices can get annoying though.
Art/Animation:
Log Horizon switches animation studios for its second season, going to the infamous Studio Deen. The first thing you'll notice is that characters look slightly different. It's most noticeable on characters with long hair such as Marielle. The designs are more faithful to the original source material, but I personally found the slight redesigns in the first season to be aesthetically pleasing.
The animation itself is bad to the point of distraction. Characters' faces never quite look right. Tons of shortcuts were taken and it's completely noticeable and frustrating.
Enjoyment:
Now, I could throw all this aside if the show manages to be fun to watch. For me, it wasn't. When my first thought week by week is "Let's get this over with" then that's a terrible sign. The show has a bunch of slice of life moments that are supposed to be funny or heartwarming or something, but they're tiresome and cringe worthy. The action scenes are all right, but they're few and far between and also take a few animation shortcuts that don't make them as fun as they could be. The plot isn't particularly engaging until the very end, but those last few episodes aren't enough to redeem the boredom that's before it. There are a few moments I genuinely enjoyed, but by and large it felt like a drag.
2/10
Yes, this is a harsh score. But if I can't take much of any enjoyment from the show and it doesn't really succeed in any area, it's tough to give it points at all.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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