Terra Formars: Revenge

I honestly don't know where the low ratings for this show are coming from. It's like a bandwagon effect every other user wants to dislike the show because they heard from him, her, or the other that the first season sucked... which it didn't. It had a rough start but does turn itself around. All that aside, I believe that Terra Formars revenge does a pretty good job redeeming itself through its intense dramatic scenes along with a reasonable amount of unforgettable action and mayhem.

Story 8.5/10

Season 2 's plot is straight-forward, right to the point, and focuses more on drama and having "goals" rather ... than having the main & supporting characters get involved in random, unexciting, and dull circumstances. This worked out well in season 2's favor because during season 1 it felt like things like the pacing was slow, and the new plot developments felt lackluster at best. The new director and team of producers working on this must have payed close attention to what was wrong with the season 1 to improve what they thought was best! Lastly, the improvements of the plot for each episode was well executed. From the story-telling narrative I was impressed with how well new developments in the story-line were made. My initial concerns during the beginning of season 2 (which were bad story-telling, lack of interesting new developments, gore for the sake of being edgy) were thrown out the window like a cold lifeless corpse as soon as I started watching. I began thinking to myself "Hmm, you know, this new team is doing a lot better than whoever worked on season 1." I enjoyed knowing that I could be fully engaged in the story & plot for each episode, and not complain the entire time about the directions of certain events were going. Now one thing I didn't like was that the story, at times, felt like both backstories, flashbacks, and often times new developments would drag on too long. Too much dialogue between characters was another re-occurring issue I had a hard time dealing with because I felt like the characters would converse so much that it would take away my enjoyment for the story. Lastly I would have also liked to see more detailed backstories on the Terra Formers because I felt like the additional information explained by Boa wasn't the least bit useful. Overall I was very impressed with the direction that the new team went with in the story of Terra formars revenge.

Animation quality looked pretty damn good. There are lots of obvious moments where I saw that CGI was used to improve the appearance of the Terra Formars in groups, often times ready to attack or die. CGI was used a lot last season so I cannot really add too much about the subject. Character designs and the appearances of both humans and roaches look a lot moderately better. I mean when you compare the anime character designs to the original manga, the anime versions look 1000% better. The quality of the special effects are also pretty good, again not too much I can add. I'm going to assume that the quality of animation was a bit better due to TYO Animations & LIDENFILMS working on it. Lastly, the background settings are very detailed. The work the animators did on objects like computer monitors and electronic devices was pretty amazing.

I have never been impressed with the soundtrack to the Terra Formar series. None of the opening & ending songs get me excited enough to watch the show. The background music sounds bland and boring, it sort of sounds like stock music. I don't think the composer put much effort into enhancing the shows dramatic moments and action scenes. The voice actors were pretty good. I actually don't have too much to add on the actors performances. Sound effects were alright, still sounds like the same effects used in season 1, JOHJ JOHJ. Overall I think the sound, voice actors special effects for vehicles, weapons, need to sound just a bit more realistic to enhance the quality of the show.

The old and new characters were alright. Like other viewers, I did notice that most main characters do seem to be "softer" and maybe just a little sillier in the personality department however, it that really doesn't have a big impact on how I enjoyed viewed the characters.. Personally I don't think that the comedy works with characters like Michelle because she's always been strong-minded along with having a serious personality. Having her be a "straight-man" to Joe's naturally hilarious & every-man personality felt kind of awkward at times. When characters do need to be strong and take action, for example Michelle, then she'll be strong. As shown in I believe episode 5 or 6. She's still the same bad-ass we loved regardless of how "toned down" her personality seems, same goes for the others too. Character growth and development is still relied upon in season 2. In a weird way, everybody learns something or the other to help them harness their strength and knowledge.

Enjoyment for this series would honestly be about a 7 and a half. While I did feel like this was much, much, better than what season 1 had to offer, the series wasn't exactly too exciting at times and had few to many moments of boredom.. I mean, episodes do feature moments where tension begins to rise and dramatic scenes are almost incredible unfortunately though, what damages the series enjoyment factor is that those moments aren't really consistent. Improvement that I think would work best is to tone down the overly dramatic scenes or make them less lengthy because as I mentioned early, certain episodes do tend to drag on with the "Oh my God we are going to die" and "Oh no, what are we going to do?" moments.

Overall I can say that season 2 was a major improvement to all categories listed above, and leaves a better impression of what the show is really about. What that thing is varies from person to person however, I'd have to say that it's determination and the will & strength to never give up. The final product was indeed "very good" and I had a lot of fun watching it. 8/10 from me mates.

Let me start this off by saying that I really enjoyed the first season of Terra Formars, even with its somewhat lackluster story and mediocre character design. But I'll leave it at that because those weren't the reasons why most people enjoyed Terra Formars. I was also really hyped for the second season, as I expected the same viewing experience that I had with the first.

Moving on to this so called second season : "Terra Formars Revenge" ( although "revenge" is probably what most of the Terra Formars fans want against the producers ).

-First off let's talk about animation... One of the main ... reasons why this season falls short of our expectations :
The animation has changed for the worse. In the first season we had well executed and fluid animation which made the fighting scenes exciting and appealing, without getting boring and repetitive.
In the second season they give us a lackluster, seemingly "lower budget" animation which makes the fighting look unimpressive as it loses the "punch" that it once had in the prequel. This makes the action as boring as it gets. It makes you feel like this might be some kind of bad joke.

-Moving on to the art :
The art style has shifted from a very realistic and dark representation of scenery and characters, to a very bright and colorful art style. This is what takes away most of what the anime was about... The cruel environment and situation have now become more lighthearted as they take a different direction from the foundation that was built in the first season.

-Speaking of lighthearted, let's head to the story/characters :
Probably the only positive thing is that the plot does continue in this second season.
And now back to the negatives : now here is where it starts to get uglier, although the plot remains, the representation of the characters and situations is a disgrace. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you : fan service !!!! You can start guessing how glad I was to see that in a supposedly dark and gory survival anime. Fan service is probably what you'd least expected to find in Terra Formars, even though it only occurs in the first episode it is still disgraceful.
Complementing the lightheartedness, the characters seem to take the situation they are in less seriously as we also have the addition of "comedy bubbles" ( don't really know how to call them ).

To wrap this up, Terra Formars Revenge is an excuse of a second season as it does not in any way bring justice upon the first season or the manga...
Hopefully this will be enough for people to understand how disappointing this sequel is...

Even though it is not unwatchable, I wouldn't recommend "Terra Formars Revenge" to anyone who loved the first season or the manga.

In the first season they showed you how vulnerable the characters could be despite having immense power. Many of them died whilst being overpowered. This creates that "cling to reality experience" that makes a good plot like AoT. I felt as though they disregarded that and went full dragon ball z which is a strict fantasy power up plot like tengen toppa. Im not saying dbz or tengen is a bad anime but what made the first season good was that slice of reality that they could at anytime die. The drawback mechanics of the source of their power up , which is the medicine, ... was disregarded I felt like. They were popping the medicine like crack whore addicts when taking 2 or 3 of those were fatal if I remember correctly from the first season. In summary, they didnt stick with their guns and just went for "convinient for the plot" route. This really a mediocere season at best.

Terra Formars was a weak action series with shallow characters and many failed attempts at adding depth. But hey, at least it was grim and gritty and we don't get nearly enough grim and gritty works of media, if you ignore the tens of thousands too many that we get. Okay, so the last series ended with our heroes stranded on Mars. One full squadron has been killed, one is made up of traitors, and I'm sure it's not the one that was reported dead but we saw alive and well, and our heroes have to find their way back to Earth with some living ... derp roaches in order to stop a disease. Let's look at where things go in Terra Formars: Revenge, and see if we can find any reason to care.

Story:

We pick up where the last series left off. In this one the focus shifts to the struggle of the traitorous fourth squadron against the other squadrons, primarily the first and second since the fourth wants to capture what's her name and that one guy. So, the 4th squadron takes control of the fallen ship, making it their base and goes all out, doing whatever it takes, to capture that one guy and whatever her name was. Meanwhile, the first and second squadron have to evade the derp roaches and find a way to strike back at the 4th squadron.

I will give this series some credit over the first. There's a lot less of an issue with both exposition, since those scenes are shortened quite a bit for this one. There's also less of a problem with solutions for various problems being completely pulled out of the writer's posterior. This series focuses much more on largely mindless action sequences coming one after the other with the series' attempt to add some depth betwixt them. That being said, flashbacks are a massive pain in this one. The first series used them quite a bit, mainly in attempts to make us care about the characters, but this one takes it to the next level. A lot of the big climactic stuff at the end gets interrupted by long, drawn out flashbacks. Plus, we get the same flashback of the protagonist boy talking to a sick child from the first series so many times you'd think it would be showing us how he learned that “with great power there must come great responsibility.” Granted, I wouldn't have remembered such a dull scene without them doing a flashback but I didn't need them to keep bringing it up. This series is also overly fond of fake-outs. The series loves to move things to a bleak note only to reveal that there's still a glimmer of hope or that things went okay after all and we just didn't see it. Here's the thing with both flashbacks and fake-outs. They're both useful tools when used in moderation but when they're overdone, like they are here, they quickly become tired. Fake-outs in particular since they don't work when you expect them. This series also has some tonal issues. There are scenes that attempt to add some levity which is a good idea, in concept. The problem here is that they'll stick the scenes in randomly during moments that are supposed to be tense. For example, they have two characters who are surrounded by derp roaches and they insert a comedic bit about skunks, which just undermines the tension completely.

Again, the concept has potential and I do still give them credit for trying to be more than just mindless action, but the execution is just poor and the effort doesn't ultimately mean much.

Characters:

I feel like I could basically copy and paste my whole rant about the characters from the first series with some minor tweaks. I won't, but I could. The big problem with the characters in this is just that they're boring. There's nothing to them beyond the same trite action archetypes that we've seen time after time. The most attempts we get at developing them are in flashbacks that serve to show us that they had equally bland families who they're fighting for or some generically tragic back stories. But there's nothing in there that really adds depth to them or that fleshes them out as a character. The result is that there's no reason to care what happens in the fight betwixt squadron four and the others or betwixt the humans and the goofy roaches.

The roaches continue to be weak villains. Yes, they have numbers and they can overwhelm the heroes we don't have any reason to care about, but at the same time they just look absurd. The changelings in Friendship is Magic looked scarier than these things. Plus, every major hero can still slaughter a large number of them with relative ease.

Art:

The artwork continues to be the area where I can give the series some praise. The backgrounds are nicely detailed. The human characters have some nice designs, particularly when you factor in their transformations. The action sequences, though incredibly violent, do have some nice intensity.

Sound:

Like with the first series, I have to give the cast some credit. They take characters who really have very little to them and they still manage to turn out passable performances. Not good by any means, but passable. This time around Wada Takafumi handles the soundtrack and, I have to say, it's not as good as Murai Shusei's was in the first series. It's all right, but that's about the best that can be said for it.

Ho-yay:

There might be a little. There's a girl named Hong who seems to have a thing for one of her comrades, Miss Xi. But it's hard to say since the character interactions are so... meh.

Final Thoughts:

That's Terra Formars Revenge. It shares some of the weaknesses of the original, improves in some areas and gets worse in others. Overall, it's a dumb action series that's trying to be more, but failing. Ultimately, I don't think it's worse than the first series nor do I think it's better. My final rating is going to be the same a 4/10. I still have no reason to care what's happening. If your only issue with the first series was the excessive exposition that interrupted the action sequences, you might like this one better. If you, like me, were not fond of the first series or you didn't bother with it because it didn't look like something you'd be into, I don't recommend this one either. If you really liked the first series, the flashbacks, fake-outs and comedic attempts might make you dislike this one but I suspect you'll be fine with it. Next week I'll take a look at Non Non Biyori. Until then, have a fantastic week.

PROS:
-Not bad animations.
-Interresting lore and main story.
-Cool and badass super powers for both foes and allies.

CONS:
-The momemtum is always cut by generics backstories that got little to nothing to do with the main lore that got us watching.
-The dark esthetic of the first season is now replaced with a more colorful/power rangers kindda look that remove a lot of originality and charms. It's good to mention that this make the Terraformars FAR LESS odd and scary.
-Would need some work in the pacing department. Things either happens way to fast or sometime not much seem to happen at all.

... PERSONNAL NOTE:
Like mentionned in the synopsis, humans traitors are the main antagonists of the 2nd season and, in my opinion, they made humans go against humans way too fast.
Humans are boring.
I'm far more interested in the Terraformars's weird and terrifying lore and culture.
It's sad that they went for the usual "humans are the worst animal" before we even got a proper look at the nightmarish Terraformars society...

'What do people like most about this show?'
'Probably the dark atmosphere with lots of gore, people fighting desperately for their lives and an overwhelming sense of threat.'
'Yeah, let's take all that away and give them some punching and comedy instead.'

I really loved the first season and was hoping this could evolve into something like this decades Gantz. But unfortunately, this second season happened. Stripped off of all the exiting stuff, the ridiculous story flaws and annoying characters shine in all their glory:
- implausible twists and turns
- everything overdramatized to the max
- people dying while they actually don't over and over
- super strong abilities utilized as ... stupid as possible
- sense of threat completely lost

The show got more painful to watch episode by episode. Can't recall the last time I was so disappointed in a sequel.

I was among the many who was expecting that this 2nd season would fare off from it's 1st season, so:................................

Storywise, I agree when a lot of reviewers stated that the violence was tone down, unlike the 1st season were it doesn't have a solid plot and relies only on the sheer violence, blood and gore, this time the human drama has been added and a betrayal plot was added as well, it was no long them humans fighting to survive against the terraformars onslaught. But I still can't ignore this story's multiple anachronisms that are present in this anime or manga, the so called ... anachronism simply violates every laws of medicine, physics, astronomy, biology, economics and engineering, even so I'm gonna rate this category a 7 over 10 for the toned down violence and the addition of the human drama.

Artwise, I give it a 5 over 10 since, nothing much has change at all pertaining to the illustrations of the character, but in this season 2 we see new illustrations of terraformars, from the youngest to those who fly, still not enough for me to give this category a high score......Fanservice? Well it was only limited to Xi, but even so, don't expect any nipples on her top and bushes on her bottom. Btw I also gave the same score for the sound, since this isn't about the VA's who does Michelle and Akari's voice, it now about the support VA who did the voices of the other support characters, but I do have a certain thing for the 3rd closing theme "Revolution" by Nao.

Character, like I've said, in this sequel it no longer about Michelle and Akari, nearly other support characters here were given a chance to shine even for a moment, like Ms. Pepe Le Pew....I'm referring to Yaeko and them civilians like Wolf, Peggy, Erika, Amelia and Joe Newton. But the real stars her were them Terraformars which I'm giving this category a 3 over 10 cu'z of them, since they basically represent as the main parachronism of this anime, since it was kinda puzzling as to how in just a short period of time they were able to manage to master the art of organ transplant, now let's not not for get that in order for such transplant to happen they (Terraformars) have to solve some problems, like the condition of the appendage is it still alive enough to be transplanted, will their body accept the organ being transplanted, were they able to have the necessary equipment for the transplant. Also there were the character parachronism were I find it hard to accept that in that timeline were U-NASA were able to genetically combine anime and human DNA, they weren't able to control the AE Virus epidemic, and does the setting show any AE outbreak? No. QAlso if them U-NASA do plant to go to mars to kick some Terreformar butt, wouldn't be much cheaper to make more Joe Newtons and Hongs, instead of giving each BUGS participant a custom DNA make over? One more reason for my score.


Enjoyment, despite of the tone down violence and the addition of the human drama, I'm barely hanged on to this anime u'til its last episode, too bad they gave it a typical Zombie ending, where the characters live to fight another day, so it's 6 over 10 for this category. And the overall, despite of my reservations, IMO it was decent enough to be watched, so, it's a 4 for this part.

OUT!

Just like the first season of Terra Formars, this anime is deathly lacking in every aspect that makes any show enjoyable. If you want an anime that is just mindless fighting that is poorly animated, special "abilities" that are lackluster and have nothing unique about them, 0 story line that you will forget about 13 seconds after they explain it, then I guess this anime is for you. But honestly, If any of those things interest you then I am sorry for the shows that you are watching and I am internally confused.

This anime could have been cool but there is nothing here that ... gives it any type of sustenance. They don't even offer you cool villains, they're literal bottom of the barrel character designs when it comes to the enemies.

Honestly, If you thoroughly enjoyed this anime and can give me a logical reason as to why you liked it, please explain it to me because I would like to understand.

I liked so much the frist season, but this isnt terra formars. Honestly, the story isnt bad, but when you see the last cap, you will see how horrible its turn.
The first caps of this season are "good", but as the season goes, it downs.
In terraformas you want to see blood and gore, a nice story with great scenes of action, but terraformars revenge offers you a "sinen" full of flowers, with a lot of unnecessary love moments...
There is an awesome animation in some moments, and there is an horrible animtion too, especially in the last episodes.
Openings are great both f them.
The characters ... of the first season are the same here (unless these who are dead, obviously), and i like them, but the story and the unexistant blood and gore scenes from season one make the second season a very bad anime.
I dont recommend to see it.

It is common for a lot of people to drop an anime after one episode. It is also common for somebody to watch a whole series with a good first episode only to be extremely disappointing with the ending or last few episodes or halve the episodes. I find it rare for people to say a first episode is horrible but the show is good.

I remember watching the first season of Terra Formars when it was airing a year or two back and thinking it is a pretty decent show. So when I watched the first episode of the second season of Terra Formars ... I was on the point of giving the series an overall score of four and dropping. After watching the full season of Revenge I have to say this show had a good comeback from the cruddy first episode it gave us.

When I watched the first episode of Terra Formars Revenge I had the same problem as other people. The show felt like it turned from a dark sci-fi series to an episode of Dragon Ball Z. This was mainly due to one of our main hero's going super Saiyan or should I say super Moth resulting in a big unrealistic explosion like I was watching some Michael Bay movie. Instead of dropping the show I said to myself I keep watching to see how much more they will wreck this show. To my surprise the show actually got better in terms of story with being fateful to the Manga by adapting some of the best arcs in the manga in the right way and of course completely erasing unnecessary explosions after episode 1.

Apart from episode one which was a big joke that roughly came out on April fool’s Day (coincidence?). Every episode carried the story well and allowed a lot of characters both major and minor to develop freely. The show had each minor arc a battle between groups of characters. The best were the ones between the minor characters which was the case in the final part of the show and the part of the show that focused on Alexander. The arc with Alexander was one of the best from the Manga, seeing it done fatefully gave me hope for this show. Apart from the first episode the only other problem with the story is that it’s too short for 13 episodes.

The Art was the only other thing people went crazy about. The art in season one was a lot darker, characters and environments had a lot more detail and the cockroaches looked less hilarious then they do now. In this season everything is a lot more shiny and bright. The characters designs have changed and the level of detail for the whole cast are downgraded. When the human characters transform to use their powers, most look like they just got tattoos applied to their faces rather than go through a major transformation.

Now the art when it comes to action scenes is far different then the actions scenes from the first season. When someone were bruised they looked like they were bruised they had bruises. When someone were cut they looked like they were cut. When someone was missing and arm or a leg it was extremely gory. The show kind of lost some its extremes that made it appealing to a mature audience by doing this. .

The Music In revenge was sometimes really good especially in the fights. The opening and ending themes where ok but were nothing compared to the opening in the first season. The voice cast in the Japanese Dub of the anime differentiate with different members of the cast. Some voices were pretty plain while others stood out in terms of emotion.

The characters in the series include the return of our surviving main cast from the last season of the show. The series does not force us to keep our eyes on the main cast the whole time. It keeps our eyes on the characters that have the most influence on what is currently happening in the story. This includes minor characters both fighters and non-fighters. I hate it when an anime forces the main characters into the centre of every situation because they are the main character. So seeing Revenge give the wheel to some others for a change is refreshing.

Overall I enjoyed the show, I am hopeful for a season 3 with better art but I will have to wait and see.

*I did not watch the prequel, only Terra Formars and Revenge* (TL;DR at bottom)

The art is a lot more generic than the first season, while the first season which not being super special was more than enough to looked good and cool.

The general concept is nothing unique, but it is enjoyable. This season tries to build stronger ties to earth but did not fully show the weight of most actions occurring.

My biggest Problem, but may be a big nit picky so its down here:

... The viewers general understanding of this world is lacking in terms of the possibilities, so we the viewer do not know what the surgery truly is or what capabilities it unlocks. This didn't pose a problem due to the first season sticking with characters you already mostly understood their powers and motivations or telling you and sticking to that very much, but in this season the mass of characters just introduced that are unique and feels almost overpowering in comparison whereas we the viewers still aren't familiar with the surgeries basic capabilities. They also didn't explain the whole plan so this whole season pretty much just feels like a WHAT THERE'S A SWORD ON MARS? and a few of these are explained that the crew aren't supposed to know is here, but then there's a ton of vehicles and equipment that the audience didn't know was there.

TL;DR - Generic art lessens the coolness, much important details and story elements weren't told the audience at first such as the original plan on mars which they manage to circumvent in the first season but not having anything the viewer wouldn't expect but season 2 falls prey to that many times.

Terra Formars Revenge was a disappointment but that was expected... Narrative stagnant fights filled 90% of the season so plot progression basically happens during Episode 1-2 and 12-13 respectively. Terra Formars had a great sense of direction by involving Fear evoking events to entertain; It is factual that Fear-induced entertainment is a common method for series to become popular in the Anime community (e.g Tokyo Ghoul, AoT, Parasyte, Owari no Seraph etc.) because it produces a pretense premise which questions Humanity's intelligence i.e "What if a life form with greater intelligence/capabilities/adapatbilities than humans existed?" That being said, unfortunately Terra Formars failed to provoke this ... hidden potential and thus isn't seen in a similar light as the aforementioned giant series.

Also, seeing how the supposed 'winner' of every fight walks away without confirming the other parties death is a lazy way to add shock factor (especially when it occurs all the time) e.g Episode 11-12, Keiji Onizuka fights the evolved Terraformar which reveals information to other Terraformars that infiltrated Annex I's Space Craft. He had the opportunity to kill the immobilized enemy but chooses to leave it which led to the failure of his team capturing and sending information from the communication room...

Story: 3/10
The main hook for Terra Formars Revenge was essentially a betrayal among the divisions which was an attractive hook at the end of the controversial 2014 adapted prequel. However, the execution of it was a different story, although I did enjoy the story hook it became inferior when the entire 13 episodes was each division playing cat and mouse to obtain XO and Akari and not much emphasis on the indecisive battles between Terra Formars and Humans. I would have have suggested to use the next arc at Episode 6/7 instead of Episode 13 because there were a lot of wasted opportunity to provoke a controversial event/decision by the communication broadcast from Mars. Overall, excited to see whether the next arc will carry the series...

Art & Sound: 5/10
For the most part, the art was great but the consistency lagged behind quite a bit; Most likely a compromise to maintain the high quality and proportion. Most of the episodes were still frames with zoom/pan movement which was very disappointing since the action scenes had the highest priority. I did notice CGI but it was well blended with the 2D elements which were surprising. VA were good and SFX~

Character: 2/10
Flashbacks are a great way to provoke a character in driving out their rage with adrenaline, However it becomes obsolete when every character has the chance to do it several times. Character development in this sequel is plentiful but innovative and structured - that is development that flows with the story line - is scarce in Terra Formars Revenge. With a smaller character palette, killing off characters isn't a passable way to develop characters anymore and thus flashbacks were intensified to allow the viewer to grasp the background of our characters with no effort to the producer. It may look like I am bashing the story and characters but I was genuinely enjoying the flow of the series and the climax of Season 1 set a high standard that wasn't met . Therefore, it has been reflected in the rating~

Enjoyment: 5/10
I will admit that the series was enjoyable personally despite all the flaws but the character talk a lot which spoiled the viewing experience.

Terraformars: Revenge, Sagasu Yu & Tachibana Kenichi (2014), is an atrocious slight to the rather enjoyable first season, with its notable stylistic and cinematic aspects. With the change in director, music director, and the addition of a new studio TYO Animations, Terraformars: Revenge is a farce of a continuation that drops the formal elements of sound, mis-en-scene, camera work, and editing, that resembled an apocalyptic or dystopian style. The visual and aural motifs (the black swirls resembling swarms, the ringing synthetic music, the conflation of a lost past and lost present) are obliterated for a shounen-like cheery anime with no gore, no remarkable motifs, and ... a tone-deaf narrative. Terraformar’s implied or implicit meaning, in its staticky use of color, silence, and conflation of lost-past to lost-present, which was its strength, is tossed aside for a superficial narrative.

The diegesis and narrative no longer fulfills science fiction tropes, in relation to technology: the odd pseudoscientific explanations and the biological presuppositions posited by characters are absent and if there, are only empty plot or action progression devices. The narrative is still quite troublesome, logically. There had been slight humor before, only as a mature defense mechanism, but this work has plenty of fanservice, ecchi frames, and slapstick measures that take away from its previous somber and bleak visual and aural tonality.

The characters previously displayed an understanding of the illogical nature of their diegesis, and as a seinen work, addressed character backstory brilliantly, with deliveries such as: “Does losing money mean that your wishes get stolen away, too!?”; “Sakurato! Is there something you want to do when you get better?” from an evidently distressed Akari; “Judging from the lack of hesitation in all your actions, that leader has a vision”. In Revenge, this is dropped for deliveries that contradict earlier depictions: “I’d get to see your shower scene!”; “Is it true that you’re going to Mars”, when Sakurato Harukaze had no idea of Annex 1 in the first season; Akari and his childhood friend crying together when they had not previously; and most idiotically, “Let’s all go back to Earth! Go, go!”. Complete turnaround in both narrative content and narrative tone. “We sent our best men and our kids with the brightest futures” one world leader states, but as viewers can recall, the children and young adults selected volunteered out of desperation, and were not selected for their bright futures. Moreover, the extradiegetic narrative, the little bubbles with comical visuals and deliveries, adds to the slapstick tonality. Infuriating!

Previously, the cinematic elements had been artistically significant. Now the cinematics are generic, even subpar given the bland and undetailed faces. The hues, the technology, the intertitles, all resembling traditional science fiction frames, had utilized darker hues with interspersed dulled whites. The use of black, silence, and space was notable in the first season: several frames are dedicated to the scurrying movement of cockroaches, the black in the frames is dynamic, like a writhing mass of cockroaches/insects; moreover, the blackness creeps over the screen not with distinct lines but with the staticky formlessness of swarm. This visual motif was rather impressive. The colors are now too-bright, too-cheery given the death and dismemberment, and the bug transformations look comical and prevent a suspension of disbelief. In fact, for most of the second season, it evokes only disbelief. The camera movement through cinematic space is generic, with few notable shots and transitions. The off-screen space is no longer key: in season one, Adolf Reinhardt, who’s past and present conflate and blur in-out of focus during the action sequence in a notable manner: “Are you saying we’re going to take their entire lives away?” states an off-screen voice as the camera moves over and through a cinematic space comprising a restrained Adolf and the equipment used to modify his base of electric eel. This is all done away with for generic cuts and transitions.

Aurally, the anime bears no distinct science fiction sounds: the synthetic music of the first season that resembled several video games of the same genre and the use of Gustav Holst’s “Mars: The Bringer of War” for Adolf Reinhardt, a striking character and perhaps the most intriguing part of both plot and story is all missing. The sound mixing was well done: often, the vital aspect of a scene overpowers the other elements; sometimes everything is overridden by the silence that resembles the sound of a swarm, and particularly the violin during Adolf’s initial strike and his memories of his wife’s affair are replaced by generic fighting music that complements the screaming-based transformation of the character, like a Dragon Ball move. Atrocious!

The character design has clearly shifted from seinen to shounen, with most looking outright comical. The facial movements and clothing detail are restricted and flat. In season one, the use of light tones, particularly white, in character’s eyes and tears was a brilliant juxtaposition against the use of the black color in a swarm-like dynamic manner. Here, everything is comical and generic, perhaps to complement the laughingstock status of this season. The less I speak of the actual narrative content of the anime, the better: “Bring it on, 100-dan judo man!”; “The virus goes against everything we know about virology”, these deliveries alter the fundamental personality of major characters. The characters are subject to, what we call in psychopathology, Capgras Syndrome or Capgras Delusion, an [irrational, but not so irrational here] belief that someone known has been replaced by an imposter. And that loss, more than the stylistic and cinematic quality loss, is what makes this work unpalatable. Final unforgivable sin: the green drawing/outline of the Johj looks like a children’s sticker in comparison with the first season’s anatomically complex depictions.

Terra formars is an interesting little gem that I skipped because it sounded like sci-fi gibberish.
Well, it's not wrong to say that it is. However, the focus of the story is not to make you, the reader or viewer, to believe the sci-fi that gets mentioned over and over in the story. but rather, the result, which is a sci-fi survival story set in mars. In a way, the enemy reminds me of the titans in AoT. Numerous, with many abilities, and with so much information unknown about them that it brings about a sense of terror.
Yet, it also reminds me of something like ... Jojo's bizzare adventure, where every individual has a unique power to themselves, each with their random quirks and uses. The gist of the story is ridiculous, but sets up a simple premise and foundation for the actual meat of the story to flourish: people possessing powerful abilities of animals to a superhuman degree, fighting equally superhuman cockroaches that are as big as humans.
It's definitely satisfying to watch the 6 crews struggle against cockroaches, and how the cockroaches always seem to one up their strategies despite being more primitive and less cunning.
Yet, even amidst this battle for survival, there are betrayals due to political allegiances, and a crew that had a good chance of fighting the cockroaches fall apart due to infighting, providing a good contrast to the bee-like hivemind that the cockroaches have, to the politically driven crews of Annex 1. Despite the story being ridiculous and the powers questionable, filled with plot holes, the political schemes on earth and the proxy wars on Mars definitely are built good enough to feel realistic, yet not too complicated that the action packed story feels dragged down by it.
Overall, a good story. Characters definitely could use some work, and showing the backstory of every other character is kind of unnecessary. There's definitely a formula of a character getting beat up in a life or death situation, them awakening their latent potential through a series of flashback sequences, and powering up and killing the cockroach enemy. I would have liked some more organic development and better chemistry amongst characters. Adolf's arc especially excruciatingly slow and painful to go through.
People say that the second season sucks compared to the first, but as a person that just watched both seasons consecutively, I've got to say, the animation definitely is better. By no means is the second season a masterpiece, but the first season had little to no good action sequences, and a lot of the fights are extremely unsatisfying to watch, the show utilizing a lot of tricks to abstract the fights. Compared to the second season, where yes, some fights are poorly made, but there are a decent number of fight choreography's that aren't choppy at all, and much better than the first season's. I liked the first season's cockroach CGI a lot better, and the details in the cockroach models in the second season only accentuate the poor CGI, as compared to the first, where it was simple, but served its purpose, and there was less of a contrast to the hand-animated characters. The story definitely takes a turn from survival to the aforementioned political proxy war, but that's also part of the manga, so if you don't like the plot, you also just don't like the original story, which is fine, but it's a faithful adaptation, to say the least.

The characters were quite engaging with their own unique personality traits, some serious, some perverted, some sad, and some angry, but each had their own reasons for signing up for the fight to defend earth, I love how the narrator would explain thoroughly each character's powers and how their strengths and weaknesses, as for the enemy I found it comical that they kept saying Joji, I now say that phrase quite often. at first they seem moronic but, as it gets well into the anime it is very clear, that they are very quick to adapt to changes and surroundings, as well as intelligence. But, ... that's all I will say about that part, overall, I found season two to be very inspiring.

I expected to not like this, but I was pleasantly surprised. I loved the first season for how dark it was, and the gripping story. When I watched the first ep of this I thought this was gonna be total shit, but after the first ep, it increased in quality and quickly picked up the pace.

The main issues everyone has with it is the change in animation. At first, I was quite surprised and really didn't like it, but after ep 1 it almost seemed like it reverted back to the old animation style. Personally except for ep 1, I had no problem with ... it. The fight scenes and action as the series progressed got better and better, and as the fight scenes got better, it started to feel more and more like the last season.

An issue I found was the second season lost a lot of the darkness and horror vibe that the first season had. A lot of the deaths in the first season had so much weight and chilling feel to them. I still can't get over the girl who killed herself in the fire cause she was so scared. Each ep was gripping and frightening, the terraformers were scary and disturbing, I felt none of that while watching this season. In fact, it felt a lot more like a shounen show than a thriller/horror.

Nevertheless I still very much enjoyed the show, and really enjoy the story. Even though a lot of this seasons story was about humans against humans, and I more enjoy the back story and culture of the terraformers, the story and motivations behind the humans were still very gripping.

And no, I will not talk about the end of the last episode

Terra Formars: Revenge


No matter what I had to go through here, I have to admit that this incredibly stupid simple concept still arouses my curiosity. I think far enough that I will also read the manga.

The second season of Terra Formars was almost as bad in quality and content as the first. Why the reviews differ so much is probably due to the content. Whereas much more happened in the first season, the second season just went around in circles and felt extremely empty and unnecessary. This is also due to the slow pacing. This season had neither animation, dynamics, tension nor atmosphere. What ... we were left with were relatively average backgrounds, Seven Deadly Frames animations and some of the most boring fights, against some of the most boring enemies there are.


[Story 3]

After the story was so far advanced, one wondered "Who are the traitors and what will develop?" Well, the traitors were more than obviously unmasked by episode 2. Honestly, they were even brought into relative focus by the end of the first season. But without their confirmation "Yes we are the traitors" which they said almost 10 times, the viewers wouldn't seem to understand it, shame on you viewers.

Otherwise, the plot just consisted of them reclaiming Annex 1 and fighting some more super bugs that are extremely hyped and completely defeated in the end.

[Characters 3] Flat, one-dimensional and boring. The only things I can credit here are some at least satisfying backgrounds and the characters' will to survive. Most of the characters here are either strong-willed, badass, wansinng or Joseph. And yes, Joseph escaped from a wrong shounen.

The protagonist here was one of the worst.

[Animations 4]

For the most part, they were just subpar. Except for minimal moments where more emphasis was placed on choreography. And again, there were moments where the level of 7 Deadly Frames was reached. One could take so many beautiful screenshots here.

[Music 5]

Osts were too rare, and they had hardly any quality anyway. The intro was bad and the outro average.

On the other hand, the second "Tera Formar" intro was relatively interesting musically. Surprised me that there were 2 alternating intros.


Conclusion

Only slightly weaker than the first season and in the end a relative waste of time, if you don't want to give such simple entertainment a chance. If you like senseless and clichéd carnage, I'd rather recommend season 1.

[Enjoyment 4]