Ajin Part 2

No spoil in this review. The review is the same for both seasons. But the notation differs on only 2 points.

The first season makes you discover a world where Ajin (immortal human) are maltreated by human. It's well done, not too long early, and understandable.
At this moment, you can think that the moral of the story is that maltreating people only because they are different is bad (racism is bad, simple but true moral).

A war is declared between Ajin and human. Exterminate people which don't like you isn't that much better than maltreating. Then you can think that you mustn't confuse with love, respect and ... fear, and the war will only create fear. The peace can be established but the result isn't good because of the use of a bad method.

These 2 axes of moral aren't developed at all. Why ?
Because the huge PROBLEM with this whole anime is the MAIN CHARACTER :
the main character is totally egocentric. For him, there is him, and the rest of the world. He said 3 times : "I just want to live peacefully my life". That clearly means "the humanity can die, I don't care if I can peacefully live my life".
There is no time where you appreciate the main character, because he isn't acting like a hero but like an ***hole. This kind of character can't pass a good moral (or it's totally artificial and even him doesn't respect it).

With all theses critics, why I give 7/10 to Ajin s1 and 5/10 for Ajin s2 ?
Because of the legendary fight present in the middle of the s1. This fight is a MUST SEE. Otherwise, there is no reason to continue to watch Ajin.
It's also because of the presence of the unpleasant secondary and useless characters. The second season is really less pleasant to watch.

For people who see the whole season 2, it's serious the end of the fight ?

This second season was, like its predecessor, a mixed bag. We're still left with sub-par artwork and iffy characterization, but with that comes a (somewhat) competently-executed story and solid soundwork. Read on to see the Deets!

[Story - 7]

This continues from the last season - Sato's antics to get the government to pay attention to Ajin ramp up in scale, and Tosaki + co. find themselves working alongside Kei to stop him. I was genuinely surprised and pleased, as I thought it would be a three-sided battle - but seeing how the government can co-operate with the more 'pacifistic' type of Ajin was truly great.

While ... there weren't many genuinely shocking twists and turns, there was a lot of good suspense and personal drama mixed in. I'll cover this more below, but some characters actually even got a well-realized arc! The two storylines I mentioned in the last review came together rather splendidly here, and I'm glad the writers were able to (mostly) pull it off.

Interestingly enough, the ending left a fairly intriguing cliffhanger for Polygon to potentially make a third season, but I think it will have to depend on how they survive the backlash from the fans.

[Art - 5]

The artwork.......mostly stayed the same, but some of the action involving humans looked better. I don't really have much to add in this aspect.

[Sound - 7]

Soundwork was still solid - I have no idea why they put two OP's into one cour, but whatever, they're both good. The ED is just as spectacular, while the rest of the score is lackluster but fitting. The SFX + voice acting has gotten better - Kei sounds a bit more believable as an arrogant teen, Sato is a delight to watch, etc. etc.

[Character - 6]

Here's the real meat-and-bones of the review! God, this was the mixed bag in the mixed bag alright - some characters have absolutely nothing going for them and some blossom rather well.

Starting with the negative - it's truly annoying that a good number of the Ajins shown don't really......grow - Ko doesn't change at all from being a headstrong (but caring) kid, Sato's still fun to watch but we learn nothing of his motives or ideology, and Tanaka is still his empty-head right-hand man, even if appearing to doubt him at times. It was a bit annoying honestly.....hopefully in the future of both the manga and the anime (if it gets a third season), we'll see them receive more fleshing out.

However, there is good to be found in this season - for starters, Kei gets paid his dues here. At first it seems like he'll continue to be the Smarter Than Thou teenager with apathetic tendancies, but he soon learns the worth of having actual relationships and values. By the end, he's grown into a fine young man who can be trusted by /Tosaki/. Other notable character arcs include the respective duo of Izumi and Tosaki - their dynamic fluctuates a lot, but they ultimately realize that they're both respectable and upstanding people who they want to be with. I wouldn't want it to be in a romantic light, but I wouldn't be opposed to it in the future.

[Enjoyment/Overall - 6]

Overall? Not too bad! It's a stronger second half in terms of story and characterization, but mostly stays the same otherwise. Same recommendation here: Continue if you're someone who doesn't care about the art and just wants some good plot and characters.

I reviewed the first series of Ajin two years ago. It was okay but suffered from being under-developed in general and from having artwork that was bad enough to be detrimental. So, when we left off our antagonist, Satou, had gathered a group of Ajin in order to perform acts of terrorism under the guise of trying to win rights for their people. And our protagonist, Kei, had narrowly escaped capture along with another Ajin.
 
Story:
We open with a brief recap of what happened in the last series. You know, in case someone decides to watch the second series without having seen the first. Satou unveils ... his intention to assassinate a list of people who he accuses of being involved with experiments performed on Ajin. Meanwhile, Kei comes to the conclusion that he can't beat Satou on his own and decides to join up with Tosaki and the group who spent the last series hunting him. 
The biggest flaw with this one isn't that they rush from big plot point to big plot point without regard for things like pacing or developing their scenario.

The biggest issue with this one is that, in the first half, very little happens. Kei and his companion join with the group trying to hunt Satou and then they spend a lot of time talking about how they should catch him while we cut to him either murdering one of his targets, bragging about murdering one of his targets or making plans to murder one of his targets. While I appreciate them trying to develop their situation a bit better, the execution is more than a little tedious.

And then when they finally get moving halfway into the series, it goes right back to rushing through plot developments. It's like they can't find a happy medium and the result is going from one extreme to another. 

Once again, the series has some good ideas buried beneath the flaws in the execution. The bits where Kei tries to connect with his sister and his old friend, Kaito, are pretty good. Although they still haven't given any compelling reason for Kei's friendship to mean so much to Kaito. The parts where they explore Shimomura's back story and why she has such a strong sense of loyalty towards Tosaki are pretty strong. The element of giving both sides of the conflict legitimate reasons for fighting breaks down a bit which actually results in questions over whether or not the conflict is worth it and multiple characters deciding it isn't. Which I can appreciate. At least the series doesn't fully Flanderize one side and just decide they're all evil now. 

Characters:
I'll continue to give the series credit for mostly having characters with realistic motivations and personalities that have enough to them to ring true. This series does run into a bit of a problem, however. In order to continue Kei's ongoing conflict against Satou, they start showing a selfless side to Kei's character. Which really doesn't mesh with anything we've seen from him before and there's not really a compelling reason for the change. It's like they needed him to be less self-centred and more moral in order for the plot to work and, instead of developing his character in that direction naturally they just changed it. 

Art:
The artwork continues to be pretty bad. This is a case where you might be able to make the art style work for a comedy. Gdgd Faeries has worse artwork than this, for example. But, when you're trying to have a more serious dramatic work, art like this really detracts from it. Having characters move in stilted, awkward ways, including one unintentionally hilarious moment where people are supposed to be fleeing in terror but look like they're trying to have a dance flash mob, really lessens the impact and makes it difficult to have a real sense of gravity in the situation. 

Sound:
The acting continues to be a strong point. Miyano Mamoru, Ootsuka Houchuu, Komatsu Mikako and Sakurai Takahiro are all solid actors. We're talking solid enough to manage to convey things in spite of having no help from the artwork in quite a few cases. Kanno Yugo's music is pretty strong as well. 

Ho-yay:
All we have in terms of romantic content is hetero-normative. None of the same sex dynamics come across as romantic. 

Final Thoughts:
Like the first series, this one is okay. If the artwork wasn't distractingly bad, I might go so far as to call it good. But as is, I'll give it a 6/10. If you can tolerate the art, and the pacing issues aren't going to bother you too much you might enjoy it. 

Initially, when I saw the release of season 2, I was stoked. Don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of really good parts that get your heart racing in Ajin.

You see drastic changes among characters whereas others seem to never change. It gets frustrating. Fortunately, it is only 12 episodes therefore there is not much room for filler.

I think the first season did Ajin justice, but this season was off. The ending felt sloppy and not properly executed. I'm really not sure what direction they were trying to take Ajin in. The one thing they did a good job about is the soundtrack ... as well as the fights.

I loved first season of ajin. However, second season for some reason didn't really "click" for me.

Basically, I pretty much finished the first season in one sitting, and it was an amazing non-stop adrenaline-fueled chase. 2nd season in comparison lookked much more bland, and something was amiss in it, even though the components of the story should've been here.

Detailed breakdown below:
Story. The season is pretty much an attempt to wrap up events of the 1st season involving the main antagonist. It is a continuous string of events, with no breaks, however, in comparison to the first season pacing feels really slow and the story lacks ... the same kind of punch. Most of the time things just kinda keep going in certain direction, story advances, but it rarely strongly surprises you.

Art:
Same CG-based style as before, however this time around quality feels very uneven. There were few short scenes where animation felt like it was running at 4 fps instead of usual 12 (it is no pixar movie, and running at half framerate is one way to mimic anime feel). However on couple of occasions the anime experimented too much with adding textures to surfaces or secondary light sources, and those short moments felt out of place and didn't match the rest of the visuals. Basically, it looked worse than Sidonia no Kishi, in my opinion, although mostly the art is tolerable. Izumi is as cute as always and her visual feel strangely mismatched compared to the rest of the people in the show.

Sound:
The amazing battle theme from the first season is still here running in the background, but it is underutilized. The choice of music for opening and the ending is very strange, to the point where ending song reminds me intro from Niya under 7 (meaning coarse, almost husky voice singing). It is nowhere close to the powerful impact of the theme in the first season, where music captured you since the first frame and kept you watching it.

Characters:
Protagonist occasionally does a strange flip between his usual cold attitude and "I'm scared" mode which feels VERY out of place. Characters don't really develop much over time, and mostly act according to their assigned "role". They don't really feel like much of a characters, and more like objects in the story, only occasionally falling into some sort of stereotype. Overall, I had a feeling that the story tried to do something similar with Patlabor or Ghost in the SHell movies, which had huge conspiracies, corruption, complicated political plots, etc, but in the end it does not really work well, and less believable.

Enjoyment:
I didn't hate it, but I liked the first season much more.

Overall:
it feels rather bland compared to the first season. Might be worth watch if you want to see continuation of the story or if you want to see Izumi Shimomura again, but that's about it. Busou Renkin, which I recently watched, had much larger impact for me, and I'm not even a shounen fan.

So, worth a watch, but don't expect too much from it.

Man season 1 was ok overall, the mc was morally grey but i thought hed get some character improvement and all that in this season but... lets just say ive never gotten this frustrated and pissed while watching anime before, probably because of how apathetic the main character was about other people's death, and also because he only used other people for his own advantage despite said people having saved his life before, all mc could think about was him and him and himself only, im on 11 eps already but i got too pissed to continue the anime but its such a waste of ... time to not finish it at this point. I dont know, maybe im just too much of an emphatetic person to enjoy watching such emotionless character(s) lol.

You should just read the manga to continue the story honestly. The anime adaptation is good and all, but the story and choices in the anime is wonky. The ending was quite rushed and it feels like the characters were watered down. You should just read the manga to continue the story honestly. The manga will feel a lot more grounded and expands on the characters a bit more. Especially on one of the characters the anime felt was leading up to something, or to just do nothing with it. The anime was made before the manga chapters were made though, so you get ... pretty much 2 stories.

*No Spoilers*
This review is for Part 2 of the anime, Ajin: Demi-Human.

Summary:
Ajin: Demi-Human is an anime based on Gaimon Sakurai’s manga of the same name. This review is for Part 2 of the series, which strays completely from the source material and is far inferior to the original contentl. Ajin: Demi-Human takes place in modern society, except some people have the power to regenerate after they die. The story is intense and posits many questions about persecution and social challenges. Overall, the anime is an excellent sci-fi story. This story is definitely dark, so it may not be suitable for younger anime fans or anyone ... looking to try anime for the first time.

Story: 4/10
The plot of the story is unique and intriguing: It takes elements of sci-fi and modern society to illustrate a witch hunt or persecutory mentality. The world-building is effective in presenting the society in which the characters live, and the plot is influenced by the characters’ decisions, making the story more worthwhile. In addition, there are some pretty funny jokes in this anime. Part 2 has an engaging, suspenseful plot, although the main character’s behaviors are even more jarring than in Part 1. Additionally, the finale of Part 2 feels extremely rushed, and (no spoilers) the powers that the main character loses and gains control over aren’t fleshed out well. This anime is not closely based of the manga source material, and it shows.

Art: 6/10
The art style is fitting for the story. The detail in the background is average, and the “monsters” are well-adapted from the manga. Overall, the anime maintains the dark and harsh art of the manga. I especially enjoyed the detail in the characters’ facial expressions.

Sound: 6/10
The background music is fitting and the voice acting is sufficient. The ending song for Part 2 is phenomenal.

Character: 3/10
One of the challenges with the show is the inconsistencies with the main character. Many of the side characters have more telling dialogue and behaviors, whereas Kei Nagai seems unpredictable, particularly in Part 2. His patterns are also more sporadically based on the plot in Part 2 which makes the story trickier to follow. The support characters tend to be more interesting, relatable, and develop more consistently than Kei. They are fleshed out nicely in Part 2. Overall, the characters are average because the main character weighs down the support characters. The characters do pale in comparison to their counterparts in the manga.

Enjoyment: 5/10
This was a Netflix anime that I actually enjoyed because of its dark premise and themes. Although the story itself diverged completely from the manga, it is still fun to watch and quite suspenseful. The biggest challenge was how the final episode felt rammed together and rushed.

Overall: 4.8/10
This is an anime that has an exciting plot, but the main character weighs it down. Overall, I believe it is of above-average quality.