Rewrite 2nd Season

Hmm...you know what this series needs? A rewrite. (Yes, I know that joke has been done to death already, but it's still fun to use.) Rewrite is a much anticipated adaptation of one of Key's most well-known visual novels that had mixed results. Its poor and attempts to compact the source material while trying to finish off its story with an anime original ending created polarizing feedback from those who watched it. So, for its second season, 8bit took another shot at the series and well...had about as much success as 8bit would have for these kinds of things.

Story: ... To summarize, Rewrite follows the story of Tennouji Koutarou and his quest to save the earth by aiding the Key, named Kagari, in her quest to understand humanity and save the world from its attempt at restarting itself. While doing this, Koutarou must fight the two factions known as Guardian and Gaia from 'saving humanity', which their methods entail destroying the Key and destroying the world respectively.

Rewrite is a very dense visual novel. Featuring 9 different routes, each of which hold a fraction of the overall story, it's no wonder where the problems of the series lie when trying to adapt roughly 100 hours of gameplay and textboxes in a grand total of 24 episodes over the course of two seasons. Focusing exclusively on the last two routes of the game, Moon and Terra, this season of Rewrite fixes a large portion of the problems the first season had, but also has similar pitfalls and wavers in quality in different ways.

As far as content goes, Key's doing what Key does best, and that's romantic visual novels that have a story pertaining to one individual learning about the world/themselves, usually with magic involved, while providing an overarching lesson to the player for them to think about once they're done with the game. Contrary to the first season, Moon/Terra feel a lot more concise and focused because it didn't have to do the background work that its predecessor had to fulfill. The entire runtime focuses solely on Koutarou and his growth on what he's trying to do in order to save the world, and while it does get a little messy at times, is something that's much better written than anything it was before. The plot gets a lot more serious, a lot of the pieces start falling into place better, and it's just overall a better story. That however doesn't say very much because being better in context to its previous season isn't a very high mark to surpass.

The biggest problem that stands out to me for Moon and Terra at the beginning is context and continuity. The anime thrusts the viewer in an unfamiliar scene and setting that, when continuing on from season 1, doesn't really click right away. Indeed, the series is beginning a new route, and thus a new story, but from the perspective of someone who hasn't played the visual novel and is going into the new season blind, this break in continuity hurts more than helps.

Another thing that doesn't help is pacing. Dense content, small time frame, pacing issues ensue. A lot of what this season is about is both personal and public conflict from either Koutarou or the rivaling factions. But due to how much conflict they need to show in order to get to the end properly, a lot of it feels meaningless. A character you learn/get to know about may be introduced in one episode then offed the next. There may be a dramatic showdown between two characters that have history with one another that ends in a flash before moving onto the next scene. The lack of proper pacing doesn't give the viewer time to let a person's death or a tragic event sink in, and that creates a lot less value in whatever trials may ensue. This problem plagues the whole show, and is even more so shown in the end of the series once again where it's clear that they were trying to show end by making scene after scene go by at a snap's notice.

Overall, Rewrite's story is another case of an adaptation that bit off more than it could chew. The sheer amount of content that needed to be told in such a small time frame muddled the story's philosophies about humanity and our place in this world and cut away a large majority of the story without much return. I really saw the potential for redemption in this second season, but there honestly isn't much I can say when it's clear that what was shown was only a fraction of the whole story.

Overview:
+ Interesting story/philosophies
- Hard break from the end of S1
- Some of the worst pacing I've seen (even by 8bit standards)
- Still difficult to understand for those who haven't played the visual novel

Characters: Characters take a dramatic shift in Moon/Terra. They take such a dramatic shift that it makes my job a lot easier since because everyone but the MC is a side character.

Tennouji Koutarou. The player character. The MC. The arbiter of the world who has lived through 9 different routes. Koutarou's character is the defining trait of Moon/Terra. Rather than focusing on the individual girls and largely the conflict between Guardian and Gaia, Koutarou takes up almost all of the series's runtime due to the sole fact that the entire series is told through internal monologue. We understand a lot more about Koutarou's thoughts and understand his actions a little more by hearing how he thinks, and this dramatic change in how the series writes itself in turn makes his struggle and his motivation a lot more personal and in-depth. However, he still suffers the same pitfalls as the story. Due to his character being so dense, the pacing made him feel incomplete, as a large portion of his decisions at the end of the series could come up to question. He's better, but there's still something missing. And the explanation as to why his powers work they way they do still aren't explained. Koutarou has definitely improved, but he's still far from being the complete character that he should be.

The rest of the cast, yes, the literal rest of the characters are all side characters that serve as wrenches to Koutarou's plans, characters who help influence Koutarou, or those who've watched the previous season will become familiar with. As far as they're concerned, they only help to move the story along. They're no longer a part of the main cast and have no real weight in the situation aside from being the puppeteers who help dictate what Koutarou will do in any given situation. They help shape the story, and that's a role they do very well. Beyond that however leaves a lot to be desired.

Overview:
+/- Koutarou is a lot better of a character (though not as good as he probably should be.)
+/- Side cast isn't impactful character-wise, but impactful story-wise

Art: 8bit comes again and mimics the Key style very well. Using the same style that they did in the first season, Rewrite comes back with a mix of Key's normal style with a touch of CGI in order to make those monsters feel like they seriously don't belong in this series.

Art looks like Key's, CGI is still kinda jarring to look at, animation for the fight scenes are semi-fluid, and the quality is standard fare. Nothing really spectacular, but nothing that looks terrible either.

Overview:
+/- Decent art
- Stop using CGI. It looks awful.

Sound: While Key works usually have great, memorable OSTs to coincide with their works, Rewrite doesn't really have the same feel. Admittedly the tracks aren't pushovers, and Terra's OP in particular has the sense of urgency that coincides with Koutarou's journey to try and fulfill his duty. They're just not anything that I would regard as a memorable track that I could listen to on repeat.

Personal Enjoyment: I'm a firm believer that you don't need to read or know about the source material before watching an adaptation. An adaptation should be able to stand on its own merits, and should instead be another medium that you can watch the story through. As someone who went into Rewrite's adaptation blind, I can safely say that I have no idea what the fuck is going on. I had to do my own research of the story in order to get any handle as to what in god's name I was watching, and doing that entails that the adaptation didn't adapt the source material correctly, and in my eyes, is considered as a failed adaptation.

Did I like this anime?

I didn't like it. While I admit the content was good and Key's adaptations are things that I'm a fan of, its piss poor pacing ruined any form of enjoyment that I may have had from this anime.

What didn't I like about it?

Pacing. Damn you pacing! Aside from that, I'm not really a big fan of Gaia's ultimate plan because it really doesn't make any sense. Saving the world by offing humanity, and there are many, MANY people who are ok with that concept/idea. That doesn't really make sense to me.

Would I recommend this anime?

Honestly, I can't see myself recommending this to people, even if they've played the visual novel. The pacing screws up a lot of its content that I honestly feel like the show could use more than a few passes on how the story should be executed. It may be a joke that Rewrite needs a rewrite, but there are so many problems with it that it honestly could really use one.

This is a massive improvement from first season. I didn't expect this to improve that much to be honest, and, while still has many flaws, shows how an anime studio can learn, even if it's just a bit, from its mistakes.

Disclaimer: I didn't played the VN so i'll review this, as i did with the first season, as an anime-only viewer.

The story adapts the Moon and Terra routes from the VN and because of that this season is clearly split in two parts: Moon route (3 episodes) and Terra route (8 episodes)
The Moon route is rather confusing at first showing as memories a lot of ... scenes from previous rutes that i didn't know because the first season adaptation was total bullshit. Because of that, i didn't care about the main heroines and anything related to them because they are barely developed in the first season, but still act as we know things about them. Fortunately, the entire show focus around the relationship of Kotarou and Kagari which were the only characters worth something in S1, both in Moon and Terra routes, despite being very different each other, while still related.

Moon was very short and its last episode felt again extremely rushed again forbiding the arc to have a pleasant ending after the first 2 good episodes. However, in Terra finally Rewrite fixes its incredible problem with the pacing. The pacing is smooth and enjoyable, being the entire arc pretty solid with an interesting development by Kotarou, who was a pretty lame and childish character in S1. Plus, the fact the main heroines not being present in the plot avoids major plot holes to the arc, that has a just fine ending which is appreciated in a series with such a complex thematic like Rewrite.
However, Terra is not flawless. Some secondary characters felt like they have a major character arc but they left it absolutely incomplete. Also, some pacing problems to explain some things are present too. These flaws are present during all the series but they are not as blatant as in S1, thankfully.

The character focus in this S2 is Kotarou in almost its entirety. He was a pretty beta VN main character in S1 but the pathos presented in the Terra arc made him an at least bidimensional character who makes appropiate decisions (and i'm not talking about his power). His behavior is believable too, being a grown and mature character which is rare in an anime of this kind and even in anime nowadays. Not perfect, but hey.

The animation is average to good. The CGI is very bad and action scenes can feel anti-climatic because of that but 2D animations is just fine, like first season, maybe a bit better. The sound is good, with the soundtrack and seiyuu's perfomance being quite nice. Nothing wrong with that.

Overall, Rewrite 2nd Season learnt from its predecessor. Maybe it's because they are straightforward routes, maybe because they are just better routes, or maybe they are just better adapted. No incredibly well adapted, but the pacing is WAY better. And this alone can make this show potable by its own.

So the review will contain SPOILERS. Avoid if haven't seen the anime. So the first and second episodes were a mess for me. I had to look at summary on Wikipedia to fully understand it. Third one is slightly better at first but got worse. Fourth onwards the series gets better until last two. Last two episodes were understandable but it throws character development and logic out in the water. The ending is worse. Kagari dies at the end as kotarou was late to save the world destruction, Again. It completely destroys the need for Kotarou to kill Esaka. He could have killed Kagari at ... the beginning as he had to kill her at the end. He betrays everyone, kills his mentor and gamble humanity just to touch Kagari boobs. He becomes a monster at the end. He becomes completely unlikable at the end as he betrays everyone but nothing happens at the end. The art is nice and no problems for me. Sound is good for most of the part. I only enjoyed episodes 4-9 and they are fine. Many are angry as the first and second season were not a harem anime but I didn't mind it.

Second season was definitely better than the first one. The character development was better in the main character.
I do not recommend to watch second season unless you have seen already first one, and want to see the development with your own eyes.

To me, the anime was confusing. This is one of those anime's , that you need to watch twice to understand it. In my opnion, this anime however IS NOT worth watching twice. It wasn't interesting enough.

The music in the anime was disapointing. Yes, it was...ok. I was rather bothered however to the fact that the same music was in the season 1.

The ... song in the OP was ok too. It wasn't that original compared to other anime's.
OP animation however, was striking to the eye. It was better than in the season 1.

The animation style in the anime over all...it didn't fit in my head to the story of the anime.

Re-write season 2 takes on a darker twist, where all that character building, development, etc that came in season 1, is not needed for season 2.

Initially, we see the key trying to find one path which will work to save the earth, but none seems to be found, as our MC simulates part of the original material by going through various situations where he is married, has kids with different members of the season 1 cast with the same end for the world


Bext, we see our MC is back with a new personality, molded a different way in his attempt to save the ... world, and he seems to want to start early on fixing the problems, without actually doing anything directly beneficial for the environment.

So what we end up with is a boy leaving home, honed to train his special powers, and coming back into a different timeline process to try and save the world, After further building a base group when sent out as a mercenary, the roots of his plan take hold, not choosing one side to save, but summoners and superhumans alike, who are being used for war.

he comes back and tries to set the two rival groups against each other, but at stages, his soft heart can be seen to be a drawback as he set organization against itself, by working both sides against each other.. At the same time, he has a little personality or cares for other people, as if he knows this is a one-way mission and people are just in the way.

It's a darker season than the first but equally valid if it gets the job done in his eyes. He knows he is drawn to the key, but he doesn't know why, or hold the memories she possesses, of all the things she put him through, and how would break any normal person's mind.

The approach brings more tragedy in his attempts to save the world, with his love for the key being what he discovers, Again not exactly the happy story or ending many will want, but the truth is due to the nature of the key, they could keep making these seasons til people get bored if they want that ultimate harem ending, or the two favorite characters together as the first few episodes worked on.

To me it was something different and it wasn't all about keeping the characters people like alive