Trinity Seven Movie 2: Heavens Library to Crimson Lord

tl;dr: A sequel film to main series that is the best so far in terms of romance and action, though it’s also incredibly rushed.

Just like the previous film, this film too is a sequel to the main series, but for real this time. Unlike the previous film, this one is based on content from the manga and is thus not anywhere near being filler. Thus, this is actually a direct sequel to the previous film that picks up where the main series left off, though it’s so rushed it may not feel like it.

This film drops you straight into the action, completely skipping how they ... got there. I thought it might have been an in media res, but nope, you’re just sort of expected to pick things up from context clues as things proceed. To put it simply, the plot of the film is that a demon lord from another world, Abyss Trinity, has come to replace Arata and destroy his world and Arata and the rest of the cast need to defeat him. The more intricate details to this plot arise from that Abyss Trinity is actually Lilith’s father who can kind of take control of her, Akio’s past being deeply connected to Abyss Trinity’s previous appearance, and because Arata originally is nowhere near strong enough to defeat Abyss Trinity and thus basically has to grow stronger incredibly quickly in order to match him. The beginning of the plot is somewhat confusing, but eventually it’s not that hard to pick up what’s going on, though the fact that it’s skipping things does drag things down in other areas. Still, while the overtly fast pacing is a problem, things being mostly intense from beginning to end fits the plot pretty well and is a reasonable way to handle a film. How it manages to throw in some good comedy and romance portions in the midst of all that was also somewhat impressive.

The action is also I would say the best out of all the anime adapted portions so far. The fight between Arata and Abyss Trinity is great and the random battles outside of that were good too. Watching Arata power up was also pretty satisfying, though, the fact that elements of this were rushed does drag this down a bit. Arata has powers at the start of this film that he didn’t have as of the end of the previous film. I’m not even sure where it skipped him getting these powers, so him just suddenly having those powers feels kind of abrupt. But even more than that, the system to how his powers work wasn’t there as of the last film, and that system is crucial for how his powers work in this film work, so as that was never explained in the anime it’s also kind of confusing. Still, if you’ve been paying attention and remember how it was explained that Hijiri’s powers worked in the main series it shouldn’t be too much of an issue to extrapolate that to how Arata’s powers work here, though if you don’t it’ll probably be somewhat confusing or feel kind of random.

The romance also feels like some of the best so far, with strong relationship development with Lilith, Lieselotte, and Akio. Lilith and Lieselotte are the main heroines in the film and in turn get a lot of good scenes with Arata that naturally move their relationship forward. There’s not really any character development in either of those two, but Arata does go through some noticeable character growth at the end due to his bond with Lilith who also has some strong character development. The situation with Akio is more complex, in that Arata’s bond with Akio clearly does grow much stronger over the course of the film and she has some great moments, but it feels like there are things the film was clearly skipping or had already skipped before the start regarding that, and thus as it feels like some context is missing and thus her portions overall simply don’t land as well. There were also some minor issues with context missing on other characters, such as Lugh.

Art and animation wise, it’s similar to the previous film, wherein it’s basically at about the level of the best parts from the main series but consistently. The soundtrack actually had new tracks though with a number of new good ones. It also brought back some good old tracks in somewhat unexpected ways, such as one of the EDs from the main series as an insert song. The credit roll song is also really great.

This movie is better than the first because this show has an actual development of the main story, but, for my surpriese, the later has less of what makes Trinity Seven a good show (at least in the manga, the anime has much more fan service), and that is the good chemistry between all the characters. Trinity Seven is a very good harem, slice of life, but not a good action shonen, despite some pretty good ideas.
The movie dont have a clear continuation with the series or the previous movie, what make the entire film a little episodic, and the fact that the villan is ... the father has no effect in the story, and that would actually make a good story about the conflict of father and future lover, but it was totally wasted, and despite get knowing Akio's past, the effect on the plot or characters is near zero too, except for one or two good moments.
But, even with this problems, the movie would be pretty much enjoyable, deserving a 6/10, but then we have to talk about the last and greatest problem: the quality is a piece of shit. The direction, the animation and above all, the inexistent ost. The soundtrack is took from the many endings of the TV show, and dont help to create any other atmosphere except agitation, like, "oh boy, here it go!".

If you are looking for fanservice, it was the only thing that has a good quality. Kidding, the fights are not bad too. The voice acting i good as always, at least. How i really like the characters and the inicial charpters of the series are memorable, i really wanted to love the movies...but no, and since the second part of the TV show, it is getting repetitive.

A few weeks ago, my friend from class told me he wanted to go see this movie. Knowing nothing of the series we decided to watch it in theaters the day of its release. Having seen movies like ordinal scale and made in abyss in theaters, I expected a lot, because I'd imagine paying any amount of money to see an anime once for an hour, it should be pretty great. It wasn't, the entire plot felt rushed, had no idea what was going on half the time. The production values seem like they were spent on one ecchi scene, and ... one fight scene. I completely understand fans of the show will enjoy seeing new content or whatever, but as an outsider to the series, I was baffled that they would expect me to enjoy watching this.