Machikado Mazoku: 2-choume

A very solid continuation of a great first season. Season 2 builds on it’s foundation well by maintaining the strong cast of characters and ultra speed comedy while continuously moving the overall plot forward every episode. Season 2 spends its first half expanding on the lore of the town as well as progressing Shamiko’s abilities. The second half ends up being slightly more general slice of life but the episodes are more segmented in less smaller but equally as overarching goals e.g maintaining Momo’s tether to the light side and working on Mikan’s curse. This separates Machikado from a good amount of CGDCT shows because ... it feels equal parts purposeful and silly, makin for a very enjoyable viewing experience.

The cast is great. Just like in season 1 all of the characters, even the inconsequential ones, have great chemistry and put on a wonderful vocal performance. The comedy in this show never slows down. Visually and vocally, quips and gags are relentless in their onslaught and yet it never comes across as overwhelming. Momo and Shamiko continue to have wonderful chemistry together with their opposite personalities melding together in wonderful harmony as their friend- erm- rivalry grows ever stronger. Other characters are given more time in the spotlight this season as well. Mikan in particular takes up a good amount of screen time and works well as an element of chaos. She plays more of a grounded motherly role but this is circumvented by her subconscious quirks which work their way into her every action, making for a surreal variant of natural comedy. I really like the gags where she tries to add citrus flavor to food and the other characters have to hide it from her, it’s little things like this flow naturally into character interactions and make the show more enjoyable.

My only complaint is a result of the fast pacing that I also happened to consider a major plus. I general it keeps things flowing nice and light but this does cause a minor drawback in the back quarter of the show. The final conflict ends up being resolved in the span of an episode and a half but this could have been stretched out into two with greater impact. It could be because it mirrors the final conflict of the first season almost exactly but I still would have preferred if they spent a bit more time on it because as it is it feels rushed (they even have a gag about how rushed it is).

Season 2 manages to easily maintain the momentum it had built in season 1 and cements itself as one of the better modern slice of life comedies

Machikado delivers yet again for season 2 with great episodes from start to finish and picks up where season 1 had left off from.

Season 2 not only has the light hearted comedy and demon girl/magical girl shenanigans it has the plot development the fans have been waiting 5 whole years for and boy was it worth the wait. Each episode went by so quickly and before you knew it the season came to a close.

So what do we get this season compared to season 1? we get to see Shamiko develop her powers more, we get to learn more about Mikan and Momo and ... even some new side characters are added into the mix.

Since the first season this show has always done a great job of mixing comedy directly into it's fantasy world building. It's a world where nobody questions a girl suddenly growing horns and a tail or the magical girl in the next class over. In this season we see the continuation of a plot thread introduced near the end of season 1 about Momo's sister who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, as well as figuring out how to cure Mikan of the bad luck curse she's got.

The comedy is very fast paced, as is most of the dialogue in general. It's the sort of show where ... a lot of the jokes might pass you right by the first time if you're not paying very close attention. I think for that it might have a lot of rewatch value for the type of people who like to rewatch things. There's a bit less emphasis on just beating up on Shamiko the whole time, in fact letting Momo be the butt of a lot more jokes this season. She probably deserves it, I always felt she was a bit on the evil side from the beginning, taking advantage of how naive our poor protagonist is.

Character growth feels slow, and the second half of the season kind of drags a bit with a lot of the same jokes just sort of being repeated. There were a lot of 'side quest' sort of things in the story that seemed sort of pointless, but in the very last episode they managed to tie most of them together in a sort of interesting way. Basically they needed a bunch of random stuff for a spell and it was stuff they all already had because of the side adventures they'd been doing. Convenient.

Overall I think I enjoyed the first season more, as it felt like it had a bit clearer direction and focus. The show was still funny, but it somehow just didn't live up to my hype and expectation for when the season was announced. Overall, 7/10