Moshi Juexing: Suyuan

This donghua was reviewed after watching all 3 currently released parts (season 1 part 1, part 2 and season 2). So I will review this from that perspective.

Note for entire series: I don't know who did the directing and cutting, but this donghua should have been split into: Season 1 - 28 episodes, Season 2 - 24 episodes. This is because Season 1 cuts off randomly in the middle of an event with no real conclusion.

Please note this is season 2, so this review may contain some spoilers for season 1, and the first two episodes of should really belong to season 1.

Plot Summary: After ... the destruction of Rabid Dog Slum and their subsequent escape, Mason and his group head to an abandoned lab of DS to find stablizers for Ling who suffers from side effects as an "Angel Assassin". Once they arrive at the abandoned DS lab, they find out that it has been converted by purged, former employees of DS (following a resistance raid) into a "Scrap Yard Town", run by a former subordinate of Mason. Mason and his group decide to rest here for the time being, only to find out that the facade of "Scrap Yard Town" is hiding darker secrets and involvement with the DS experiments from 5 years ago.

The plot of this season has a dramatic shift from the previous season. While the first season was focused on Mason waking up to the calling and working to grasp ahold of his destiny, this season is focused on breaking free from the past and fighting against the authoritarianism of DS. This season is really interesting, with all the sci-fi AI, scheming for the experiements, and inception (memory recall) type elements. The only complaint I had for this season was the romantic subplot, though it made sense with the final punchline. There were some problems with characters though, since a bunch of supposedly "dead" characters got revived, making their previous deaths seem irrelevant and even calling into question what happened in the end of the of the season as no one ever seems to really die. At the end, there was a clear hook for a potential new season that has me interested in a new season should it happen.

All the named characters are back in this season, Mason and crew that escaped from Rabid Dog village, and even those that were killed in Season 1 all showed up at some point. While the revival of some characters showcased some of he tech in the world, unfortunately it decreases the impact or meaning of death in the series. The characters themselves are quite interesting though, with a wide range of personalities, goals and motivations making for an interesting world.

The animations and character models have been updated for this season, though not by much, since they look pretty much the same. While most of the general animation and shootouts had nice, smooth and exciting animation, the melee fights and chase scenes were really lacking. There were also a few scenes that had poor distance perception rendering, but overall, the quality of the animation was good.

I enjoyed this season more than the previous one since this season did a much better job of building the world. There were also more sci-fi elements and much more of the world is explained. This season falls more under the sci-fi than the post apocolyptic genre that the previous season would suggest. This season can be watched without the first season (if you discount the first 2 episodes) because most of the relevant S1 stuff is flashed back to before it becomes relevant. This season also wraps up everything well, unlike S1 which cuts off wierdly. A good watch, in my opinion, if you like this genre of donghua.