Kyoukai Senki Part 2

With such a childish portrayal of death and war that it could only be tailored for a younger audience, yet such a focus on political intrigue and military drama I find myself asking: Who the hell is this for? I was not a big fan of the first season of this show, and was less than enthusiastic about having to watch more of it. The only thing that brought me back was my completionist mentality leading me to attempt a MAL 100% speedrun (so far my splits leave a lot to be desired.)

The show spends a good chunk of it's opening act on this obnoxious ... "I killed someone, and killing is always bad so I need to feel bad" subplot. I get that he's still basically just a kid, but he's fighting a war, what did he expect? This is why I mentioned the incredibly childish outlook on death and war. It's one of my biggest pet peeves in fiction, the philosophy that killing is never justified. It may ultimately come down to a difference in theology, eastern religions teaching the no killing philosophy far more prominently and it just being so deeply ingrained in the culture while the Christianity that developed most modern western culture is pretty clear on retribution for the unrepentant. When that guy admits that he's going to continue being evil if Amou doesn't kill him, it annoys me so much that the show still treats Amou killing him as a bad thing somehow. It was objectively the right thing to do in that situation, and the amount of time they have him spend feeling sorry for himself doesn't make any sense.

The rest of the season is full of plotting and scheming boring political stuff that just went right through my brain, not bothering to stick around past the end of each episode. Convoluted military double crosses just don't make for good entertainment in my mind. It's only possible to make those sorts of complex stories any fun for me if they're grounded in characters that I care about having real stakes in what's going on. And therein lies the real problem, the fact that I just don't care about any of these characters. The protagonist, as established, is a whiny teenager with no redeeming qualities and his friends Angst and The Girl One aren't any better. The rest feel like side characters but end up getting all the screen time anyway. Again I just have to wonder who this was for.

Hard to get through, 5/10

So, not long after Part 1's airing and release 6 months back in Fall, we're back again with Part 2 a.k.a the 2nd Split-Cour of Sunrise Beyond's new mecha series that I mentioned in my Part 1 review, was to continue being a cash-cow for more Bandai Gunpla merchandise amidst an overly-convoluted story that has too many elements working against each other. So with Part 2 being the continuation of the set-up that was for Part 1, how is the entire series in general of its complete 25-episode run? In a word: so-so.

All I can say about Part 2, is that you should've been caught ... up with last Fall's 13-episode run that shows a futuristic post-war Japan being split and divided into different military factions, and this terrorist group Yatagarasu fighting for a liberated Japan that is back to its harmonious routes with this 16 year old boy Amou Shiiba finding an autonomous AI leading the charge. This is the understanding so far with Part 1, and Part 2 makes good on that premise by honouring the United Nations-like premise of the military finally having brains to converge together for an alliance, knowing intentions and aligning with enemies to forge a new Japan together, where only one large enemy remains in the way while still giving much more emphasis to the yet-untold behind-the-scenes story that adds more lore into the series as a whole. Mainly the creation of the AMAIM program, its creators and how they're side-swiped by the only big force (the NAC: North American Coalition) enough to plan ahead before progress got far, and that being reason enough for the smaller military forces to join hands with Yatagarasu and work together to once and for all, free Japan in a puppet state in disorientation. At least this feels like a much better and decent resolution for the build-up in Part 1 that was at times, unremarkable and un-noteworthy at best.

I've also complained about Amou's character development in Part 1 as a young adult whom has no backbone, and as you would expect, Part 2 vindicates his character growth through the explanation into his whole PTSD episode of reasoning. That, and which Amou has seemingly and dramatically "come back from the dead" in a solid fashion, is also telling of his once, cowardly behaviour that is also much improved. At most certainly, his character transformation is only done through plot, but since this is the 2nd part of the story, there needs to be a closure to his personal story that at the start, feels maligned to the point of a gone-case nut. The other characters do get significant improvements from their ambitions to everything surrounding their circumstances, but the sad case is that this is a self-contained story, and thus, also needs a resolution somehow. And although this isn't the best outcome, it's the best that they could've done, and for that I respect the improvements made in aiding more character development, but that's just about the extent of a larger-than-life story that's meant to showcase much more.

Reluctantly, it's clear that the split-part/cour format is the new trend going around in anime production to better weigh people against time, and making anime isn't as easy as you'd think. It's obvious that the studio was given another 3 months to work things out to refine of what's left with the show before the Spring release, and that I'd say was just the same as Part 1, so it's fine. I'd think that Part 2's OST was a step down from Part 1, I'd appreciate Yu-Na Fukinbara's Part 1 ED more than Part 2's OP for a decent song, all things considered. For the ED, Natumi.'s ED song "pARTs" is nothing special, but some will identify that the music feels somewhat different, and that's because the song is composed by none other than SawanoHiroyuki, whom if you watched shows like 86, his background music is very telling of similar beats.

All in all, Kyoukai Senki a.k.a AMAIM: Warrior at the Borderline as a series, my opinion still stands from the very beginning that it's the parent company Sunrise's efforts at branching off the Gundam franchise to find new ways to market more Gunpla, because of the company's strong connections to Bandai Spirits, and unfortunately there's no way around it. The entire show itself, you can take it or leave it, but in the end, it's just a farce of a marketing ploy that takes precedence over the show's quantity and quality to hide the fact that it's one BIG advertisement, and a mediocre attempt at that overall. Definitely not a good series and would be easily forgotten as when it first came.

Part 1 of Kyoukai Senki was agonizing to get through, and moved slower than a turtle in pacing. None of the characters seemed very likeable or properly developed, and the limited production values ruined it's commitment to 2D animation. The constant slideshows, and long dragging still frames that zoomed in and out during conversations felt very disappointing. The fights were not given any justice in how brutal they were supposed to look, and the lack of detail is frustrating. Between this starting and finishing, I also watched many of Tomino's Gundam series, from the original, Zeta, ZZ, and Char's Counterattack, to Victory Gundam. Kyoukai Senki ... is a droplet of water compared to the ocean that any of those Gundam entries are in comparison to it. Gundam ruined it even more for me by giving me higher standards for a series of this genre. Even now with modern mecha, Megaton-kyuu Musashi, that rarely anyone bothered to watch, is significantly better, and is a series that I would recommend (second season is coming in Fall 2022).

Kyoukai Senki felt like a severely watered down war story where the staff couldn't kill off any of it's main cast. Maybe it was an issue with risking being too dark. When a side character dies, the main cast get depressed each time and it's annoying. They could of at least done something such as in Victory Gundam where the feelings of loss are effectively and horrifyingly expressed, instead here it's constantly seeing Amou, Shion, and Gashin sit by a tree together looking as if someone stole their lunch money. Amou is the frustratingly emotional, delicate flower protagonist that I despise to see in anime like this. He would get killed immediately if he was in any Gundam series I've seen. Anything this series tries to do fails in comparison to how Gundam did it. The music is forgettable.

One of the biggest mistakes this series makes is that it reveals many of the characters motivations at the very end, and leaves them undeveloped and sort of behind the scenes throughout almost the entire series. This biggest fault here is their management of Brad's character. He rarely does anything, and is constantly smiling behind the scenes and acting as if he is two steps ahead of everyone else. I kept wondering, "why is he like this?" "When is he going to actually do something instead of just smiling at monitors and people every episode?" At the very end, they do explain what he was up to. The pay off felt great, but for all the wrong reasons.

The story and politics are mostly elementary and not very interesting to talk about. The cast is fighting to restore Japan. That's it. As they go to war and try to win a revolution to gain it back, there's a lot of dirty politics going on between the factions. Ghost, who was the most interesting and amusing part of Part 1, is reduced to a toy for Brad, and doesn't go anywhere for almost the entirety of the second part. I would have liked to see if he was an AI like the ones the trio have. Their last ditch effort to have Ghost do anything at the end felt hollow. I much preferred how in Part 1, Ghost was this fearsome force with an AI that was constantly analyzing and countering it's enemies with it's high intelligence. They built up it's new form in this second season as something even more wicked, though the way Amou deals with it during their disappointingly anti-climactic final fight is just laughable.

It's tragic that the episode that left the biggest impression on me is the plotless one where they had a birthday party for the AI. Up until that episode, the Pokémon rejects were annoying to me. It took me a long while to come to appreciate Gai. He felt like a convenient plot device and hack for Amou to help him win his battles.

Of what I did enjoy, were mostly 4 characters. Brad, as pathetic as his execution as a character was for most of it, always remained the most interesting character because of what he was really up to in the war. Misuzu, their engineer, is the one who created the AI, and constantly struggles to come up with upgrades for their weapons. She's mostly glued to a computer and spends the rest of her time explaining. She still seemed likeable as the one who is in the lead of determining the overall technological advancement of the war. Lastly, the only dynamic and characters that I felt were the best ones for me came to be Shion and her AI, Nayuta. They have a fun dynamic where Nayuta is in love with her, and treats her as he is a servant and her a princess. Shion was nearly abandoned in part 1, and didn't really go anywhere in Part 2 besides being a supportive force to help Amou in battle. There's still a charm to her, as she is the only main character I could tolerate from the trio. Gashin is too annoyingly bitter, and felt like even more of a background character in Part 2.

At least, the last 2 episodes bring some kind of redemption. Despite that they still overtly show it's problems as a series, they were intense and finally bring answers and closure to my headaches from all the previous episodes. Overall, this series was doomed from the start, and the ending was anti-climactic and as generic as they come. The slide show epilogue was very disappointing to see. As I said before, if you want to watch a modern mecha series that is out right now that is worth your time, go to Megaton-kyuu Musashi instead.