Sekirei: Pure Engagement

My rating uses the actual words given by MAL; a 5 is average. My goal is to be as unbiased as possible so i suggest reading the review rather than looking at my rating to make your choice. As this is a sequel it is also geared towards more of what to expect if you wish to continue.

-Little focus on other Ashikabi.
While this leaves more time for Minato, it would have been nice to see more interaction between them. There is obviously fighting between the groups, yet I don't recall more than one other ashikabi having any true impact.

-I was honestly surprised by an arc ... twist.
Without spoiling much, i will say there is a chance a twist will actually work. It is not groundbreaking, but in the relative atmosphere of the show i didn't see it coming.

-Next phase begins, and more fighting ensues.
As usual there are fights between the 108 sekirei. However it seems that, while not lacking, there was less fighting than the previous season. This is also due to the fact that the fighting is distributed to the large cast of Minato's sekirei so don't expect your favorite character to fight more then a few times. It also seemed that the fights were shorter.

-Matsu, Uzume, Kazehana and Homura get the focus.
I found out just how truly awesome Matsu really was all this time. Actually, along with Kuu she became my favorite sekirei personality wise. The other members get some much needed development; Uzume and Homura's secret identities from the first season finally comes into play, as we can expect a bit more closer. While we learn about a few of the other older sekirei there is minimal development from other characters.

Let me start by saying I've neevr read, nor do I really plan to read the Sekirei manga, so I won't be making any comparisons to it, however I have read the comments and most people seem to agree that until the final 5 episodes or so it's fairly faithful to what's in the manga. Take that for as much, or little, as you wish.

Sekirei: Pure Engagement is the sequel to Sekirei and with a largely story driven anime like this it really is important to have watched the prequel first, I'll be writing this as if you had. But if you didn't enjoy Sekirei ... then you might as well stop here, the formula remains very similar and it's unlikely Pure Engagement will turn your view on the series around if you didn't enjoy the first season.

With those two little disclaimers hung up let's move on to the plot; well as I hinted at above, not much has changed. We see the Sekirei Plan move forward, I'll avoid giving too many spoilers here but really most people can likely guess at how it's likely to go. With most of the Sekirei snapped up by the end of the first season Pure Engagement is more focused on relationships within the group/harem/cast than adding more people to it and we see more action in general than the first season. Sadly though there are several plot threads that are left dangling at the end and no real conclusion is ever met, even without having read the manga it's quite clear when the anime deviates as the last few episodes suddenly jump in pacing to hurry to a conclusion of some kind within the 13 episodes given. Also if you're anything like me you'll get annoyed by the consistant lack of use of Norito's despite being established as being the 'ultimate attack' of any Sekirei they are used maybe.. 3 times in this entire series.

Art wise, well art is always a subjective thing so I won't comment on the style but it's pretty much the same as Sekirei, very few changes and I didn't notice any serious quality drops or flucctuations, characters seemed consistant and easily identifyable. But then I didn't watch to look for these things so it's perfectly possible they slipped me by.

With the characters, well it's a sequal so there's not much to say here Uzume gets some welcome exposition but there are very few entirely new characters introduced between seasons and those that are are usually cameos at best so if you liked them in the first season, you'll like them here.

Sound quality was good and I never found the voice actors ill-suited to their character or found any of them to get grating. For the OP and ED, again these are subjective, I enjoyed them at the time but neither is likely to find it's way onto my computer or ipod and I wouldn't fault anyone for skipping them over.

In conclusion Sekirei: Pure Engagement is just what it says on the tin, a continuation of Sekirei, if you enjoyed the first series then you'll enjoy this but if you were expecting evolution of the sries in the sequal then you'll likely be dissapointed.

This is the second season/series for the Anime Sekirei. I definintely recommend watching the first part of the story before giving this a look. It continues where the last one left off, and there are 2 OVA's between the seasons that are completely optional to watch. As a stand alone anime it isn't bad, in fact if you've only seen the first season/series anime and not read the manga then this is completely worth your time. This anime has enough action and comedy to be a stand up sequel/second season. I am actually glad they added the "Pure Engagement" to the title, because it really ... is packed with filler and a truncated version of the manga storyline. This is not adapted as closely as the first season/series is.

This is a fun series to watch, even the OVA's are (which I will not rate separately, my score includes the OVA's because of how different this is from the manga) worth watching for a few giggles. If you have read the manga before watching the anime then you may have a problem with this series.

Firstly, the manga is far superior to the anime as far as story and artwork goes. The part of the story they ended the first season on was changed a bit, so they recovered at the beginning of this season with filler episodes. Once they had the story back on track they truncated it so they could end this season with an original sort of finale. For those that care about accuracy with manga adaptations, you have now been warned. That being said, it's still worth watching, and I gave it a 6 because it's still not quite as good as the first season/series.

All in all, not a bad watch.