Mashle: Shinkakusha Kouho Senbatsu Shiken-hen

Season 2 of Mashle was quite disappointing, even though it didn't differ from the first season that much. That is the problem though. Mashle is supposed to be a parody of fantasy tropes and specifically Harry Potter but it fell into the trap most parodies fall into. Instead of actively making fun of the tropes in fantasy media, it exaggerates them as an excuse for the lazy writing.

The writing itself is very simple which isn't a problem as long as there is something else keeping the story interesting. Watching Mash come up with crazy methods to beat his opponents was hilarious in season 1, but ... now it's already been 24 episodes of the same repeating formula. The formula has also gotten more simplistic from the first season, where the motivations of characters played an important role. Now the characters have been reduced to generic anime trope characters.

Lemon is the love interest, Dot is the generic hothead and Finn is the cowardly self insert and voice of reason. As a parody, having generic characters and then subverting the viewers expectations is fine, but it feels like these characters get barely any time to develop or show how they parody the tropes. Instead of parodying generic characters, Mashle simply repeats those tropes with no added flavor.

All in all the story is extremely generic and is filled with tropes. The fight scenes are great, but a little repetitive. As a parody anime Mashle repeated the same mistakes as others and has turned into what it set out to parody in the first place.

Mashle started better in the first 12 episodes than it ends after the other 12. It's a decent show that can go both ways later, but this half of the season feels lacking in pace, humor and anything to keep me occupied while watching the show.
Sure, there were some fights, the main secret got out of the box now and there was set up for the antagonist and the meta plot.
However it doesn't feel all that impressive at this point.
Mashle felt fun when MC was fooling around with his fake magic, but now they don't really bother anymore with that and it starts feeling one ... punch man without everything that made one punch man good. The story takes itself too seriously for the overall level absurdity and I would prefer it be more chill.
It took me like 4 days going back and forth at it to finish these 12 episodes and it was borderline passable for me.

I hope they pick up the pace next season, otherwise I will probably drop it at this rate. Gimmick can't keep me for too long.

This season opens with a fairly interesting looking new set of antagonists. Then by episode 3, they are no longer on screen, and it is immediately clear that there is no "here" here. This action comedy spoof did not take enough time creating a reason to invest in the characters in the first season, so they aren't holding our attention this season. In addition, the stakes don't feel high enough, the action isn't cool enough, and the comedy isn't funny enough for me to continue devoting time here amongst the 40+ other anime that premiered with this season. Fine if you have too much time ... on your hands, but if you've seen season 1, you've basically seen all Mashle has to offer.

Preety disappointed.Feel like its a filler seasons where some Sidestory take place which arnt relevant It was like a whole season was dedicated for Introducing the main villan and than he Dissapired saying i will be back.Too much peptalk about this and that.In every episode "i know you, you are weak or "you should die because you have no magic" This type of shit Nd please why 70% of anime is talking and talking. The season 1 was kinda perfect.where you actually feel some tence moments, good fights, op mc and funny jokes. But this season is so fukin slow that you will be skipping ... scenes every minuite. The pace is way slow for 12 episode anime.Nothing groundbreaking happens this time.The jokes are very blunt ,not funny and sometimes irritating.
its like they are trying to cover 1 manga chapter in a whole episode damn slow.
Not saying its bad just don't expect much things like season 1.It sure deserve a well 5 outof 10 but for me its 4\10 as its pretty irrelevant to watch.
Well i did thought the op broke the internet but why not the anime, now i know why.

Mashle is the perfect example of those typical type of shows that we say, turn your brain off and just watch it. However even if you just want to watch something for the sake of watching something. There is hardly anything to find that is less entertaining than this.

The story is basic and repetitive. Perhaps if you liked Harry Potter you can give this a chance, because its basically HP and One Punch Man combined. Unfortunately we haven’t seen anything special or unexpected and probably never will. Although it had a promising potential, I just can’t see any signs after watching two seasons that they’ll ... try to even take this a little bit more seriously in the future. Therefore expecting to see something meaningful and interesting after this season is pushing it.

I keep hearing that regardless of how mundane its premise is, it has a decent animation at least.

Let me be clear and honest about this, the animation is trash. Respectfully, this is below the standards of any mainstream media, not even considering that we are already in 2024, but Im sure you can find anime from the year before 2010 that has significantly better animation qualities than this.

Not just the luck of animation what is present, but the artistry of the characters, landscapes and even the backgrounds depiction is really mildly done.

I also have to mention the FPS (frame per second) which is incredibly low as well. Except a few fight scenes where we can see 12-15 fps at best, but for the most part we staring at a pretty low 3-6 fps which is pretty bad.

For comparison anime like this usually rocks between 12-24 FPS. Only crazy studios like Ufotable and Kyoto Animation just for a two examples had produced episodes that were reached 45 FPS or even more. Still, in Mashle’s case it feels like a drag to watch. Not as bad as Majo to Yajuu, but new animes really struggle with production quality, or maybe they just don’t care as much..

(Maybe, it is due to the fact that consumers standards are dropping significantly). As for a lot of people this is going to be the norm standard, no wonder Frieren is “masterpiece”.

Overall, I can’t recommend Mashl to anyone, although it seems everyone is pretty much liking it.. It certainly had a vibrant opening which made use of in some parties recently. Other than that, what is really missing from the new gen anime is the faint trace of real passion and magic, which Mashle has none.

Thank you for reading!