Mushoku Tensei II: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu - Shugo Jutsushi Fitz

Now, I'll start the real review.

Story: They decided to adapt some special chapters from previous volumes + a part of vol 9 as a starting episode. This is a great decision imho, it's better for the flow of the show to start from this. Content wise they did a great job, it can be a bit boring but it's surely essential. Vote: 8/10

Technical quality: The episode was inconsistent, yeah. They used also cgi. But if you see who worked for this episode, you'll see it was greatly outsourced, so it's understandable. The fights animations were great tho, on-par with S1. Direction was good, bit confusionary ... sometimes but good. Musical score too, the composer didnt change and it's great. The design... well, it was good for sylphy and ariel, but not good for Luke and some characters like Darius(the old fucker that also executed Sarius, Eris' grandfather), it is what it is. Vote: 7/10

Overall, I'll give it an 8 because im biased and im happy that apart from the inconsistency the animation was great. Definitely recommend it, and trust me, an LN reader: this season's cour 1 maybe wont be that perfect but cour 2 will be a masterpiece.

Mushoku Tensei is probably my favourite anime as of right now, and my all time favourite fictional story.

I want to keep optimistic, but this episode did fall short on my expectations. I read the LN so I have the context, and even then this episode was a little hard to follow. It wasn't just the drop in animation quality that we were all expecting, because season 1 was just too ridiculous, but the direction this episode took was strange. They gave you just enough cookie crumbs to get an idea of the situation, and that was likely due to the constraints that they had to ... literally fill in the time-line of the exact moment where the mana disaster left off to near the time-line Season 1 ended all in one episode. Sylphy's side story wasn't amazing or anything, but it was definitely important for the story moving forward and I felt like we didn't get a proper representation of the characters and the situation they were in is all. Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but I wished they did a 1 hour premiere like some of the other animes, just to properly execute Sylphy's side of the story and then to lead us into Rudeus's situation.

It's alright.

This is a fine, normal episode. You should watch it if you have watched season 1 of Mushoku Tensei and plan to watch season 2.

The episode has a pretty hard task to reintroduce Sylphy, who we hadn't seen since the begining of season 1, in a new age, a new stage in life, in a new location, and with a new set of accompanying characters, and to show what was going on in her life for several years, all in 23 minutes. All boxes are checked: we are now up to date with Sylphy's story.

We also got exposition on Asura Kingdom politics, and were ... introduced to several new characters, like Ariel and Luke. That's a lot of exposition for 23 minutes, maybe a bit too much. But they did a good job balancing it out, and it never feels overwhelming.

There is some action, which is alright. There is some fan service, which is to be expected from Mushoku Tensei. The tone was a bit inconsistent here and there.

Is it as good as an average Mushoku Tensei episode? No, but MT is a great show, so even its relatively mid episodes are pretty good, and that's one of those.

It's called "Episode 0" for a reason. It's a detour from our main story, there is no Rudeus or Eris, and a lot of it is exposition. It wasn't supposed to be as good as the show itself, and it's not, but it's still good enough to enjoy it. Watch it, don't expect a masterpiece, and prepare yourself for the main meal. Season 2 is ahead.

This obviously is not peak mushoku. It's a side story that is still very essential. It covers the life of Sylphy since the mana disruption and her connection with Princess Ariel and Luke. This episode might be a bit boring and season 2's first few episodes will heavily focus on Rudeus' journey and he will eventually meet Sylphy so this episode is really important in giving context about Sylphy.

Story-wise its really good 8/10

Animation/art style -> While this isn't what mushoku often looks like and is a downgrade, I think this episode was outsourced so for the actual s2 the animation should be much better. This ... doesn't mean the episode was appalling by any means, just means that It was not on par with s1. 6/10

episode 0 is a preparation for season 2, its normal episode contain the required information to understand how it starts as it is in season 2 , not that it is a must but helps in following up on what happened , its a normal episode with normal length , I recommend watching it before starting season 2.
some might find it useless to do episode like this and I understand , like why don't they just start the season with this episode then continue , first episode still not out but I guess its a follow up to this so I could relate.
for the ... episode itself it was good , didn't notice a difference in animation or sounds compared to season one, sound track in season 1 was very beautiful and so in this episode .

This anime feels like one hell of an experiment to see how can a studio live off the sunk cost fallacy.

Give season 1 all the budget and then degrade it to hell and laugh at all the suckers still buying and supporting this dreck while only spending a quarter of the effort that it was placed in s1.

Fr. this episode was a disaster how did a studio air this?


Animation 1/10

Story? We get to see the elf chick get assaulted and see more underage girls exposed and more questionable angles.
...
At this point the studio is going to go bankrupt and I hope they do. This is just shameless.

Good little start to the next season. It explains what happen to Slyphy's side of the story after the incident. And how she became a friend/ servant of another royal. Not sure if this really needed a review lol, but like I said it's a good start to season 2. Though this next season setting is pretty much just going to be in the school only. So they switched from adventuring to school life, when I read the manga it didn't really have anything it was building up to, so I find it interesting on how they'll adapt this into the anime as it does ... seem kind of a slow season from reading this part, but you know music, and animation can change a lot of how a story is told, so can't wait to see it

I'm glad to see Sylphy again, but I would have liked them to delve deeper into the character's story. Perhaps they condensed the episode too much, only 23 minutes where they don't really conclude anything except for the friendship with the princess, which still feels empty. I like that the episode had action and political intrigue, but it didn't delve into any character, which takes away the impact for us as viewers. I would have liked to know more about Sylphy beyond just being the protagonist's friend. Lastly, considering the worsened animation quality, the truth is that this episode gives a rather decadent impression. My ... rating is 7/10 only because I have affection for it.

I hope they learn from this and avoid rush outsourcing any more episodes of Mushoku Tensei ever again, it's not worth it. I watched this without knowing it was from a different production company and I was quite upset about the prospect of the entire season being like this. If this was what MT became then I wonder how long I'd keep watching.

It didn't take 10 seconds for me to realize something was up with the animation quality and the entire episode I was noticing more and more rough edges. Rough lines, muted color pallete, shoddy movement, tons of closeups or still shots, lack ... of character detail - and that's just talking about the stuff that was animated. Beyond that they resorted to numerous CG background characters that stuck out like a sore thumb. They had several shots where you could easily spot that they reused the same generic character model multiple times in close proximity to each other. It was like an old video game where you see the same character model in the crowd every 3 seats. That kind of shoddy laziness or crunched corner cutting doesn't belong in Mushoku Tensei.

They didn't even try to make the magic look cool at all. One of the most remarkable things about the first season was how spectacular and memorable it made the magic and even sword skills look which gave a sense of amazement, depth, and realness to the world. Here we got a generic CG blue ball for a water spell and some wispy white lines for wind spells.

All that isn't even getting to the direction and pacing which almost seemed as questionable at times. I knew the story from the light novels but this episode seems like too many things shoved together and not well. The development within a scene felt weird and it seemed to jerkily go from one thing to another without properly setting things up or transitioning.

Mushoku Tensei is supposed to be special among the isekai, but when they cut corners and lower themselves to the level of their cheap imitators, it's a disappointing, embarrassing waste of source material. I thought they made Studio Bind because they wanted to do Mushoku Tensei justice, outsourcing the animation to a random studio to complete on a crunched schedule isn't doing that. I sincerely hope the rest of season 2 is a return to form and will be anxiously awaiting future episodes to see.

I know this exists to prepare you for season 2 and all, but.. why is it so bad?

Couldn't even be arsed to make it interesting? No character stands out, nothing interesting happens. In-fact, whole episode could've been summarised as 2-3 flashbacks in a regular episode.

While we're at it, the art is just awful compared to the first season. I really hope this isn't a sign of things to come with season 2. Kinda like how "Shield Hero" season two ended up being ultimate garbage, I am hoping this show doesn't go down the same road.

Anyway, you can watch this if you're dying to know ... the most generic backstory in existence.

5/10 - Because it's still part of the lore, just not very good part.

I'm going to keep this very short. Episode 0 is not peak. It is not lit. It is not even mid. It's just bad. It tells the story of Sylphy, who I believe is introduced late in Mushoku Tensei season 1. Question is: Who asked for it? Don't get me wrong. Had this not been boring. I still would say "who cares, ' but at least it would have been entertaining. There's no reason for tedium. I could excuse the poor art work had the story been interesting, but it was not. And, yes, the art work is not good. There ... are scenes that look pretty good, especially at the end, but for the most part the animation looks like it came out of the 1970's.

Uninteresting. Un-fulfilling. Mushoku Tensei II episode 0 is just bad and it makes me worried for the upcoming season.