S2 ruined my interest in this series. I thought S1 was 9/10, and S2 is 7/10. S2 was not bad, but I didn't like it because it's like a side story or spinoff being forced upon me when I much rather be watching the main series.
The best analogy I can think of for my experience is like ordering a quality steak (S1) from a restaurant and getting a hamburger steak (S2) instead. Now the hamburger steak wasn't bad, but it's not what I ordered and was expecting. At first the restaurant keeps telling me my quality steak is on the way, just treat the hamburger steak as an appetizer, I trust them in good faith since the last time I was here their quality steak (S1) was excellent, and the first bites of this hamburger steak isn't that bad (Vueko's story). But then I'm half-way through the hamburger steak with no quality steak in sight still, and I'm starting to have doubts (Mitty Clone, Nanachi sells herself), I start wondering why parts of this hamburger steak is uncooked? 3/4 of the way through the hamburger steak (underdeveloped character Faputa shows up for revenge from the hole Reg blasted) I lose my patience, "where the fuck is my quality steak?!?" I wonder. I'm furious because at this point (with 3 eps remaining) I've eaten so much of this damn hamburger steak, which I didn't order, that my appetite for a quality steak has been ruined (realizing that what I was expecting is likely not coming, and even if it did it'll be too little too late to enjoy by that point). And the last remaining amount of hamburger steak (last 3 eps), even though it was good in some parts, I couldn't enjoy because I'm so dissatisfied and the uncooked parts (the illogical stuff and underdeveloped characters) starts making me puke up nearly everything (they killed Vueko and all the villagers, nearly everything introduced in S2 was for nothing). What little remained in my stomach was giving me indigestion (Faputa). Suffice to say my quality steak never came, and what worse the experience ruined my desire for quality steaks in the future and the memory of them from before (S1). I'm slightly fuller than before I started though, I didn't puke up everything (what little amount of development they did which complimented S1).
With that analogy out of the way, that's exactly how I felt. It can't be denied that S2 was seemingly a side story because S2 could be skipped with very little consequence to the overall story S1 setup. The only things I can think of that was affected is Riko's white whistle got worked on, it makes Reg power up by making his helmet and arms turn white, and they picked up another party member. But Faputa is just terrible, she was so under developed when her revenge plot came, and she doesn't have the presence to carry the scene unlike Bondrewd or Ozen has. In fact even Nanachi has way more presence than she does. What's worse is Vueko had so much development done on her character that she should have been the one to be added to the party instead of Faputa, and Faputa should have died instead; given her revenge was completed and like she actually did kill everybody when there's no reason to since the village was already doom to crumble to nothing after she started. I'm not even sure why the villagers vanish when leaving the village, it was kind of BS, but regardless that constraint didn't apply to Vueko. Anyways, by the time they did try to do any development on Faputa, it was too late for me to care, I quite enjoyed the monsters from the outside pummeling her, kind of BS she could take them on later after the villagers illogically started to feed themselves to her.
I think S2 would have been better off as a side story movie, they could have shortened it because much of the time seemed to be squandered showing the villagers being weird deformed creatures for just the sake of being weird. The background ones didn't even feel like they used to be human, and they weren't doing anything discernably logical in the weird stuff they were doing. The anime also should have taken Riko, Reg, and Nanachi out of it. They pretty much mostly did nothing of importance the whole season, Riko got diarrhea, Nanachi got sold and slept, and Reg acted like a big moron again. Like Reg agreed to Faputa's condition to help her without knowing what it was (just like Nanachi's request which turned out to be killing Mitty), then he causes the disaster to happen by letting Faputa in. And what does Reg do with the whole reason he did all that for (Faputa's arm), give it to random villagers to keep Riko safe while he fell unconscious. So the whole reason why did what he did was pointless, and he got Nanachi back by causing the destruction of the whole village and getting everybody killed. And Nanachi contributed to that by selling herself for the Mitty clone which is just one big shameless retread of the Mitty arc in S1, and the Mitty clone dies anyways by vanishing. All this actually tarnishes the characters of Riko, Reg, and Nanachi for me, it felt cheap and they were stupid.
I guess the bright side to all this is I don't care when S3 comes out, so I can wait. Again, S2 wasn't bad, but it's quite the accomplishment to somehow go past "underwhelming" and "disappointing" to "ruining my interest in the series" while not being bad. I think this is the first time I've encountered this.
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