Back to Idlear's Profile Idlear's Profile

Vinland Saga Season 2 is in a tricky yet opportune position. Known as the Farmland Arc by fans and as the Slave Arc officially, the stretch of 45 chapters adapted in full by the second season of the anime marks the crucial turning point for Thorfinn Karlsefni, the payoff for all of his stunted non-development in the first season. Frankly, Shonen protagonist-esque ball of rage Season 1 Thorfinn is often a pain to watch, and that’s the point. Most would agree that the star of the show in Vinland Saga’s prologue is Askeladd, although he is a largely static character, and once he finally sacrifices ... himself for a cause greater than himself, Thorfinn steps up to fill the void he leaves. He does this by thinking, really thinking. Thinking and re-thinking, grieving, regretting, pondering. Very few protagonists undergo such drastic change as Thorfinn does over his greater arc. Season 1 Thorfinn, vicious and vindictive, is not so much an interesting character by merit of his thoughts and ideology, which amounts to little more than to the maladaptive belief that might makes right. Rather, the bloody first leg of Thorfinn’s journey is interesting because of the dire situations that he is thrown into by cruel chance and circumstance. Seeing him descend into the hell on earth of blood feuds, war, and senseless violence that his father tried to shield him from is as heartbreaking as it is compelling. Of course, one can only descend so far, and Thorfinn’s confrontation at the end of Season 1 with the essential hollowness and futility of his quest for vengeance, right as it is snatched away from him in a narrative climax executed in sublime anti-climax, should cue any viewer into how Thorfinn will not and cannot remain the same. The story changes course, towards the direction it was always headed.

As Thorfinn himself observes, the main cause of slavery is war. It is remarkable to me how, despite the admittedly marked tonal shift between seasons 1 and 2, mangaka Makoto Yukimura consistently depicts the often brutal living conditions of medieval Europe throughout the story. Some viewers may be distracted by the heaps of flashy action scenes in the first season, but the slaves and corpses created by the violence of Thorfinn, Askeladd and the rest of the warriors receive much attention as well. The story of the Slavic slave in episode 1, the Norwegian slave girl in episode 8, and the fate of the English village in episode 14 all come to mind. However, these victims of war do not receive as much attention as the battles themselves do in Season 1 (although Thorfinn, Askeladd, and the rest of those who wage war are arguably victims of it as well). The main cast is too caught up in their own petty squabbles and egos to pay too much attention to the casualties of their campaigns, after all. But the consequences of war are still frequently depicted in the first season, even if Thorfinn gives no deep thought to it at the time. Thorfinn’s enslavement in the second season, therefore, figures as a direct consequence of the violence he perpetuates in the first, and the hollowing out of his desire for revenge, the surface level manifestation of his pain at becoming the victim of a deeply unjust culture in which might makes right, opens himself up to personal growth for the first time in a long time. In essence, he finally asks himself: if I was hurt, why do I have to lash out in return? All that does is create more pain. It solves none of my, of our, underlying problems. What are these problems? What can I do to resolve them?

But if this was the direction that Vinland Saga was always headed towards, towards the journey of a warrior-turned-pacifist to build at least one town in recompense for the lives and livelihoods he has destroyed, why did it take so long to get there? Somewhat understandably, many anime-only viewers of the Season 2 have expressed their disappointment with the slower, more introspective turn the story has taken, but to anyone who thinks that Season 2 is a complete 180 from the first one, I want to ask if they were really paying attention, or rather, I want to ask what they were paying attention to. The first answer that comes to my mind is the action and the other more conventionally exciting aspects of Season 1. A compelling quest for revenge, a series of exciting fights, a charismatic and intriguing anti-hero in Askeladd. These are all admittedly key aspects of the first season that are absent in the second, but they are not absent without good reason. The core of Vinland Saga was never these specific aspects but rather Yukimura's holistic depiction of medieval Europe and Thorfinn’s journey. Caught for a time in the spiral of death and destruction, Thorfinn escapes by chance and then stumbles towards new growth and ideals as he develops real relationships with the people around him. Thorfinn’s oft-quoted and memed declaration “I have no enemies” may sound naive to some, but naive can be a dysphemism for admirable, or more neutrally, for idealistic. The point of an ideal is that it does not align with the status quo, with our lived experiences at large. It is something you have to struggle for, something you may never be able to truly achieve but you believe is worth reaching for nonetheless.

Instead of Wit Studio, who helmed the production of the first season, Vinland Saga Season 2 was produced by Mappa. Although there has been an overall decrease from Season 1 in the amount of frames and therefore movement per episode, the consistently strong direction of the second season makes the noticeable drop in production values a non-issue. The slower pace of the Slave Arc certainly helps mask how the Vinland team likely had less time, money, and people to produce Season 2 than they did for Season 1. On a visual level, Vinland Saga Season 2 is a mostly faithful adaptation of the manga, all thanks to the work of the talented staff, many of whom worked on Season 1 at Wit and chose to continue with Season 2 as a passion project. The returning voice actors also deliver stellar performances, with the happy inclusion of impressive talent for the new characters. The emotional range of Einar’s voice actor, Shunsuke Takeuchi, stood out to me in particular. Arnheid’s voice actress, Mayumi Sako, was also consistently convincing. Accompanying the voice acting, Yutaka Yamada’s music continues to elevate the Vinland Saga anime to spine-tingling heights. Both the opening and ending songs are thematically appropriate and banger songs in their own right as well. Despite the many shot reverse shot conversations with little more movement than the mouth flaps, the staff of Vinland Saga Season 2 has crafted a work that in my opinion shines not only as “good for a TV anime” but great as a work of animated storytelling in general. Season 2 isn’t just a downgrade across the board from a production standpoint, however. The attention the animators paid to rendering facial expressions generally exceeds the first season, and although this may seem like a minor point, the detail put into rendering the characters’ hands and the dirt, grit, and scars which accumulate on them also impressed me. After all, Yukimura himself writes about how one can tell someone’s personality from their hands and how an artist’s ability is better measured by their skill in drawing them than in drawing faces. It follows that the animators working on Vinland Saga Season 2 should all be proud of their clear artistic skill.

Only a few stories have changed the way I think. Vinland Saga is one of those stories. Simply put, it has made me want to be a kinder, gentler person. Although the story is not without its own flaws, the arguable over-indulgence in idealism being the most obvious one, I think reading and watching Vinland Saga has changed me for the better. That alone makes me want to recommend it to as many people as I can in the hope that it can do the same for them.

Let’s start this review with a saying I just came up with: it’s okay to cringe. What I mean by that is that it’s okay to cringe at Tomozaki, the main character of this show. It’s okay to cringe because that’s the point of the show: our boy goes from a cringe sad boy to a cringe chad boy and boy is it glorious. It’s okay to cringe at his “gamer” dialogue with Hinami as well. These are high schoolers we’re talking about. And they’re not just any highschoolers, they’re highschoolers who are really into their intellectual property’s legally distinct version of Super Smash Bros. ... As a “video games playing guy” myself who spent his senior year in high school playing Smash Ultimate with the boys every lunch period without fail, let me tell you, people like us act and say things in a “cringe” way sometimes. And that’s okay. If we come across a story that sets out to depict “cringe gamers” and how they perceive the world, can we honestly say that cringing at the result is a failure on its part? Not at all. If anything that’s a failure on the viewer’s part to meet the story halfway, to realize what it’s aiming for and to judge it based on that. Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun is at its heart a dramedy, which is a stuffed up way to say it’s a comedy with some character drama. The main conflict between the leads Tomozaki and Hinami introduced in the first few episodes comes to a head in the show’s conclusion predictably but still satisfactorily. From here I intend to spell out this conflict, what I found to be the most interesting parts of the show, so if you’re just looking for a recommendation suffice it to say that the main charm of this story is as the synopsis says: the self-betterment of an endearingly awkward gamer boy. The fish out of water comedy that results from this betterment is what drives the laughs and occasional reflective “hmms” this show will get out of you. If I had to compare it to another popular anime, it’s what you get when you take Oregairu, subtract most of the angsty monologues and multiply the parts where the protagonist actually tries to improve himself all while adding in some “cringe” gamer jokes (that are supposed to be cringe; that’s the point guys). Enjoy!

Who is Aoi Hinami? Why, she’s a high-tier character is the game of life of course. Someone who’s learned all the high-level tech to befriend the world. Someone who knows all the frame data to counter any awkward conversation and set it back on track. Someone who has mastered various classes like “class president”, “school athlete”, and “top of the class student”. Someone who we later find out goes to such lengths only because she sees them as productive behaviours that most people aspire to. And it’s because these are common aspirations, (being athletic, academic, and a social butterfly), that she wants to be the best at them, believing that she has no personal desires of what she “really wants to do” motivating her. Wait, what? But putting that worrying cognitive dissonance aside for now, when it comes to “Smash Bros” of all things there’s one opponent she can’t beat: her classmate Fumiya Tomozaki. But while Hinami is proficient in many things, Tomozaki is proficient in just this one thing. He’s also quite the social pariah at school who has given up on all hope for social life. Feeling a kinship with Tomozaki’s drive to improve himself at this one thing, Hinami takes him under her wing and teaches him the “best” strats for grinding experience points to level up in the real world… Okay, I think you get it, so I’ll stop poorly imitating the “gamer” dialogue of the show now. But my use of airquotes around “best” did have a point, and it’s that Hinami’s idea of self-betterment is problematic. Of course, she doesn’t have it all wrong. For example, teaching Tomozaki correct posture. It’s uncomfortable at first, but it’s nothing but beneficial for his mental, physical and social health in the long run. It’s the same with instructing him to start more conversations with others. With telling him to be more assertive in conversations so that he doesn’t end up the butt of the joke all the time. With ordering him to lie to this quiet girl in his class about sharing her interests so he can ask her out and fulfill some arbitrary goal of getting a girlfriend before he graduates. Wait, what? And there lies the problem. Hinami is realistic about gaming success in life and in socializing to an almost cynical degree.

Through the lessons she gives Tomozaki, Hinami is actually attempting to quantify social interactions and relationships in a utilitarian-esc model of capital: what am I gaining from this? And what she seems to be getting at through this way of life is perfection in a boring, inoffensively stereotypical way. Tomozaki even describes her as a typical “yamato nadeshiko” in episode one. In context he means this as a compliment, but since the term comes from the pre-modern Japanese ideal of a woman who is demure, faithful and virtuous, all of which are terms set up by men (observers of women, akin to players of a game), Hinami’s pursuit of happi- I mean pursuit of “perfection” is thrown into relief as fake and forced. She acknowledges this fakeness, however, and proudly touts it as the point of life: overcoming one’s self to become better. But what does “better” mean to her? I wrote earlier that she’s trying to be perfect in a “stereotypically inoffensive way”, but that doesn’t quite fit, as she’s more striving to just be better than the rest. This reflects back to her and Tomozaki’s relationship. Both of them hate to lose, and so they treat life as just a competitive game until Tomozaki grows a brain (or rather a heart). The main thematic conflict of this show arises when Tomozaki starts to disagree with Hinami’s advice, particularly involving his relationship with Kikuchi, and starts to act of his own accord in his relationships. After following her orders for quite a while and improving himself in her terms of what “better” is, Tomozaki confronts Hinami about her over-calculating approach to life. He thinks, like I hope most of us do, that choosing what you “really want” is more important in life than coldly calculating what the arbitrarily “best” option is. She disagrees without giving a good reason (more on this later). The show ends on an inconclusive note. The final episode takes the setup in episode one where Hinami challenges Tomozaki to the game of life and reverses it so that he challenges her to see whether his new-found resolve to pursue what he really wants in life, however irrational, can beat out her cold and uncompromising rationality. While these competing schools of thought aren’t explored as much as I would have liked by the end, the ending manages to be a heartwarming showcase of just how much our awkward gamer boy has grown. In the end he uses the skills his mentor taught him against her: he is assertive and stands up for himself. Considering that this is an adaptation of a light novel, I didn’t expect for there to be any real conclusion after twelves episodes, but what we got works well as a culmination of the major themes: self-improvement, what motivates self-improvement, and what is a healthy way to go about this self-improvement. My hope is that the light novels continue to explore why Hinami betters herself seemingly only for the sake of it. What does becoming the stereotype of the perfect person, the yamato nadeshiko, do to a person? The answer to that shouldn’t be hard to guess, but seeing as the story has set up all these questions in advance, I’m confident it will deliver on them well with a good mix of light character drama and goofy gamer talk (which is funny because it’s cringe, not in spite of it; guys I’m telling you, please listen to me here. The cringy gamer stuff is the best part. Yes this is the hill I’m dying on).

The production of this show is nothing remarkable. The sound effects blended in well and the music set the tone of scenes well. The voice acting, especially for the two leads, was enjoyable. It would have been easy for Tomozaki’s VA to start stuttering less and speaking more confidently right away, and so his more gradual transition from sad mode to chad mode was much appreciated. But seriously, every time Tomozaki said “ゲーマー” (Gamer) or ”ゲーマーとして” (As a Gamer) I lost it. He’s a clumsy guy who sees things in terms of games, what can you do? It’s the point of his character, so I say just try to laugh along and wish him good luck. His story of self-improvement while staying true to himself is a simple one, but it’s told well and is a net positive to anime as a whole. Tomozaki is an aspirational character, and I wouldn’t mind tuning in to an OVA or a second season to see where his aspirations take him next.

tl;dr: This is the best slice of life comedy manga you've never heard of and will never read UNLESS I TYPE IN ALL CAPS TO GRAB YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE READ THIS.

What makes a slice of life manga good? Atmosphere is the common answer, but what is that made of? The easy answer is that everything besides plot, which there should be little of in a slice of life, makes up the atmosphere. Background art, character designs, setting, joke gimmicks, and the characters themselves all pitch in, but it's the characters most of all. Heck, it's characters most of all for almost every story. And this ... is where Yugami-kun ni wa Tomodachi ga Inai (Yugami has no Friends) excels. The characters are endearing from the beginning. No writing that bends over backwards in left-field backstory to tug at your heartstrings here, just some earnestly human characters who play off each other well in comedy and some light drama that usually has a comedic punchline. If you go into this manga thinking "Ah, so Yugami is the Tanaka-kun/Saiki/Sakamoto/Komi of this manga?" you'll be surprised. Yes, predictably the poster boy character is different from most people, and the humour, like for most manga and anime, comes from the gap between normative expectations and this eccentricism (i.e. Yugami not needing friends and his benign antisocialism). "Different" is important here, as Yugami is not a static joke dispenser. The punchlines do continue to come from this "gap" throughout the story, but the characters, Yugami included, are dynamic. Not dramatically dynamic, but they grow up a little just as you would expect, say, your real classmates to. Out of all the characters though, Yugami is still the hub, and the rest are the spokes that rotate around him... Or so it seems if you only read the title and summary. And that's how this manga stands out in a sea of quirky main-character comedy slice of life manga. Yugami isn't *really* the main character.

The initially friendless transfer student Watanuki Chihiro is the perspective character and arguable main character. Chihiro, somewhat socially anxious but mostly neurotypical, is Yugami's foil. She needs friends, Yugami does not. These two, who aren't friends btw, keep getting involved with each other and butt heads, misunderstand each other, misunderstand an understanding between each other, have a brief understanding between each other, then not, the cycle repeats. Hilarity ensues. I think most readers of this manga will at first empathize with Chihiro and share in her disbelief and other amusing reactions to Yugami's "shenanigans", which are just his daily routine to him. This is intentional. Chihiro is the average reader surrogate. Being an "eccentric" person myself, however, I identified with Yugami from the beginning, but I must be somewhat well-adjusted because I also identified with Chihiro from the beginning. Landing in this sweet spot between neurotypical and neurodivergent, I consider myself very lucky. It let me enjoy this manga as much as I did, after all. But I know that I would have enjoyed it even if I was entirely a Chihiro or entirely a Yugami. This is because the writing doesn't treat the unique traits of Yugami, Chihiro, or the other characters as problems that need solutions. While there are some character flaw wrinkles that get ironed out here and there (or sometimes not at all for comedic effect), their core personalities all stay the same. And hey, come to think of it, the core personalities of real people also rarely change. But as we can grow up a little, so do Yugami and Chihiro.

Yugami-kun ni wa Tomodachi ga Inai is a comfy comedy slice of life manga that is refreshingly not designed to go on forever and does not recycle the same joke at the expense of one character's eccentricism. Yugami, Chihiro, and the rest of the diverse cast of neurotypicals and neurodivergents are rarely the unilateral butt of the joke or punchline. They act in whatever ways make them happy even if it comes off as amusing from the other characters' or reader's perspectives. Ultimately, the real humour comes from the misunderstandings that arise between people just different enough from each other to trick themselves into thinking they can't understand one another. But as the manga goes on, Chihiro and the rest do start to understand Yugami in their own little ways and vice versa. In a word, it’s wholesome. My hope is that most readers finish this manga with a better impression of Yugami than they started with. You probably won’t agree with him on most things, of course, but Sakura Jun (the mangaka) has written a work that teaches us to at least tolerate eccentrics like Yugami. For the joy they bring themselves and those who are willing to understand them, the Yugami’s of the world should be allowed to exist as they are, not needing friends while still knowing some people, the Chihiro’s of the world, who are their friends in every way except in name.

Maybe they’re something more than friends?

On the whole, Nihon Chinbotsu/Japan Sinks 2020 is a terrible show. If you have nothing else to do for 3 1/2 hours, then by all means kill that time with this. It's hilariously bad at times, but it's not so bad that I'd recommend watching it unless you really do have nothing else to do. Considering that it is *2020* (roll credits and eyes please), you just might have a lot of time to kill.

But there are two, yes that's right, exactly two scenes that are good. Unironically good. They are the first half of episode 8 and one scene around the middle of episode ... 9. Take out those two scenes, however, and my overall score would drop to a 1. The overproduced first episode may seem to have some redeeming qualities as well (e.g. its fluid animation mostly free of CG that sets the bar too high for most of episodes 2 through 7 and some sections of the last 3), but since the first impression of the show it gives the viewer, an impression of a somewhat grounded disaster story, is betrayed by everything that follows, episode 1's surface level merits fall flat as a broken promise. But does that mean they were trying to subvert our expectations? That's a no. The themes of perseverance, familial bonds, and what I can only describe as a "neoliberal national identity message" that all fell flat on their sugar coating by the end would have at least been somewhat coherent if the semi-realistic tone set by the first episode continued until the first half of the eighth and if the deus ex machina driven third act that followed had some serious rewrites.

The first episode was not a misdirect. It was a fluke.

And yes, I know that "neoliberal nationalism" sounds contradictory, but I can't think of any other way to describe the condemnation of Japanese nationalism as a grand narrative that the show portrays throughout almost its entire runtime (pressing right on the nose at times, more subtly nudging it at others) only for the final episode to cap it all off with a self-congratulatory montage of the proverbial land of the rising sun *rising* again as a rejuvenated nation state. All at once the show's surface and subtext on the alienation from and the arbitrariness of nationalism are overwritten as though the message all along was that predicating one's identity on a national narrative is a-okay so long as that nation is making socially progressive steps... What? In episode 9, the protagonist Ayumu even spells out what seemed to have been the point up until then, that national identities and narratives are arbitrary, and that fostering personal connections and communities is what really lends people strength in times of need... The writing is just so confused.

Still, those two good scenes (mostly) hold up even in the messy context of the rest of the show. The one from episode 8 is just 9 minutes of the two main characters, Ayumu and her younger brother Gou, stranded on a life raft/tent, floating over a flooded Japan. Their dialogue as shell shocked children who have yet to fully process the recent events is convincing as are the performances of their Japanese voice actors (I can't speak on the English dub, however). Throughout this scene that is implied to last at least a few days, the dehydrated and malnourished children shoot flares, blow rescue whistles, signal SOS with their dead father’s flashlight, and just generally grope around in the dark. In one particularly touching moment, the two gaze at the kaleidoscopic bioluminescence of zooplankton beneath their raft, reminiscing on how it looks like the lights in their backyard, and then they talk deliriously about all the brands, conveniences, and people that children would understandably miss. This is the most meaningful, uncontrived moment of characterization in the entire show. This scene of them just surviving and interacting as siblings would interact even despite the circumstances (they even brush aside the cynical thoughts they do have that most other “kids” in modern anime would spend several monologues angsting in).

The other good scene in the episode after doesn’t quite reach the same level. It’s the scene of Ayumu’s track and field upperclassman who has gone from being mute hikikomori at the start of the plot to a humdrum male with a “can-do” attitude after being flipped upside down by the plot… At least it’s not the most unbelievable thing the “plot” pulls, but I’m not here to point out the obvious flaws, the contrivances, and coincidences of this show here. This scene is supposed to be good, right? Well, it’s a little cheesy, but it works. For context, I gave the sound a 6 because it’s an umbrella category for the sound effects, voice acting, and soundtrack. I would give the sound effects a 6 (nothing special although the tremors stood out as believable and chilling), the voice acting a 6 (some of performances were okay and in the case of the raft scene really good, but many of the side characters like Daniel were unbearable, and the material all the voice actors had to work with was usually terrible: “hasta la vista, baby” was a real low point), and the soundtrack a 7. The typical thriller pieces notwithstanding, many of the scenes, even the over dramatic and gruesome ones, are accompanied by piano driven ambient tracks that are so tonally-dissonant they actually work as a kind of soothing contrast, which brings me to that good scene in episode 9 (See? It’s all circles back). In it, our can-do male character runs out to the sea to retrieve a plot-importance macguffin before a roaring tide can sweep it away. Since this happens presumably years after him being a shut-in, this is an effective catharsis. One of those piano driven ambient tracks kicks off with his sprint, but it’s a more beat driven track this time. As he runs, he recalls the audio commentary from him winning a race this one time that plays over the scene along with the ambient track, and of course he dies in the end. He wasn’t a memorable character, but that one scene revealed something human even if it was a bit heavy handed.

I could continue, but it’s all downhill from here. I don’t see the point in redundantly complaining about media when I know there is much more already out there that I will enjoy, more than I could experience in my own lifetime. Besides, there are plenty of reviews on this site that cover the many flaws of this messterpiece. That said, maybe try watching that opening scene from episode 8. For a full 9 minutes it gives a glimpse of a more grounded, more effecting story. But on the whole, this show is anything but.