Back to Nagakura's Profile Nagakura's Profile

This is an absolute travesty. The author's original work is a damn near masterpiece, and this butchers it in nearly every regard.

The story simply isn't there. They took the premise, and cut out 90% of the content, skipping from the beginning of the story to what was the original's ending, screwing up many dynamics in the process, including what made its ending compelling and fun. Long story short, they cut a long story far, far too short.

The artwork is terribly inconsistent, and even with some static frames you can tell there was little effort to be on-model. This is especially noticeable when it pans over ... the many girls whose sections were skipped in the adaptation, with saggy breasts, wide torsos, and thin arms that look pinned on. The times it looks best are when it steers closer to the original artwork, but even that isn't reliably quality. It gets better in the second episode, but it's still spotty and you'll often snap from a fine scene to an ugly one.

The animation as well is mostly awful in the same ways as the artwork. All too frequently the way that the bodies moves looks simply grotesque. If not for a few key frames that decently copied scenes from the H-manga (notably fellatio scenes), it'd be nearly irredeemable.

The sound is another disappointment. The sound effects are unremarkable, and I wish I could say the same for the voicework. Some of the voice casting is jarringly bad; our teenage protagonist Naotatsu sounds like he's in his 30's (a bit like a typical dumb guy in a hentai production), while the notably foreign teacher Suomi sounds like an impossibly high-pitched squeaky caricature of a Japanese idol. On top of that, some lines are voiced with entirely the wrong direction, such as a sultry quiet line (from how it appeared in the original context) being instead delivered loudly. Never mind matching any mouth movements.

This is simply a badly made adaptation, and everyone would do well to read the original H-manga by 'Shiwasu no Okina' instead with a better adult anime playing in the background.

Looks and sounds great, truly, but is marginally worse than the mediocre first season. From the story, to the characters, to the dialogue, it's a mess of inconsistencies if you can see past the bare breasts.

Perhaps chief among the problems of this season is the haphazard way new characters are brought in and used. The introduction is one hinges entirely on coincidence (not unlike the nonsensical run-in with Asia), and conflicts with what we'd been led to believe about Issei's history. Another character is just an excuse to make gay jokes and make Rias look unnaturally inept. And a third new key character is just ... a product of lazy writing, which also happens to create a legit plothole based on previously established rules of the world. And, just as it was with the previous season, every antagonist is a one-dimensional trope whose motivations and actions make the worst James Bond villains look well written and thoughtful.

Moving away from the individual characters, Christianity plays a larger role in this season than previously, but unfortunately it's made clear that the author knows next-to-nothing about different churches, what Christians believe on a basic level, or how they act and react when it comes to the faith. Matter of fact, until later in the novels, there are no indications that more than one denomination of Christianity even exists in Highschool DxD, and that instead everyone is under the same vague umbrella of "The Church". A twist that comes up could've been interesting enough, if it wasn't so poorly delivered and followed by reactions that make one wonder if the author's ever even met a religious person. Suffice it to say the author's only research seems to have been looking up mythological names and little else.

Unarguably the second half, or second arc of the season, is the worst of all. A key part of the previous arc's grand and history-laden conflict is rendered nonsensical in a single afternoon. Further, characters are handed literal plot devices seemingly because the author couldn't think up anything better than just giving them "just because".

With writing like that, it's little surprise that, when it comes to dialogue, multiple characters slip into the same geek otaku-speak that should only be relegated to Issei. And if the criminal offender protagonist didn't endear himself to you in the first season, you're not going to like him any more in this one as he continues to be a mix of rude jerk and "such a nice guy" hero whose stilted, childlike words make girls' hearts flutter and loins moisten.

All that said, the artwork and animation are still very nice to look at, the music is intensely catchy, and there's no complaints to made of the voice work. If you took the action on its own, disregarding how new powers sprout up out of convenient nowhere, that's also a reasonable high point. The nudity is of course ridiculously gratuitous, but that's intentional and ought not be held against it. It's just a crying shame about the writing. Do yourself a favor: Stop here and proceed no further if you care about a sensible story and characters.