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Season 2 of the distinguished isekai series builds upon the legacy of the first installment, commencing with the introduction of two new regions and an exploration of their political and economic landscape. The narrative follows the protagonist's recovery from the depression experienced in the previous season's finale, leading him to a prestigious mage university where his skills are expected to be further enhanced. Interwoven are thrilling quests with various adventurer guilds and enriching interactions that explore camaraderie and romance.

The second season maintains the strength of its predecessor, particularly in the aspect of world-building. The detailed and logically cohesive universe sets it apart from many others ... in the anime genre. From the geopolitical intricacies of the regions to the nuanced responses and behavior of the characters, everything in Mushoku Tensei has been meticulously crafted. This attention to detail fosters a profound connection with the characters, allowing for deep empathy and understanding.It is as if I'm watching animation of an extremely well written fantasy novel.

Mushoku Tensei sets itself apart from conventional anime by eschewing the stereotypical "cool" main character who invariably does the right thing. Instead, the protagonist of Mushoku Tensei exhibits traits more akin to a realistic individual, complete with personal flaws and complexity. The narrative further diverges from traditional patterns by refraining from introducing generic, overpowered villains only to be defeated by sudden, unexplained power-ups. Instead, it focuses on adventures and quests within an intricately crafted fantasy world, devoid of clear and obvious villains or objectives.

This approach has resulted in a mixed reception; some viewers, expecting a more typical isekai experience, find themselves disappointed and unable to recognize the innovation and distinctiveness that Mushoku Tensei brings to the genre. Their expectations are challenged by a story that seeks to redefine conventional norms, potentially leading to an underappreciation of its true greatness and uniqueness.

10/10 Masterpiece. Plot progression is certainly there albeit there is a lot of world-building in first few episodes which is somehow conceived as lack of plot progression. But I would like to remind everyone again that whole concept of Konosuba series is comedy and fun adventures. If you are watching these series for sake of plot progression, you are certainly in wrong place. Do not force yourself to watch this because it is popular, no way you are going to be able to enjoy what this series offers with such mindset. Realize what this anime will offer you, relax your expectations and embrace the random ... fun high quality comedic presentation.

Animation: 10/10, Konosuba series always had high quality production, amazing effects, no random blurs. It gives you what you would expect of a high budget anime. Albeit not as high budget as SOA or AoT.
Comedy: 10/10 Not one episode that I wasn't bursting out laughing.
Characters: Show is filled with unique and very likeable characters.
Plot: Whole plot is oriented around Megumin and YunYun and does great job at establishing background for these characters. And plot is filled with random fun events.

For sake of being objective I really wanted to list cons as well, but honestly, there are no cons. And only cons I have seen listed are coming from people not realizing the category of this anime and expecting from it something it never promised in the first place. Konosuba won't give you brutal dark stories or multi-season deep extremely detailed convoluted stories - but expecting such things from Konosuba goes against what konosuba is and setting right expectations is crucial for a human's enjoyment of any entertainment medium. As I said, don't force yourself to watch this because it is popular, only watch this if you are interested in fun, adventurous comedy anime on isekai setting.

People develop hate towards this anime due to the way it conveys serious manners such as rape and child abuse in joking manner. While they have right to criticize anime for this, their emotions blind them from seeing how great this anime is in other topics.

Is Mushoku Tensei generic isekai? Not at all, there is no "great evil" in this story. Character is dropped in this fantasy world - which is very detailed and extremely well built - and just starts living in this world. All the events happen very naturally without world having a clear defined goal such as (defeat this evil, clear this ... dungeon etc). It starts off very grounded and truly conveys sense of adventure and living in medieval fantasy like no other anime has been able to so far.

So what makes this anime so special? World building is absolute top notch and the way character acts in this world is very logical and natural (except for fan service parts that is). Even in battle it is not a fancy power level check (except when power level differences are high) but the way character fights trying to utilize environment around mixed with magic makes a lot of sense and immerses you deeply within this world. Production is very-very good with satisfying fight scenes, extremely high quality VA etc. Also the adventure's our characters have are varied and extremely interesting.

Tried to keep review as short as possible and to keep spoilers to minimum I didn't want to go too much into detail but I can tell you this, Mushoku is best anime I have ever watched and this includes all the top anime such as FMA, AoT, S;G etc. It is not even close. That being said I'm a huge fan of medieval fantasy setting

[CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS]

Kaguya-Sama is an absolute masterpiece of a show whose every second will bring a smile to your face.

Show continues on the great streak it started with the first season, each episode is self-contained, that is events don't continue onto next epsiode which makes it great because when you watch an episode of Kaguya-sama, you know show is going to deliver you a full experience and that sub-story is going to end on that episode.

Character development is subtle but well crafted. Their responses are realistic to some degree, indeed, some of the things between our lovers are things that I have personally experienced. ... Each character comes with a complex definition and set of characteristics that made them unique and humane.

They are anything but bland, taking Kaguya for example. She is a girl raised in a rich prideful home, she is a good girl that cares for her friends and due to her raising on a rich family she also does not shy back from using some more questionable methods to get what she wants. Her raising left out from her knowing some of the norms of the society which makes her ignorant in some aspects which show utilizes extremely well for comedy. I have seen her called a Tsundare, on the contrary, she is only cold towards people whose motivations directly oppose hers and kind towards everyone else except for some comedic moments.

Anime does repeat same "concepts" for a joke multiple times - but does so masterfully. When it does so - it repeats same shitty event happening over and over to our characters to extract extra frustration from our character which invokes genuine and interesting responses with each repetition. Also, each repetition happens in a different yet interesting setting. In my opinion most criticism that goes to this are people whom are trying to find excuses to hate the show as each repetition has its own scenario has invokes different responses and frustrations from our characters despite having same concept at very high level.

Indeed, if we think of events at a such high level we can reach to conclusion that every anime repeats itself. You can criticize every super-hero anime as "anime creates random bad guys and makes our characters fight with them over and over" - yet what distinguishes anime is not what it does at a very high level but how it brings that concept to our screens and makes it interesting - at which Kaguya does absolutely stellar job.

As someone who has watched almost every popular-semi popular Isekai and a TON of anime. I can say without slightest doubt, that this is the best Isekai by a large margin.

I will keep the review simple and to the point.

Characters:
Extremely well established, they have very well defined identities with their own motivations and origins. Also, behavior and interaction between the characters is exceptionally well handled and feels very realistic by the "setting" of established world. A lot of anime's get this wrong, that characters don't feel "correct" psychologically, but here characters are so well made that they feel as if they are actual persons you ... know in real life.

Setting:
There are tons of factions, each with their individual cultures and goals. World is vast, complex, interesting and full of mysteries. Anime does excellent job at setting up the pace, it feels like a genuine adventure instead of having a simple objective and MC quickly powering up and beating the objective through the power of edginess or friendship (looking at you SAO).

Music, Animation, Drawing:
This is one thing that even people that hates this show congratulates, studio simply did excellent job at turning this into an anime. I hope they continue their excellent job with other manga's as well.

Main characters are just so generic, Emilia is always the "princess" and Subaru is always playing "white knight crybaby" hero character that always saves the day.

Side characters I find far-far more interesting then main characters. Literally every single one of them is interesting, world building is easily one the best I have seen.

Minor spoilers below

But the actual story? It re-applies this "emotional" formulate of "oh im depressed I can't save everyone bla bla" and then some random source of motivation followed by "yeah I'm saving everyone baby" and keeps repeating this very same concept over and over. First time it works but fifth time? It ... makes you wonder if the writers are so incapable that they need to repeat same concepts to get the show going. I can give 10 different examples to writers repeating same concepts over and over but another example is the usual dialogue between Subarau and Emillia "oh why are you helping me" "because I love you" - literally 2 episodes later "do you really love me" "I really love" it makes you think if Emillia has comprehension problems or anything and no - this happens on same time line, not on a separate one.

And another example from last final episode
Subaru becomes her knight, literally swears to do anything she orders. And he has already told her that she has her back like 20x up until this point.
- Last scene Subaru: "Emilia I will always be there and we will do this together bla bla" Emillia: "Will you really??". Man are you kidding me.

When series wants to put interesting story, it can do a great job. But the quality of the dialogue and emotional scenes is pretty bad and unfortunately writers decide to put these on highlight instead of interesting random events and world building that they do a far better job at. Every time a dialogue or emotional scene happens I feel as I have watched that like 5 times because it is going to be basically the same thing from few episodes ago with a slight twists and complete lack of originality.

I really think that 30 min per episode greatly harms overall quality of this anime. They could just skip the unimportant forced emotional scenes that exist for sake of existing with 0 proper buildup and focus their development in actually touching emotional scenes with proper build up leading to it and not repeat same concepts over and over again.