<I highly recommend you to read this to know the dark side behind the anime industry, although it's quite long>
<LONG REVIEW>
Kemono friends is a sleeper hit two years ago. In case you didn't know, Kemono Friends is a pretty much near dead franchise before the anime started airing. Nobody expected anything good from Kemono Friends. However, the director, Tatsuki, brought a near death franchise to life again with his amazing skills throughout the anime. The 1st season was without a doubt a massive hit in Japan, and it's all thanks to Tatsuki and his team members Yaoyorozu. However, he and his team members was removed from the Kemono Friends project in late September last year for no exact reason by Kadokawa. So, the 2nd season is made by a new team with a new director. Now, did it live up to the hype of the first season? Well, see for yourself.
The 1st season of KF received one of the highest rating in Japanese video streaming website NicoNico when it finished airing. A lot of new anime fans, old anime fans, and even people who have already left the anime community praised Kemono Friends like it's the next Miyazaki anime. However, after Tatsuki got kicked out from the project itself, the franchised immediately went back to the state before the 1st season was even made. The 2nd season of Kemono Friends received the lowest rating in NicoNico as opposed to the 1st season. It's so bad that it not only angered fans of the series itself but also the casual anime fans. How bad is it? Now let me explain.
First of all, the story. The story of the 1st season centers around a human named Kaban who had lost her memories and forgot what species she belong to, adventuring in the Japari Park with her friend, Serval to find out the answer. Throughout the journey they met a lot of different animal friends and learnt a lot about them. It's mostly an adventure series that at the surface seemed like it was aimed at kids. However after episode three, the tone got much darker and it attracted the attention of a lot of different anime fans. It is too the dark underlying tones throughout the series that kept the audiences interested in the series and giving it a high score. However, the 2nd season is just trash with no meaning behind it whatsoever. They removed everything good and interesting about KF1 and only remained the boring parts. Then maybe you would argue that we can still enjoy it for the cute interactions between the characters. Well let me correct you, the interactions between the characters aren't cute at all. They changed the relationship between the character as friends (as stated in the freakin' title) into one that shows how superior humans are to animals. Boi, there's nothing friends about this. Well now you may say that I'm just nitpicking, but let me show you some examples of what happened in the anime, especially in episode 9.
In episode 9, our main character Kyururu met with a domestic dog. One day Kyururu got attacked by some monsters and the domestic dog put all of its effort in protecting her, until she got badly wounded. However she still can't win, and at the last minute Serval appeared and defeated the monsters. Now what Kyururu do after she got saved, just guess. Well, your guess is maybe wrong. Kyururu didn't give a crap about Domestic Dog and keep on praising how great Serval was. In the end she told the Domestic Dog to go home with a smile without treating her injuries or even thanking her. The moral value of the episode itself is so twisted that it angered a lot of anime fans and started the low rating streak of KF2. Plus throughout the series the animals kept on praising how superior the humans are and how much they respect them whatsoever, boi there's nothing friends about that. The director and scripwriter must be twisted to think of something like this.
Now let's talk about the final episode that angered a lot of fans, Serval straight on denied Kaban, who appeared in the anime for only a few scenes, as her friend for Kyururu with the theme song of the 1st season playing in the background. Seriously!? Why!? This is so twisted that I can't even describe it anymore.
Now let's talk about the person in charge of this project, especially the most famous two, Nobuyuki Hosoya, the producer of the 2nd season and Ryuichi Kimura, the director for this season. Now normally I don't discuss this sort of stuff but for this series I need to, because these two people are the ones destroying the franchise on purpose!
Now let's start with the director. The main reason he took on this project, as stated on his twitter, is that he thinks that anybody can handle Kemono Friends because it's just an easy project, completely looking down on Tatsuki who's responsible for nearly everything season 1 is. This had a lot of the KF fans angered. Now when the series was airing, he kept on going on a war with the fans of the first season on Twitter, stating that listening to what the fans wants isn't what he wanted for the project and that people can't come to a mutual understanding which even angered the fans of KF1. At the end of the first season he even stated that the opinions of the fans of the first season don't matter because they are just blind followers of Tatsuki, completely denying the faults he made in the 2nd season. He also blacklist the people who told him what's wrong with the 2nd season.
Next, let's talk about Nobuyuki Hosoya, the producer behind this season. Now he didn't do anything too bad, he just stated that episode 9 is the best episode in the 2nd season, you know the episode which started the low rating streak of KF2.
In the end, the entire project is just to make fun at the fans of the 1st season and the fact that it got the worst rating on NicoNico is expected because of how disgusting it was. This also completely showed the dark side of the anime industry. Although I don't recommend you to watch this second season, but I do recommend you to check our what happened behind the scenes. You'll definitely be shocked. That's it for my review. Thanks for reading and I wish you a good day.
