Shadow House Season 2, like Season 1, is a great production with attractive main characters, beautiful art design, a unique gothic-styled song and some impressive action sequences. Its weakest department is the writing. This season's story is still recovering from the last seasonal finale's premature revelation of the core mystery on which the entire story is built. Fortunately, the 2nd season has a somewhat tighter narrative focused on the "Master Robe" case. Most of the issues I had with Season 1 still apply here, as Shadow House continues to closely follow the formula of "Qing-dynasty Palace Drama" popularized in Asian countries.
My expectations/reasons for watching:
Since I watched Season 1 out of curiosity, I was at least motivated to find out about Kate and Emilico's fate after their last face-off with Edward, though I did not have very high expectations for its story. I was also curious to know what new mystery they have in store for driving this season.
Baseline quality:
6.5-7/10. Not a bad production. The "Moe Gothic" OP song is pretty good. But I am still not a fan of all the palace infight drama. The allegory to real-world class warfare is a little too on the nose for me. There are clues of brilliance sprinkled across the episodes, but the detective procedure is pretty much by the numbers.
Recommended to:
Fans of "palace infight drama"; people who believe in the cosmic conspiracy that earth is just a giant prison for humanity; fans of "moe torture"; fans of Victorian aesthetics.
Not recommended to:
Those who don't like palace infight drama and those prone to be depressed by suppressive hierarchy.
What worked for me:
+ Good art direction throughout. Facial art is consistently good throughout the 2 seasons.
+ Interesting worldbuilding with commendable attention to details in the structure of the castle, social institution, etc.
+ Emilico is still adorable throughout the season, her relationship with Kate serves as the backbone of the story. I admit that is solid enough to warrant my continuous watching.
+ More focus on the narrative than Season 1.
+ Great OP song.
What did not quite work for me:
- As the show follows the formula of "Palace infight drama" too closely, it also inherited a plethora of issues that bothered me in that genre.
- over-demonization of the villains coupled with over-idealization of the main characters. Pitting sunshine-like Emilico against this pitch-black evil castle and its demonic/alien rulers creates quite some drama, right? However, that makes the scenario for Emilico/Kate's winning in the end less believable. Unless the show finds a clever way to deconstruct the "pure evil" of the titular Shadow House, this is always going to be a major hurdle for the writer. Otherwise, the story apparently risks falling into the most egregious power fantasy. In the most popular palace dramas, the main protagonist (usually a low-level maid or concubine) gradually gains power by their sheer will and wits. In this season of Shadow House, Emilico and Kate are on the track to be a couple blessed with all powers. Sure the writer can add wrinkles to their journey, but this trend is very apparent.
- Formulaic. Like in most palace dramas, the protagonist gains sympathetic allies and friends, but they soon suffer/die in the hands of the ruthless and all-powerful ruling villains, making the protagonist more determined to tear down this palace. I am not saying this formula is inherently bad, but how Shadow House handled it feels a bit too on the nose for me.
- A few too many fake-outs hurt the suspenseful moments in the show. In an early episode when Emilico was showing her prowess, you'd think she's in some authentic physical danger, but not really. When the fake-outs become the norm, the audience is also conditioned to believe that the main heroes will never truly be in danger.
- Ends on a rather bizarre and uninteresting cliffhanger.
- Whoever puts "slice-of-life" in its genre on MAL still deserves Shadow Grandpa's coffee, the whole pot please. On my book this is a most depressing thriller/drama set in a society with extreme power distance and cruelty, most certainly not a "slice-of-life".
As you can see, I am neither the biggest fan nor a hater of the show. I can appreciate certain aspects of the show but my appreciation is limited by the aforementioned reasons. If you are a fan, please just ignore my criticism. If you are hesitating about watching it, just take my words with a whole pack of salt.
