The second season of medaka box, dubbed ‘Abnormal’ resumes following the somewhat mindblowing conclusion to the first season which saw a complete half revolution turn in the emphasis and plot of the whole series. In the second season we are introduced to a world of normal, specials and abnormals.
Normals here are defined as everyday folk such as myself and maybe even you, Specials are people who greatly excel in a particular field and Abnormals from their name itself we can guess possess some sort of strange ability and able to achieve great feats that leave us normal folks dumbstruck. One factor I was greatly impressed with about the abnormal abilities was that the series tries to explain to us the mechanics and how these abilities work and unlike most shows that introduce some kind of wild out outrageous and thought provoking phenomenon to do this, medaka box simply uses Biology and Anatomy. The abilities are explained as being born from some sort of efficiency or deficiency of an organ, enzymes or muscle in the body. This greatly enhances a viewer’s experience and even gives the show (dare I say it to a shounen anime) a sense of realism.
A scheme is later hatched by the principal called the ‘flask plan’ to perform research on a few Abnormals in the school so as to find out how abnormality works with the main aim of discovering some kind of method to transform normal human beings into abnormals or in other words make them perfect. The scheme itself i’m afraid to say isn’t necessarily original and without a doubt is a slight alteration from the all too familiar concept of a group of individuals who believe themselves greater than normal humans decide to rule over them. The principal also intends upon making this discovery to use the students of the school as test subjects for his experiments which could have adverse effects on them, and upon getting word of this of course, the student council consisting of medaka and co. try to stop the plan.
The highschool is divided into 13 sub classes ranging from numbers 1-13 and as it also happens, all the abnormal students are in class 13 of their respective grades. A group of these students have been selected to be the roots of the flask plan called the ’13 party’ and medaka’s objective will be to defeat this group thereby bringing a halt to the project. At the end of the first season we witness medaka defeat Unzen and at the start of the second season we are told that Unzen was a part of the 13 party, however due to his defeat he is unable to participate anymore and Medaka being the one who defeated him is now the most likely beneficiary to take his place. Feeling proud of their abilities most of the students in class 13 hardly come to school but upon hearing of the experiment most of them return with the prospect of attempting to take part but just as Medaka defeated Unzen to enter contention, they also believe they need to defeat her to have a chance to join, therefore presenting medaka’s group with a sizable amount of opponents. This of course was nothing more than to show us indeed how powerful Medaka was when compared to other abnormals and also for the viewer to hold highly in prospect the other members of the 13 party upon their introduction.
The school setting itself is seemingly devoid of teachers or any kind of academic activities for that matter. The main base of the experiment itself is an underground base on the campus; the base is divided into floors each holding one member of the experiment meaning medaka has to defeat them floor by floor making the series hold a sort of platform game feel to it which isn’t such a good idea. However giving the modern school setting and having super powered individuals, there will be a need to make use of an enclosed environment to demonstrate these abilities so the writers had a limited amount of choices in terms of location.
Gainax resume their duty of animation but however I will admit I’m not a fan of the art style used in the show, the use of extremely heavy pencil lines especially under the eyes give most characters a wild expression making them look as though high on cocaine with only voice actors and changes in facial expression making it otherwise. However when compared to some mediocre animation we saw in the first season, Gainax did a great job with animation on the second season. It has a number of fluid and nicely orchestrated action sequences here and there but these action sequences may seem dragged on a times by no fault of the animation but by characters overlooking a fight giving commentary on almost every little factor, something that should have been kept to a minimum or removed completely.
Minami Kuribyashi resumes her role as she again sings the OP, entitled ‘Believe’ and unlike the first season’s OP that had a happy-go-lucky beat and feel to it, this one had more of a melodramatic and serious tone thus accurately depicting the complete shift in emphasis of the series. BGM mostly consisted of instrumentals and the sound director does well to appropriate each instrument well into a scene. Tension, suspense and other moments are most of the time complemented with a nice instrument to get a better feel of the atmosphere but the series still could have done better with its choice of soundtracks.
The show also takes pride in its host of very peculiar and strange set of characters with their differing ideals and philosophies on humanity. Medaka herself retaining her honest do-good attitude has this stubborn ideal of believing that all humans have some good in them and will a times go to whatever length to protect this ideal, often times purposely falling into enemy traps which looked to me nothing more than a weak excuse to extend the story. Her tenacious personality may come off as a bit annoying a times but her die hard attitude will leave most people wanting more. Most members of the 13 party will leave audiences absolutely dazzled, just as it’s depicted in the show that normal people see them as amazing or on another level, I have to admit even I sitting on the other side of the screen could also tell. The show uses the personality of these characters very well to keep viewers hooked to the screen and this factor was without a doubt the series strongest point.
The beginning of the show I have to admit was amazing but as time went on it started to lose quite a bit of edge especially towards its climax but it was still an enjoyable experience in the end. The series main problem was not as a result of its execution or anything it could help but in my opinion the writers seemingly not giving enough thought or effort into the storyline towards the ending as they did initially and seemed to be running out of ideas along the way and finally adopting cliché basic shounen analogies in the end. Despite all this, it still manages to impress with its fluid animation, applied sciences and extremely strange set of characters. The second season was without a doubt a lot better than the first and with more material still to be animated we can only expect things to only get better in future.
