Kamierabi 2nd Season

From what I can gather in this website, I can see that the second season of Kamierabi is a show with very low expectations, at least in the west. Initially, the first season didn't get much popularity, with the major part of its audience being attracted by the name of Yoko Taro, who is the creator of the story. Then, even tho the first season had a interesting cliff hanger ending, most of the audience must have dropped the anime along the way for various reasons. And because of that, the second season has currently, by the end of it, about a tenth of the audience (673 users) from the first season; a very small number compared to what we are used to see on MAL. Regardless, its safe to say that studio Unend produced a solid second season, with a consistent quality similar to the first season, and a fitting ending for the series. Lets talk about it. Even though its not necessary, I make sure that I do not spoil neither seasons of the show. And I'll be discussing mainly the second; if you'd like to know more about the first season, then I encourage you to read the others' reviews or even my own. (Story) When you start watching the first episode, you see a dark empty area, and in it, theres only a humanoid being, with no remarkable features except a blue outline, crying with his face buried in his palms while sitting in a chair; a pen-looking object falls from nowhere and the being notices that, then, it grabs the object and writes in the void: "my wish". Its a very enigmatic scene that doesnt make sense at first even to who watched the first season. And turns out that this humanoid being is a recurring figure at the start of pretty much every episode of the season. After that, we see a girl in a orange hooded sweatshirt, with something in her arms, running away from men that are apparently looking for the thing in her arms. This girl is actually Lall from the first season, now in human form, as you may discover by the end of the episode. And also, after the new opening is displayed, you watch the school presentation of a kid, in which she tries to explain what happened in the incident of the final episode of the first season. It happened 12 years ago and it was responsible, among other things, for turning the people involved in so called "semi-permanents", individuals that do not show signs of aging anymore. No one has been able to explain this phenomenon since then and the kid seems determined in doing just that. As you can deduce, the start of the season heavily focuses on mysteries. Until the very end of the anime, you'll be wondering about "who is that humanoid being at the start of the episodes?", "why do some people stopped aging?", "what exactly happened during these 12 years?", and those will stack up on the unanswered questions of the first season, like "why is that god election happening in the first place?" or "who is that man in the blue outfit that appears in episode 12?". Surprisingly, they do give answers to all of that along the story, which is very nice. Points for cohesion! The major part of the season is that slow but progressive unveilling of the plot. However, at the last episodes, the story suddenly starts to pick up really fast and we get plot twist, after plot twist, after plot twist, in true "yoko tarian style". Now, I apologize for the poor choice of words there but I guess my point goes across. Its rather unclear how much influence Yoko Taro had on this anime or if he supervised the project at all, but I do think that the ending was purely his doing because of how warped your understanding of the story gets right by the end; thats his trademark, pretty much. In comparison, the second season feels much more serious than the first one. While the first season consists of Gorou f'ing around and finding out, putting himself in a lot of unusual or even strange situations; in this season, the characters are mentally tired from the god election and they just want to get it all over with. (Music) Again, just like in the first season, the music is done by studio MONACA, lead by Keiichi Okabe. From what you can hear in the anime, you may conclude that the soundtrack mostly contains electronic music and opera. A scene where the opera really stands out is when a part of the main cast is talking to each other, discussing their current situation and planning what they are going to do, in a place where the sunset is visible; the atmosphere is tense and just when the characters are about to go silent from unease, they look at the sun and notice that it is disappearing, not by descending into the horizon but by decomposing into (literal) words - the opera starts, you hear drums being played between long intervals and almost tribal chanting- they start panicking and then become aware that not only their surroundings but also the whole world is decomposing into words. I think thats one of the highlights of the second season; its a very intense scene. The opening theme is sung by Nanashi no Tarou, who doesnt have any more works in anime besides this one. You may notice that this opening is a bit more serious in tone than the first one, matching with the change of atmosphere in the story. And by the way, the lyrics portray feelings of sorrow and unease, which might as well, except for the romantic subtext, represent Lall's character in this season. The ending theme was made by the band LEEVELLES and its quite a good one. The lyrics describe a conflicted individual that tries to live an earnest correct life but doesnt get the rewards he expected to receive, supposedly from God, for it, ultimately struggling to live a happy live. Then, he reaches the conclusion that there must be meaning in life beyond living in a standard correct way and decides to search for it, like some kind of rebellion against God. In some ways, this illustrates pretty much every character in the series and their discontents with life. Because of that, apart from being a banger, the song is a very fitting ending theme for the anime. The opening has a similar look to the first opening, just like the ending is similar to the first ending. In other words, they dont have original animation and are composed of scenes from the anime. To me, thats a bummer, I wish they would have done something new for this season. (Characters) This time, the protagonist is Lall, the little fairy demon girl that accompanied Gorou in the first season but now as a human girl. She is portrayed as an immature, rebellious and short-tempered kid who will do anything and move anyone out of her way to reach her objectives. Of course, these traits dont make her a bad character but I did find her annoying, as she keeps being rude to the other characters and doesnt necessarily help them most of the time. The first new character we are introduced to is Eko Sasaki, the girl who does the school presentation at the start of the first episode. She is shy, frail and looks like the type of character who cant do things on her own even though she has goals and good intentions. Eko is in the same class as Lall and starts to follow her around to understand more about the god election. Because of that, she gets involved in the events of the story and ends up developing into a interesting character along the way. Another new character is Higaki Ebisu, the guy in the blue outfit that we see at the end of the first season. Hes an important politician in Japan (the prime minister, I believe) and hes participating in the god election. Contrary to the other characters, Higaki is a fully-fledged adult and doesnt pull any punches when fighting, posing a big threat to the main cast. He is also a very important character to the plot but doesnt get too much screen time; I wish we saw more of him. In general, the characters of Kamierabi are entertaining, fit the atmosphere of the story and have a sort of charming design but they dont have much psychological depth. Besides, in this season, not a lot of development was seen from the…

Spiritually another one of Yoko Taro's EoS'd mobages. Starting from the finale, the last two episodes are all it had to be. If you finished the first season and will jump into the second, you could just not waste your time, lost as you may feel by doing that. By rewriting it properly, about three episodes would be needed to conclude the first season, if this was the goal it was heading to, but for some reason they did 12 more without any content do so. It's easy to imagine how the script was written as if it were either a VN or the VN segment of a mobage, as there's no visual direction. The characters have no movement, the angles and visuals are always still (sometimes literally a slideshow), and they just keep talking and talking exposition. The first season may not have been the best show ever, but it clearly had much more of a vision, as in, the world was alive and so were its characters. Considering the metastory that takes place here, I can't even tell if it wasn't a cry for help from a writer that needs to write a second season after accidentally finding closure on the first one. If I had to say something good about it, it made me realize how Goro and Sawa carried the first season. Not having them in the cast across so many episodes was a slog, a bore and a torture. Nothing interesting happens, nothing interesting is said. It's also kind of funny to see when the writing took an unexpected turn mid-production, because plot-relevant characters will use generic faceless colorless 3D models used for mobs, or show up as 2D sprites that change like you're on Powerpoint. They didn't plan for the character to be there, so they didn't have a model ready and had to improvise. I wouldn't recommend this show to anyone, especially to people who liked the first season, because it'll really ruin what was a good experience, flawed as it might have been.

Let's get this out of the way: Yes, the whole series is butt ugly. But, I happen to have a very high tolerance for lousy animation so long as the underlying narrative is any good, and boy, on that front, KamiErabi certainly delivers, and then some. What I enjoyed most was the show's unpredictability. The premise of it being a death game might as well be a lie, as that notion is pretty much abandoned halfway through the first cour. And yet crucially, the show manages to resolve all of its loose ends very satisfyingly. It's also possibly one of the few cases of a Deus Ex Machina being used well. YokoTaro has a knack for combining cringy lighthearted moments and a dark narrative and somehow making those two elements work. While the show may take some time to get used to, especially if you don't have a high tolerance for shitty animation as I do, it is well worth it in the end. Rarely do you see an anime original fully commit to its themes and resolves itself so satisfyingly in the end with no sequel bait or any baggage. It's not easy to sell the show without spoiling anything, but the show does shake off the "Death Game" aspect relatively early to reveal itself for what it really is, and if you're any familiar with YokoTaro's other works, you'll feel right at home. 8/10