Title: Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon II
Genre: Action, Comedy, Science Fiction
Rating: 8.0/10
Summary: Season two of
Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon
Review: First I would like to say how excited I am that they made a second (and possibly third) season of
Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon. I was completely lost at the beginning of the first season but it soon turned into one of my most enjoyed action/romance anime. I’m also looking forward to a hopeful third season where they will dive even deeper into the other characters. Actually, that’s probably what this review is going to be focused around, character development. The thing about the first season is that it throws you into a whole mess of new people, most of which you hardly remember. They have all their own back stories and special powers so it is hard to keep track. However, the second season did a phenomenal job expanding on the characters that weren’t in the lime light during the first season. In fact, Horizon and Tori while considered a main character during the first season played a small role in the second season compared to people like Tenzou. They did a great job with the second season and made it a lot more clear of what was going on.
I’m going to skip the art and soundtrack because most people who watch the second season have probably already watched the first and I didn’t see too much of a difference. Let’s start with what the second season did better than the first: explanation. This isn’t a spoiler but for all of those who were confused as I was the first season this short phrase may help: it’s all a reenactment. It doesn’t? Well let me explain my wonderful audience. The second season of
Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon made it much clearer that the whole point of this sci-fi anime was that the students of Japan were against reenacting such a devilish history over and over again. They wanted to change things, create their own fate. After I learned that this was the entire plot with multiple sub-plots it made the anime much more enjoyable. Of course the anime took its own take on things because William Shakespeare was definitely not alive the same time as Einstein, two prominent characters of the second season. With new character introductions there always comes new romance. I’m happy to say that the romance in the second season was just as good as the first. I’m not sure what it was about this anime that struck my fancy in the romance realm with such hits like
Toradora and
REC, but I grew so attached. Something about a guy risking his life, his country, and his pride to protect a girl was downright epic. There were no other ways to say it. The story continued to escalate throughout the season at a reasonable pace. They introduced characters mostly by combat this time instead of political debates. Don’t worry those of you who were still into the political side of the anime don’t worry there was still plenty. Overall I would say that the second season was an improvement from the first. It wasn’t all perfect though and there were some things that I still found to be a bit tiresome or boring. As much as I liked the
Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon for its romance it did take it a bit far sometimes. It seemed like everyone had a romantic interest whether big or small. With so many different couples forming left and right it was difficult to keep focus on one. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but the anime decided to try and make everyone’s romance something deep and meaningful. This caused some romances to either escalade to quickly or die off in an anti-climactic matter. Thankfully it didn’t take away from the main story arc and romantic interest so it didn’t effect the ratings too much. Another big dropout that I found was the explanation and utilization of the deadly armaments. It felt so underwhelming once more of the seven armaments came into sight. Although the flashy lights were a nice touch, the armaments didn’t seem to play that big of a role. They showed up for a fight scene or two which ended rather promptly. It didn’t seem like much of an effort to keep them from being collected in my opinion. I have to say though that they did a good job introducing more emotions to Horizon. It was very subtle and I admittedly missed the difference at first until it was mentioned in the anime. I’m glad that they didn’t add a drastic change to Horizon’s character after one more armament was collected. It leaves a lot more to the imagination of what kind of person she will turn out to be in the end and how each armament will effect her actions.
Final statements: A short review as usual for a second season anime. I would consider it a
high priority watch and urge anyone who hasn’t started this series to start it now. I’m greatly looking forward to the third season and can’t wait to see what’s in store.
