Title: Medaka Box Abnormal
Genre: Action, Comedy, Romance
Rating: 8.2/10
Summary: Second season of Medaka Box
Review: For all of you who read my first review of Medaka Box, this wont come as a surprise that I wanted a second season. I had my doubts and worries that the second season will just be the exact same as the first until I started to do a little research. The authors decided to take a different route and instead of just making the serious strictly comedic and fun, it became rather dark. It wasn’t about Medaka’s love-hate relationship with animals or golden heart anymore. Don’t fret if that was the reason you loved the anime, because there are plenty of comedic scenes and great character development. I would even argue that most of the second season was character development. You learn a lot of about the different characters (both new and old) while still being entertained by fast pace action and witty dialogue. Although I would say people who enjoyed the final arc of the first season would like the second season even more, it is still worth watching if you were into the series for the comedy.
Most would say that both seasons were on equal footing when it came to art. I would agree for the most part, but the second season brought about a much more exciting use of the art style. The first season had quite a dose of action, well the second had even more. The action season if
Medaka Box were probably some of the best I've seen in a long time. I enjoyed watching these abnormal humans duke it out. It's unfortunate that the series had to stay with the school uniforms though. I would have liked to see each character with their individual styles and tastes. There was only so much variation they could do to a school uniform before it can't be considered a uniform anymore.
The overlying story arc for the second season was far better than the first. It brought a lot more to the table in terms of character development and entertainment. It was a nice change of pace to see Medaka actually struggling a little with internal and external conflicts. The best part is that she was still the same girl she always was while still growing as a character. It was good to know that there are things that set her off and others that keep her in check. The relationship between her and Zenkichi was also admirable. They made it clear in the second season that Zenkichi always knew he would never be as powerful, loving, caring, kind, and awe-inspiring as Medaka, but he never gave up. It didn't matter if Medaka was in a fight that he couldn't win, he would always step up to the plate and take a swing to protect her. This alone made him my favorite character of the series. Medaka on the other hand never saw herself as better than Zenkichi; they were always equals in her eyes. It's this type of relationship was that carried out through the season and allowed the creators to venture more into other genres than action and comedy. Unfortunately I can't say that the series was picture perfect. It ran into the snag that I tends to get a hold of a lot of action anime: obvious outcome. The entire season was basically one long tournament. The core group would split up and fight the bad guys individually, always on the losing side, and then suddenly pull out a new trick or be saved. Even though I was curious to see how everyone would get out of sticky situations it got repetitive. Of course the bad guys also had the cliche motivation to fighting, most of the time being to test their strength. This was the only thing I considered to be worse than the first season.
Thankfully the ending gave me hopes for yet another season of
Medaka Box. So far the series has done a good job with the continuation and I hope they keep it up. It seems that the possible third season will pull away from the standard one-on-one battles and become more of mental warfare. Either way I'm very excited to see how it continues (if it does). I'm thinking that I might end up reading the manga if I can find a place to buy it cheap.
Final statements: The second season of
Medaka Box was definitely better than the first and I'm hoping for a third season. It bumped the series up to a
high priority watch which is a pretty big achievement. I only hope that they don't become repetitive like a lot of other big name action anime.
