harem

Arifureta continues to be a mixed bag of varying animation quality and varying amounts of care. At times there are scenes that look truly beautiful and then they are followed by a still image depicting everyone walking in for dinner with the sound of footsteps over the top to give us a sense of actual movement going on (unsuccessfully). Likewise we go from a silly game of tag where Shia’s bikini top gets stolen to full on conspiracy and murder at the castle.

As always, my feelings on Arifureta are mixed as the overall plot line is fascinating and all of these characters have moments where I truly do like watching them. Then there’s everything in between those moments and when that starts dominating the episodes I find myself wondering once again why I continue to push through with this anime.

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Definitely a case where reading is the better option for this story because you can definitely get through the more frivolous parts quicker and when you get to the meat the story is actually really good.

Those still watching Arifureta really have to just accept this is what it is.

You’d be forgiven early on for feeling that episode 7 of Arifureta was just going to be more filler time with fan-service as Hajime and the girls delay leaving Myu and her mother due to Hajime suddenly having sentimental feelings toward leaving Myu behind. Admittedly, it is a pretty decent character progression point given other than Yue, Hajime had cut himself off significantly from others after the initial betrayal that led to his fall so seeing him so connected to another is actually a great step forward.

It doesn’t make watching them play tag in bikinis any more interesting. Nor does it make morning wood jokes actually amusing.

However, for all that Hajime and gang seem to be in a holding pattern this week, events back at the castle involving the other students are in full swing. We finally get to see Aiko in her prison and admittedly she isn’t doing a whole lot other than fretting about things. It would have been nice to see her plotting escape or trying to get a message out or literally anything to show that she had grown beyond just wringing her hands and hoping, but at least we’ve finally seen what happened to her after her abduction.

Of course, it does leave you wondering why she isn’t just dead. All well and good to say she’s been taken off the board but the problem is she could be placed back on it if you just leave her where she is.

Aiko isn’t the main point though. What we see this week is that huge numbers of people in the castle are being influenced and this leads to an attack on the Knight Commander and pretty much only decent guy there. While a fairly common criticism I’ve had of Arifureta up until now is that we don’t spend enough time on this aspect of the story, leading to only having a vague sense of any of these characters, the Knight Commander has managed to make an impression so the attack upon him definitely carried weight and it definitely has huge implications for the safety of the students going forward.

And just to ensure that the plot is really hopping along we also get a cut of the demons declaring that their god has spoken and they are going to war. This could potentially lead to a very violent climax if all of these plot threads actually come together.

All that is really left is to see what Arifureta decides to do with all these plot points. Hopefully something good. Or at the very least, explosive.

Images from: Arifureta 2nd Season. Dir. A Iwanaga. asread & studio MOTHER. 2022.

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Karandi James

When Arifureta directed Hajime onto his quest to conquer each of the Labyrinths, initially as a goal to maybe get home and then apparently to bring down the gods of the world, or whatever, I wondered how they would keep this scenario interesting.

The first Labyrinth (in season one) was brutal for Hajime given his weakness when he fell into it and transformed him entirely teaching him a huge range of skills along the way. Subsequent labyrinths have been less impressive. While the second presented some challenges, mostly they’ve been a walk-through for Hajime and gang and while they’ve learned a new magic at the other end there’s been little personal growth associated with the journey.

If the journey is giving diminishing returns, what will Arifureta do next?

I guess if someone was determined to attempt defending the Arifureta anime adaptation they’d point to Kaori’s understanding this week as she accepted her position in the party and that Hajime was in love with Yue. I’m not entirely sure that was a winning decision but I guess it counts as character growth.

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For Hajime though, this latest Labyrinth really didn’t do much for him other than give him the token that means he now has conquered enough labyrinths to go back to the one in Shea’s forest. I’ll admit though, as Hajime himself points out, the visions in this Labyrinth would have been much harder to deal with if you were from the world originally. As it was though it really was as Hajime put like “watching a bad play”.

Basically this Labyrinth revealed that a year after peace was forged between humans, beastmen and demons, the human king got all the delegates from the beastmen and demons onto a boat, went off on a religious extremist rant before executing the lot of them. Go figure it was a human who broke the peace treaty and did it because he was hiding behind religion.

Although, I guess we are potentially being led to believe that he was being manipulated behind the scenes. With the end scenes showing us what is currently happening in the palace where clearly people are having their minds controlled, it is certainly possible.

And certainly they remind us at the end of this episode of Arifureta yet again of things going very wrong for the students waiting back at the palace. While Hajime and his group are out doing and as a result continuing to gain magic and skills, the rest of the summoned heroes have kind of stagnated and seem to not even be venturing out from behind the walls anymore.

Even as they worry about their teacher who has not come back and others who have gone missing, they still simply sit at a table and wring their hands rather than taking action.

Honestly, we’re very back to Arifureta just kind of being adequate. We’ve returned to the murky visuals at points in the Labyrinth making it difficult to see what is happening. We’re also back to seemingly little to no challenge for Hajime and his gang as they simply walk through one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Even the one potential threat that may have challenged them was easily dealt with due to the arrival of the talking fish Hajime randomly rescued way back when (and how many viewers had just forgotten about that).

That said, there is a sense that this season of Arifureta is actually moving us toward something. The ongoing saga with the other students suggests that Hajime isn’t going to be ignored for too much longer and it makes me wonder where this season will end.

Images from: Arifureta 2nd Season. Dir. A Iwanaga. asread & studio MOTHER. 2022.

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Karandi James

Arifureta leaves Myu behind as the gang board the submarine and go labyrinth hunting. Only it isn’t much of a hunt because after drifting kind of aimlessly, giving time to show each girl of the harem in the shower and Hajime contemplating the setting sun, the moon hits the magical necklace and gives them a direct beam of light to their location. Convenient.

Arifureta takes us on an underwater adventure – kind of.

It is kind of weird they made such a big deal about this being an underwater labyrinth and Hajime premade a submarine and the like. Largely because as soon as they arrive underwater the submarine becomes useless as they end up in first a cave and then some kind of island location. Also, can we take a moment to critique the underwater sequence Arifureta does give us.

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I mentioned back in season one that one of the issues with the action in the dungeons was how dark the episodes were. To the point that it was difficult to even see what was happening because there was insufficient contrast. Well, underwater sequences are much the same and the submarine really just gets them down through the water, throws a few torpedo’s at a completely unidentified monster, and then is packed away.

Arifureta, this is not how you make best use of your props.

Though while we are on the submarine sequence, I found Hajime’s actions just kind of eye-roll worthy. He senses or sees a monster behind the submarine (or at least its aura) and without even identifying what it is simply launches a barrage at it, gloats about how the explosions are more powerful and continues on. Great, now even the anime itself is just skipping over conflict to the point where we don’t even know what they are fighting.

Likewise Tio notices something on the cave roof when they arrive and rather than take a closer look or anything else she just hits it with a barrage of magic power. Guessing they weren’t trying to get the element of surprise here. Not to mention, her attack essentially dropped part of the roof on top of Shea.

Arifureta then treats the audience to a slime fight though again its taking place in an underwater cavern so basically just accept you are going to see dark purple smears on the screen and the girls lifting their arms up while lights come out and meanwhile Hajime will go from shooting a gun to getting out the flame thrower. Its a pretty unspectacular visual mess of a sequence.

But before you think I’m just kind of dumping on Arifureta because I can, I actually did like the sequence that followed all the murky action where Hajime point blank talked to Kaori about his relationship with Yue and called her out on her jealousy. It was a far more direct approach to tidying up miscommunications and misunderstandings than most anime ever get to and hopefully it tidies up the ongoing squabbling in the harem because that was getting old.

It would be even better if Kaori could just be happy for Hajime and leave it at that.

Finally, as has become standard for Arifureta Season 2, the story jumps over to the castle where we see Aiko getting abducted. Someone ought to tell her kidnapper that being told ‘don’t worry I won’t kill you’ isn’t as comforting as she might think.

All things considered, I’d still say season 2 of Arifureta is going much better than most of season one, however there are still enough issues, particularly with the visuals and lack of things to care about as most of the battles still feel weightless. That said, season 2 is far more watchable than season one and honestly its doing better at holding my interest this season than the second season of Realist Hero or the first season of Tensai Ouji.

Images from: Arifureta 2nd Season. Dir. A Iwanaga. asread & studio MOTHER. 2022.

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Karandi James

Arifureta briefly gave us a glimpse of a somewhat grittier scene last week in episode 3 with a fight that felt like the characters had to really invest. However almost immediately this episode backs away from that by showing us the characters already free and clear before flashing back to walk us through a pretty clumsy escape plot that involves Hajime having already built a submarine (because they were going to investigate an underwater labyrinth) and said submarine somehow being fit to ride through lava.

Let’s not even talk about the fact that not only did getting swept away by lava deeper underground end up with them not being trapped in an underground chamber but somehow harmlessly flushed them out into the ocean, it actually did so right near Myu’s home and despite having no clear means to communicate, Tio, Kaoru and Myu more or less instantly found them and reunited.

Arifureta clearly likes its no stakes approach to conflict.

I will acknowledge that they do spend some time later in the episode bringing the whole conspiracy with the church and the King and his advisor’s potentially being mind-controlled or whatever more clearly into focus. As much as Aiko and Shizuku seem very peripheral to the plot, season 2 of Arifureta does seem to want to build up this portion of the story and there’s certainly room for it to end up being an interesting plot line. They just need to make us care about any of the classmates as characters.

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Meanwhile, with the core group that we’ve spent time with and kind of come to appreciate, Yue, Hajime and Shia fall back into their old dynamics from before Tio and others joined the crew. As much as Tio had a pretty glorious moment in the last episode, this episode of Arifureta just reminded me of how much better this cast is when there are less of them around. Because as the others caught up with Hajime again I felt each character’s presence get more diluted until we really just had Myu and Hajime with the bevy of other characters trailing along and filling up the background.

Even Yue couldn’t really break through this week. While she certainly had her moment, with Shia more or less out for the count after their escape and Hajime lying on the deck of his convenient submarine, Yue certainly takes advantage of the moment to reclaim her position as the main girl in the story but all too soon she’s also just part of the bright haired girl group that seem to follow Hajime.

As always, its a case of wanting more from Arifureta than it seems willing to bring to the party and the end result is always feeling like we’re getting a walk through of a story rather than being immersed in the story.

Myu being reunited with her mother should have felt somewhat emotional but instead it was just another thing that happened and even the conversation between mother and Hajime, who Myu has taken to calling ‘papa’ couldn’t really carry any weight because the whole thing was frame by the locals peeking in through the windows and providing unwanted commentary before running off to plot something (probably something relatively meaningless so I’m not overly concerned).

That said, having watched season one and now being a third of the way through season two, it is clear season two is a little more settled than season one felt. There’s nothing actively bad about this season so far and it is definitely more a case of just feeling a little underwhelming. Though if this season of Arifureta gave us more episodes like episode 3 that might start to change.

Images from: Arifureta 2nd Season. Dir. A Iwanaga. asread & studio MOTHER. 2022.

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Karandi James

One of my ongoing issues with the anime adaptation of Arifureta has been the general feeling that even the characters are bored or just playing around as they move through the various challenges they seemingly face. I get the whole point is that Hajime is an overpowered main character after his ordeal falling to the bottom of the Labyrinth alone but it doesn’t make for a compelling story when a ridiculously powerful enemy appears and Hajime literally snuffs it out without breaking a sweat.

After the events of the last episode, Hajime isn’t in a great state. In fact, I don’t think we’ve seen him this injured since the very start of the story and Yue is understandably a little freaked out. Even Tio and Shia are struggling to keep calm under the circumstances. And then it appears that the demon has caught up with them and decided to eliminate them. Also he declares he’s god’s apostle and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, his motives seem fairly trite to be honest and just the usual kind of thing of I got great power from someone and now I’ll do whatever just because they say so.

Arifureta could put a little more effort into the antagonist here.

However, just finally having a fairly powerful enemy isn’t enough to elevate Arifureta from the pile of indifference I usually have when watching it. What works here is that the fight itself, while following most of the standard clichés for such a match up when it isn’t a final battle, works well. The pacing was spot on. The characters actually seemed to be taking the situation very seriously. There were actual potential stakes. And let’s be honest, the setting of fighting inside a volcano is just kind of cool once you get a decent enough fight scene to enjoy it.

Weirdly though, Tio, a character I have little time for and am mostly glad she has mostly remained in the background of the group, was the standout this week, and not just because she went full dragon.

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Arifureta really gave her moments to shine throughout this episode as she was the one who kept her head when Hajime was first injured. Shielding Yue from the follow up attack and also preventing Shia from putting herself in harm’s way. She also recalled that Hajime, despite his overwhelming strength, was human. A very brief flash-back sequence reminded us of her own circumstances and why she hides what she is most of the time. And then she stepped up, went full dragon and played a pivotal roll in allowing Hajime to kind of get the upper-hand in the fight if only briefly.

It was a solid effort from this supporting cast member and I think her final flight out of the volcano on Hajime’s orders, as true to form she laughs in the face of pain, is a scene that should be remembered as a triumph for a character that at times manages to really just derail whole scenes. This was Tio at her best and I really hope we see more of this Tio because I really liked it.

The other solid choice here is the villain isn’t killed. Arifureta most definitely is heading for a rematch which means for once we have something to look forward to in this story rather than just Hajime knocking something down and moving on seemingly without ever considering what is coming in the future.

The final few minutes of the episode of Arifureta skip us back to the castle with the Princess, the King and all the other class-mates. There’s a problem with the King being in a trance, Shizuku is feeling weak after her easy defeat in the dungeon, and the guy who tried to kill Hajime is annoyed because Hajime isn’t dead and Kaori has now gone with him. Going to be honest, I don’t care. None of these characters have had enough presence in the anime to be anything other than a distraction and sure these subplots will be important later but Arifureta hasn’t given them enough weight to really matter at this stage.

Here’s hoping more of the episodes feel like this where core characters get moments worth celebrating and conflicts feel like they were worth having.

Images from: Arifureta 2nd Season. Dir. A Iwanaga. asread & studio MOTHER. 2022.

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Karandi James

Arifureta is one of the very few anime where I had read the source prior to the anime coming out (there’s been a few more recently but usually I read the source after the anime is done and usually only if I want to know if there’s more to the story). With the other issues season one faced, knowing the story had been told better in a different format certainly didn’t help my enjoyment of it. But season 2 isn’t burdened by that issue as the plot has now moved beyond the novels that I’ve read.

Which explains why I was nearly jumping for joy midway through this episode when Kaori decided to stay in the village to continue healing the sick civilians rather than accompanying Hajime to the mountain. Anymore Yue and Kaori bickering after the first episode of season 2 of Arifureta might very well have killed any lingering curiosity I had for finding out where this story goes.

Arifureta Season 2 Continues Its Theme Of Indifferent Monster Slaying

Anyway, this episode begins with Hajime and his harem arriving in the town that had the issue with the poisoned water. In the space of a few little spells they create a major water reservoir so the town people can drink while they determine what the problem with the oasis is before going in search of the magic mineral that will help cure everyone rather than just stabilise them. Yue does most of the leg-work with the spells and for a brief instant looks weakened but then makes out with Hajime and instantly bounces back.

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One of the things that continues to make it difficult to really buy into Arifureta is the indifference the characters themselves have to their circumstances. Sometimes they at least recklessly enjoy the danger but normally, as it is when they confront the blob monster thing in the oasis, they are so coldly disinterested in really just makes it hard as a viewer to care about what they are doing.

However, with the water reserves sorted and the creature in the oasis defeated, its time to go to the mountain and enter yet another labyrinth. I’m not sure if this one was meant to be as elaborate or interesting as the previous ones but after a brief walk, a rest stop in which all the girls open their shirts to cool off revealing sweat trickling into their bosoms, the group board a boat and ride the lava to the finish line.

Way to take the excitement out of a quest.

Meanwhile how long is Hajime going to react with blushes and yelps when the girls that are constantly around him do something vaguely provocative? He’s so chill about death and monsters after his ordeal in the first labyrinth it makes you wonder why his constant exposure to Yue, Shia and Tio hasn’t desensitised him at least a little bit. Then again, I guess he wouldn’t be an anime protagonist if he didn’t.

The final parts of this episode of Arifureta focus on some lava snakes attacking the group prior to reaching what they think will be the end of the labyrinth. As usual they take care of it all pretty easily though as least just as they think they are victorious something a little surprising happens leaving us with at least a decent enough cliff-hanger to carry us into episode 3.

Part of me just wishes that the creative team behind Arifureta had spent as long on their monster designs an animations as they had on cute anime girls and heaving bosoms. While the lava snakes are a step up in quality from some of the visual monstrosities of season one, they aren’t particularly interesting and their movements are almost identical to the sand snakes encountered in episode 1.

Images from: Arifureta 2nd Season. Dir. A Iwanaga. asread & studio MOTHER. 2022.

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Karandi James