The first season brought with it some high expectations as it was able to tell a complete story and filled it with sympathetic characters, great animation, and a brilliant soundtrack scored by Toshihiko Sahashi. This second season on the other hand seems quite soulless in comparison. Without anything else to go off of, I can only say that Artland managed to take Madhouse's brilliant adaptation of Yu Aida's manga and do it a grave disservice.

Starting from the beginning, I had already had my reservations, especially with how most of the voice actors did not portray their characters accurately. Or maybe it was the scriptwriting that was poor. Regardless, they felt the need to have Rico and Henrietta make cute-sounding noises every so often. Why? I have no damn clue myself. Maybe it was to fill in the silence or something. However, that detracted just slightly from the series, but enough to make it an annoyance. A graver matter was how Triela and Rico's personalities were way off the mark. Both the two were made to be very happy-go-lucky in such a way that they didn't seem real or genuine. Triela, for her part, seemed too happy when out with Hillshire when their relationship in reality is more strained. Triela herself was the most serious-minded girl of the group, but it certainly didn't seem that way from watching this. Rico also seemed a bit too outgoing and happy. Something about her just really got on my nerves and made me want to give her a good sock to the jaw to bring her back to her senses.

The sound direction was also a travesty. Early on in episode 1, there's a scene involving some protests in Rome... except the protesters didn't sound like protesters. Unless the protesters you see are weird and grunted instead of actually shouting slogans or anything of substance. This seemed like a really cheap shortcut and a half-assed way to go about doing this. If they're resorting to grunting, I can only imagine how they could take shortcuts elsewhere too.

Along with the crappy sound direction is the music, which, while listenable and decent, just doesn't mesh as well as it could. Another protest scene called for some tense sounding music, and the composer delivered unto us some electronica with a heavy beat to it. Given how the first season had a majestic soundtrack to it, season 2 just seems lame in comparison. Whatever happened to the awesomeness of the TEMA tracks anyhow? Yeah, what we have here is a definite downgrade in the music department.

OK, so we have to accept that the characters and the sound direction is terrible. Well, to add to that blow is the crappy animation which, like the sound direction, saw the animators take quite a few shortcuts. Seeing the poor treatment of Henrietta's P90 was already pretty bad, but looking at the scene where you can see Jan's bullet hit one of the terrorist in the legs (LOL BULLET TIME??) and the splotchy paint that they put over Triela's clothing in place of blood was absolutely inexcusable. And to top it off, they had Triela snipe with a shotgun. WTF??? I'm certainly no gun expert, but if I can catch all of those details, something is obviously very wrong with the show. ARGH!!!

Overall, I'm pretty disappointed. I'm comparing this to the first season though, so it may be unfair in that respect.

I feel as if the 2nd season has lost the melancholy feeling it once had in the first. It seems lightened up in this one. All the girls seem well.... more girly and slightly less believable (did Henrietta honestly have to giggle that many times when she was in Joses room?). Jose seems like he's more social now too, from the interaction between him and Henrietta we witness. When they did try to portray some form of seriousness (Henrietta getting angry that Jose was hurt and almost pulling the trigger, and Triela covered in blood as she turns around after shooting that guy) it came off as melodramatic, and wasn't very effective on me at all.

I'm very disheartened with where they headed with the art direction and music though. Everyone seems so much younger now.. and the music... well, it doesn't captivate me anymore like it once did, seems very generic. I do like the ending theme though :3.

All in all, I feel as if the series has been catered to a more mainstream audience and that it has been lightened up a significant amount. Hard to judge from one episode, but it's a bad first impression for me. I will continue watching though, just to see where this goes.

Ah, one thing I did like though, was the attention to firearm mechanics. The close up of Triela chambering her trademark trench gun was nice. Though, whenever someone went to ready their firearm, I felt as if the entire scene froze just so we would notice that one movement haha. I understand they're trying to please us firearm junkies, but they don't have to make their point so blatant.


EDIT: The OP was a complete pain to watch and a true eye sore.

the bullet goes through and leaves that guy with that nosebleed is accurate and representative of the particular firearm that Triela was using? I'm not saying it's fake, but it sure looked that way.