VINLAND SAGA SEASON 2

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ActionVinland Saga
ANIME ActionVINLAND SAGA
ONA ActionVINLAND SAGA SEASON 2: Drowning in the Shadow
ONA DramaVINLAND SAGA SEASON 2: Same old story

REVIEWS

• 

  Bropix

  100/100
  I Never Thought Farming Simulator Could Get So Intense

  Vinland Saga is a historical, adventure-epic manga by Makoto Yukimura. The first 8 volumes were adapted into a 24-episode anime season by Wit Studio. Season 1 was one of the best anime of 2019, so the much-awaited 2nd season of Vinland Saga was one of the most anticipated anime of 2023.

  This season covers the “Slave Arc”, volumes 9-14 into 24 episodes by studio MAPPA. Despite the studio change, much of the original staff from season 1 have worked on season 2!

  

  Set in 11th century Europe after the events of the 1st season, the young warrior Thorfinn’s main reasons to keep struggling and fighting for are gone now. Feeling empty he abandons his warrior self and is sold into slavery all the while being plagued by nightmares of his past actions.

  This season's core focus is the rehabilitation of the main character and to start moving the series to its end conclusion… reaching Vinland.

  If you are looking for an action-packed season with more dual knife-wielding, war fights, and Thorkell Hanma going on rampages you will be very disappointed. There is still lots of blood and heavy themes, and regarding themes they are even heavier here than in the first season.

  Vinland Saga Season 2 is criticized by some as slow. There is less action and more character drama. This arc is popularly called Farmland Saga, why? Almost all of season 2 takes place on a farm. Imagine the farmhouse in Walking Dead Season 2, but good... really fucking good.

  

  Despite there being far less action, this season is shockingly better and more amazing than the already amazing 1st season. Yes, it’s that good.

  I personally do not like using the term “Peak Fiction” in reviews, as it can be cringy or full of bias, but for Vinland Saga, it feels appropriate for the level of writing it has delivered.

  This is a season that will make you curious about what happens next in its plot, it will impress you with rich characterization of its characters, immerse you with its drama and tragedy, it even made me cry more than once. It also fills you with hope and lots of badassery... plus lots of farming!

  The direction is seriously incredible. The staff was able to create some fantastic scenes with the wonderful art and animation. Full of dedication and love, it especially shows in the anime original content that additionally fleshes out existing scenes. 1/3 of episode 17 is anime original and it’s universally accepted even by manga readers to be great. The nightmare scenes are visually stunning and the fight scenes that are included have amazing choreography.

  The sound design is great, everything sounds appropriate and the soundtrack is equally as good... especially the piano OSTs. The voice acting is S tier, the entire cast is amazing. Uemura Yuuto as Thorfinn and Saco Mayumi as Arnheid deliver performances that left me impressed.

  

  It is very apparent that the staff really love and understand the source material. The dedication would make any author start crying from how fortunate they were if they received such an adaptation.

  Thorfinn has one of the best rehabilitation and transformations I’ve seen in media. His character progression and development throughout the two seasons are masterful. Seeing him abandoning his old warrior self to become a true warrior like his father.

  Einar is best boy, a contrast to Thorfinn in the way they grew up, but both are the same regarding the uncertainty of their futures. Their relationship is wonderful, genuine, and wholesome. Being the main source of help for Thorfinn's mental health and their first real friend.

  Canute returns with an amazing glow up. His role in the story is as interesting as ever, after becoming king it is very fascinating seeing how the crown has started affecting him and his end goals.

  The “I have no enemies” scene is the best scene in the series thus far... It is the culmination of over 40 episodes worth of content for Thorfinn's character and it does not disappoint with its impact. As not only Thorfinn realizes the full meaning of those words, but so do you the viewer

  

  Vinland Saga is not just war and Vikings, the story is about trauma and showing the never-ending cycle of violence constructed by those believing they have enemies worth killing. Vinland Saga is an amazing, beautiful, epic story.

  __It was the best anime of 2019 and currently one of the best of 2023.__
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• 

  Mcsuper

  98/100
  A Transcendant Tale Of War And One's Ideals

  Before: After:

  “Carve it. Carve it into your flesh. Carve it into the land. Carve it into the sea. Carve it into your spoils. Carve it into your enemies. Carve it.”

  The second season of Vinland Saga is a clear departure to the themes of its predecessor, with a much slower pace, and while the setting still has the backdrop of war surrounding it, a lot of it was in quite a calm, farming environment, at least for the first half. This season really embodied the Seinen genre extremely well, with much more complex themes than what the first season provided, and both seasons shine in their own respective ways. It’s meant for a more mature audience perhaps compared to the first season, which served as a good way to get fans into the series.

  Sure, the first season had quite a lot of action, but as we keep moving along in the story, a question we could ask ourselves is, “Was the action really the main focus of what this story wanted to tell?” It’s set in the Viking era, so obviously there will be some combat, but it’s become clearer with this season that it’s not even close to the message that the author wanted to tell. Makoto Yukimura, the author, definitely put some of his ideals into the characters and the story, reflecting on the kindness and cruelty of the world, and its balance. If you haven’t already read his Twitter threads for each episode, I do recommend you read them so you understand his intent behind the story even more. If you are a huge fan of action anime, you might find this season a bit off-putting and not for you.

  It’s a full 180 from Season 1 not just in its story, but also its characters. Thorfinn in Season 1 was in a way, kind of a protagonist you’d find in action shounen anime, with revenge being his main reason to keep on living after Askeladd slayed his father on the ship. He lost his reason to live after the events of Season 1’s finale, so at the start of this season, he was understandably depressed. However, if Season 1 was a tale of battles and what it means to fight and die on the battlefield, then Season 2 was a tale of what it means to live. His development this season was absolutely stellar, as he went from a very quiet, depressed character, to a character with lofty ideals, and one who influenced everyone around him, filling them to the brim with hope, and a reason to press on in a cruel world like theirs. Meanwhile, Einar, the other main protagonist, and some other characters as well, kind of feel like the Thorfinn of old back in Season 1. Snappy, quick to anger, and easy to provoke. It’s somewhat ironic that Thorfinn sometimes is the one to calm them down, but it just shows how far he’s come. He’s truly a beautiful man.

  A big message, and perhaps the main one, was the fact that people draw their swords way too quickly, and don’t talk things out. It’s easy to resort to violence instead of trying to reason with others. Other characters on the farm had these traits, such as Olmar and Thorgil. Not everyone understands Thorfinn’s ideals right away, as they might seem laughable in a world like theirs, where people pillage and set fire to villages almost every day. Slowly and surely, the people understand, and get inspired by the kindness of Thorfinn, but not everyone comes around, although everyone can have the capacity to change. The contrasting ideals of what it means to be a “true warrior” will be a subject of debate always, in this anime, and in our real world. Is it someone who is physically strong, and fights with no mercy toward one’s enemies, or is it someone who has the wisdom and adaptability to prevent the conflict from ever happening to save lives? The different characters in this anime are on both sides of this spectrum, and I love how neither side backs down on their ideals. When such ideals clash, conflict will still unfortunately ensue, and it’s easy to just say that conflict is a part of life, that it’s unavoidable, but with that said, should we give up and not try to stop it, just accepting it? As Thorfinn said, “Anger begets more anger, it just results in deaths, one after another.”

  All of these themes culminate in a very gripping story on Ketil’s farm, filled with very heavy episodes, raw emotion, and pure brutality on the battlefield. The violence was gruesome, with limbs lying on the ground, blood spilling everywhere, and I love how the production staff didn’t hold back in that regard. The raw emotion resulted in many painful times for the characters and for us viewers, but they don’t rely on sob stories and massive melodrama to convey such emotion, but rather, it just shows us how unlucky some people are, especially the slaves. Snake said a very interesting thing,"They say inferior people can't help but become slaves. That it's where they belong. But I don't think so. Slaves were just unlucky. That is all. If you and I had been unlucky, we might've ended up as slaves, too."

  The animation was overall quite solid, though there were some episodes with rather limited movement and a few stiff looking bits of animation here and there. That would be my one nitpick, in that it wasn’t perfectly polished, but no production can be perfect, especially in these times where the production schedules aren’t the most healthy, especially from MAPPA taking on so many projects at once. There are also some scenes that feel a bit dragged to pad the episode time, but it didn’t bother me too much. That said, the background art was incredibly immaculate, especially in the important moments, to really convey the emotional weight of certain scenes. Props to director Shuhei Yabuta for doing a great job, along with the rest of the production team.

  The soundtrack was also exemplary in making emotional scenes hit that much harder, with the somber piano tracks, as well as even a choir, and fitting music in more uplifting moments as well. Without this beautiful music, I wouldn’t have felt nearly as emotional as I did in some of the scenes, to the point of crying. The two openings and two endings were also quite solid, with providing the necessary hype in the openings, and the more quiet, emotional side of things from the endings.

  All in all, this was most definitely my favourite anime I’ve watched this year without a shadow of a doubt, and one of the most beautiful, anime I watched ever. Truly transcendent material. It’s an exquisite story about mental and moral dilemmas that plague the world, and especially Thorfinn. It’s a tale of maturity for him, from a person driven by revenge and hatred, to a person driven by love and kindness. It was all about letting go of hate, and finding out what it means to live, to create a utopia that makes others want to live, and not resort to death as a salvation from an unforgiving, savage world. He’s well on his way to doing that.

  And as a final message, the next time you encounter a fan complaining about the lack of action, or preaches their favourite shounen like the Bible, don’t make them your enemy, just say, “I have no enemies.”

  
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• 

  Alriven

  100/100
  A Worthy Successor To The Incredible First Season!

  As a manga reader, I already knew how awesome this season was going to be. The only underlying worry with the change in studios was MAPPA giving it a proper adaptation. Needless to say, they have done a pretty decent job at it.

  What is it that first comes to our minds when we think of the Golden Age of the Vikings? Surely it is Norse Gods, bloody raids across Europe, pagan rituals, voyages in longships and so on. The daily lives of slaves and farmers or the effect of raids on the lives of the victims are hardly among those, since the former appears more appealing compared to the latter. But regardless of the entertainment value, both of them were integral parts of society then. If the first season explored the former, the second season explores the latter. Surely there is a shift in tone accompanied by this change, but rather than treating them as two completely different things, we should see them as the two sides of the same coin.

  The first season of Vinland Saga, although a wonderful season in terms of both narrative and technical aspects, lacked something huge. The portrayal of what should have been the very heart of the show, Thorfinn, left a large portion of the viewers annoyed, detached and not being able to like the character. But this was largely due to the constraints of adapting an anime from the source material, rather than being a flaw of the storyline itself. Regardless, everything changed for the better in this season as Thorfinn undergoes one of the greatest character developments to become the most lovable character of the show, perhaps even more than the show stealer Askeladd himself. The mass introduction of new characters is something that I'm not really a huge fan of. There are several shows that does this that has left a bad taste in my mouth. But sometimes the storyline demands it and it's very hard to pull off successfully. Needless to say, Yukimura has done a great job at introducing the new characters for they are all very likeable and interesting, even though some of them being absolute pieces of shit. There have also been several instances of anime original scenes in the show. Even the very first scene of this season was an original scene, but all of them have only enhanced the source material even more.

  However, two of the biggest drawbacks of this season seemed to be related to the animation quality and shift in tone compared to the first season. There certainly has been a slight dip in the animation quality compared to the first season. There are instances of choppy animation, not big enough to ruin your experience but enough to notice them. Instances where facial features are not completely visible upon viewing from afar and moments with juxtaposition of characters with backgrounds are also present. The lack of action compared to the first season might also be underwhelming for many fans who have been following this anime just because it's bloody aspects and cannot find the themes explored by this season interesting, adding salt to the wound, the slow pace of the storyline.

  In conclusion, as a huge fan of Vinland Saga, the Farmland Saga was everything I could have ever hoped for. Of course, there are certain aspects which could have been improved, but overall, it has been a satisfying journey. And don't forget, You Don't Have Any Enemies!

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