And thus, the boy’s path to kinghood was firmly halted.
What They Say:
The Kingdom of Tūrān decides to take advantage of Pars’s moment of weakness to invade, forcing Arslan to abandon his plan to retake Ecbatana in order to secure the border at Peshawar.
The Tūrānians regroup and prepare to make another attempt to take Peshawar Fortress, this time, using more underhanded means. Meanwhile, Andragoras makes good his escape from Ecbatana and the Lusitanians.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Arslan Senki is in an interesting place right now. It has passed the manga by Fullmetal Alchemist creator Hiromu Arakawa, which it began by adapting. That means it’s just going by the story from the original novels now, but of course it still has Arakawa’s distinctive character designs, and any new characters going forward have to match that. So while I’m not up on the manga enough to compare accurately, it would seem that the anime staff now has to draw new characters from the manga in the style they would envision Arakawa doing so, and for consistency Arakawa herself may refer to them for when these events come up in her actual manga adaptation and draw the characters to match others’ idea of how she would’ve drawn them in the first place. Given that bizarre prospect, it would make a great deal more sense to simply have Arakawa design them for the anime to use ahead of time, and given her end card illustration for the first episode and her work with the team behind Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood to deliver the ending to that series at the same time as the manga ended, the chances of that being the case are probably pretty good.
Another interesting note is that this new season, following up the full 25-episode one that preceded it last year, is a mere 8 episodes, an unusually small number for any anime series on TV. Why it was decided to continue the series after less than a year off and yet only give it such a short running time I have no idea, but as a result, just these first two episodes account for a quarter of the entire season. Now the question is whether we’ll continue to get more in the future, and considering all the surprising things about this adaptation so far, I couldn’t hazard any kind of educated guess at this point. To top it all off, the original novels are still running as well, so depending on how far along we are, enough of this series could potentially mean catching up to those as well, in which case there’s no way to continue onward. It’s in an interesting place indeed.
Likely due in part to this small episode count, the series wastes no time in getting things rolling again. Characters are reintroduced via boxes displaying their names and titles, not taking any time away to recap the events of the first season. This series has seemed protracted at times, with several episodes passing at any given point and not necessarily a solid chunk of progress achieved in the process. There are a lot of moving parts in these first two episodes back into the story, but one stands above the rest as a potential for great change in the first and an absolute confirmation of that ending the second: Andragoras is back on the scene. Having spent most of the series chained up, a viewer may have forgotten just how terrifying a man he was, but he practically punches through the screen to remind us all of that fact, and to prove it more than ever. The primary antagonist has always been set up to be Silver Mask (whose real name has gone from Hermes to Hilmes, though I’m not sure why), and for that matter Arslan and his comrades have long been hoping for Andragoras to be alive and well and to one day be freed, whether by their hands or not. However, the fearsome man takes this opportunity to quickly establish himself as Arslan’s greatest enemy in the short term. After all, while it’s easy for Arslan and his army to clash swords with Hilmes, Andragoras is the one man that none of them can even stand up to, stopped by themselves before any physical conflicts can even come into play. This is clearly a point that must be dealt with before Arslan can make any further progress in his path to become the king that the narration has always claimed he will become, so the immediate question at hand is whether that will take just another episode or two, the entire length of this brief sequel, or if even after all that is over, it will still be far out in the future. There’s no telling at this point what can be expected from the production of this series, though the plot is more predictable.
In Summary:
Arslan returns alongside his eponymous series, but both may see roadblocks in their path in the form of the former king and a short running time (possibly followed by catching up with source material) respectively. In some ways the unique aspects of the production are more interesting than the plot itself, but these first two episodes do display a strong return to form, making the most of the limited time available to bring forth captivating plot elements basically right off the bat.
Grade: B
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Roku 3, Sceptre X425BV-FHD 42″ Class LCD HDTV.