“Even from a far away place, your heart is always nearby”
We’ll meet again…right? After the end of the big battle with peace and happiness, Cyan knew that she would have to return home. I thought they would at least give her some time.
As expected, the good guys and the power of music win again. Darudayu flies in with the Melodisian Almaz and uses the power of it to boost the strength of everyone’s song. And with Maple’s “sacrifice” too. It was great hearing everyone’s voices in the same song, I thought it sounded fantastic. Their song defeated Victorious and it made her realize how much she really did love music and how she saw on Sound Planet how fun and warm music was. She used music before in hard times, like what we saw with her and Astrael. But hearing everyone’s songs made her see music as something else. She tells this to everyone and apologizes to them, and they were all happy to forgive her. Cute silliness ensues with everyone crying over Maple but he appears just as a…ahem, fried egg. And yeah Victorious just heads back to her planet where she brings music as she sings happily.
The concert at Puru Land continues and all is well. After their performance, Plasmagica is visited by Ninjinriot from the future telling them that they have succeeded. And since there’s nothing else for her to do there, it’s time for Cyan to go home. Just like last time, it’s a sorrowful departure full of tears but also happy words. They believe they’ll see each other again so they all remain positive. Cyan gives one last look to her friends as she is enveloped in Kamui’s green light.
In the credits, we see Cyan singing a new song we are to assume is the song she wrote for her school band for their festival. From the lyrics, the song is a shoutout to Plasmagica. It’s a sweet song. 🙂
A short recap, but this episode went the same way shows like this typically go. Good guys look like they’ll lose, one of the characters supposedly die but they don’t, a power arrives that helps the good guys, they win, they help the villain realize they were wrong, and happy ending! Honestly, it’s formulaic so I wasn’t on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next. Cyan’s departure wasn’t as sad as last time, probably because the first time I really thought Cyan would leave permanently. But this is the second season and she came back, so Cyan will probably come back again. Also, the departure was a little sudden and rushed so that was another reason. Speaking of which…
Final Impression
The second season of Show By Rock was fine, but like other people have mentioned, it was a little rushed. There were many things thrown into this season for us, such as Moa’s home planet, the intro of BUD VIRGIN LOGIC and ARCAREAFACT (who are still in the sewer!!! give them money!!! Shuzo help them!!!), the tension between Rosia and Retoree, Rom and Shu’s dealio, the sibling reveal of Ailane and Aion, the Queen of Darkness and her past, Tsurezure somehow knowing about the Melodisian Almaz, and so on. There was so much they squeezed into these 12 episodes that some things got more attention than others, where most of these topics were talked about with little to no buildup, and then we would move on to the next thing.
If I had to be brutally honest, this season wasn’t better than the first. There’s good things about this season though, like the character development. They made me like Rosia! I like her lots, and I just love all the characters in general. When it comes to characters, Show By Rock does it well. But when it comes to story, it falters. They made it seem like the girls of BUD VIRGIN LOGIC would be the main baddies, and they focused so much time on them only to have Victorious be the main one. And we kinda knew she was, but we never focused on her and her point of view. We rushed through her backstory, as well as other backstories. Aion and Ailane being siblings came out of nowhere with absolutely no hints, and Aion was a character we never really payed too much attention to. Rom and Shu’s past getting some attention was great, but again they didn’t do much with it. They probably could have if only they had more time for all of this, but they couldn’t because there were other episodes that took up that time.
The episodes that didn’t have to do with anything were episodes 2-4. As much as I love Moa and even though I felt like she needed her story to be told, I think we could have done without her episode altogether. Yes, I know it was her planet that funded the Puru Land project and the mecha, but we could have learned that in another way. Episodes 3 and 4 had some character development, especially the water sports episode, but it had nothing to do with the main plot so that took away from all the other things they wanted to do.
And frankly, as much as I absolutely love ARCAREAFACT (*blows kiss towards a sewer*), they didn’t contribute to the main plot either. They posed as rivals for SHINGANCRIMSONZ, and again that’s great for character development, but this took time away from the plot. Were ARC central to the plot? Sure, they had Victorious acting as their manager, but it wasn’t too important. They could have just made Victorious disguise herself as something else and we could have gotten rid of ARC and nothing would be different plot wise. We never even got to see them in the finale except for that tiny little snippet of them watching the Puru Land concert on TV. They weren’t villains, but just rivals.
Of course, BONES could have kept everything in! But that just meant that they needed more episodes, but seeing as how BONES worked themselves to the bone (haha) this year with so many shows, they probably struggled with this season and there was no way for them to make this season a two-cour. And the struggle shows with the quality of the animation. The animation dipped after awhile, especially in this finale, so you could see where they were cutting corners. I actually said earlier this year when I was blogging the first season of Bungou Stray Dogs that they had to cut corners with that show, but watching how amazing the animation was in the second season, they had to cut corners on a different show! I mean, it makes sense. That’s probably why they animated the performances in regular 2D and not in the usual Miumon ultra-hyper-1000fps 3D.
I know I’ve been saying nothing but negatives about this season, but I still liked this season. Not as much as the first one, but I still enjoyed watching it. The music this season was still fantastic. BUD VIRGIN LOGIC’S two songs, Schlehit Melodie and Danzai no Solitude, were my absolute favorite songs in this season. I’ve been listening to their songs every single day now and I haven’t gotten tired of them. It’s just so good! The other bands had great songs too, and really, the most important thing in an anime about music is having good music. So even though the animation took a dip, at least the music quality didn’t. In fact, I think it was better.
Also, I’m the kind of person that believes that a show with good characters and an iffy plot is much more better than a show with bad characters and a good plot. When it comes to characters, Show By Rock does well with that.
This season had a good thing going for it and it did a lot good, but it had some stumbles. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t like this season. True, it wasn’t as good as the first season, but it was still enjoyable for a Show By Rock fan like me. Will they make another season? I have no clue, and I’m not sure if they should. Apparently this series sells well in Japan, so anything could happen!
7/10
All in all, I agree with all your points except the part about the 3D animation.
Incredulous as it may sound, but 2D animation is actually harder and more expensive to do all the constant time than 3D animation once the models are done and can be reused constantly.
The main reason why 2D scenes were being used a lot more often this season is because the use of 3DCG in the first season was quite heavily criticized despite the staff being very proud of it (and it allowing them to do more with the rest of the story and the background), so they had to please those overtly critical fans who consider any kind of CG a blight upon anime (no matter how good and fitting it may be in SB69’s case).
And yes, the 2D animation of SB69 season 2 does take a drop because the same substudio of Bones (Studio D) worked on both Show By Rock and Bungou Stray Dogs at the same time in the Fall season. Because the second season isn’t allowed to use the CG animation too often, that means that the animators had to work extra hard and keep reusing the cheap anime tricks that we are all accustomed to, like showing still pictures and flashback sequences to older episodes, and hiring more animation directors to keep production on time, which makes coordination just that much more difficult.
And Show By Rock cannot afford to be delayed unlike other anime shows like Long Riders or Brave Witches, since as a multimedia-project, it exists to offer game codes for the mobile game as well as advertising music singles and the great Sanrio Puroland Escape game as an incentive for people to watch it live as it airs.
I hope the fans of 2D animation will be glad with what they’ve got with Show By Rock!!#, and that it was worth it for them.
Oh really! Seeing as how top quality the 3D models in this show are I would have thought that would have been more expensive! But yeah that makes sense. I admit that I was happy that they animated the music scenes in the regular 2D since they actually looked pretty good. But seeing as how they were trying to emulate the mobile game with the 3d Miumon artstyle and just how good the 3D looks in this show, I think it makes sense too that they would choose that style. I know that people usually hate CG in anime (I’m kinda in that boat), the CG in this show looks amazing so I’m surprised to hear that there were so many critiques against it.
Ahh, then yeah that explains even more. Bungou Stray Dogs season 2’s animation was stellar, but unfortunately that meant Show By Rock looked iffy. But yeah, Show by Rock is huge so I’m sure the animators were working extremely hard. I’ll cut them some slack.