by Kallo » July 19th, 2017, 6:59 pm
I finally got around to watching all three episodes of S2 so far. I enjoyed them, but they also weren't exactly up to my expectations (be it the fault of too high expectations on my part, or the episodes themselves). Especially "The Savannah Summit". I enjoyed Makuu's development, but at the same time when I heard about this episode, I was hoping there'd be some real plot against the giraffes or something. That'd have been a cool episode. So far, things I've noticed about S2 I was hoping for, but not exactly expecting to be there: 1) New intro. Was hoping there'd be one, and slightly disappointed there's not one. 2) The animation hasn't improved as much as I'd hoped. The walking animation still often looks... bad. It's still improving slowly, but the animation quality is basically exactly where it was at the end of S1. 3) Background music is improving and it was already great, which is awesome! 4) Simba's VA seems to be improving, though his voice still doesn't really fit the character super well, I feel. But at least his acting is getting better. 5) Mufasa's appearance is still lame as ever. The music and the visuals just aren't impressive enough when he appears. It's not supposed to feel like an "everyday thing", which it does now. I hope they'll at least handle Scar's appearance better. 6) Still too many songs and catchphrases being thrown around. Not a fan. At least the catchphrases this time seemed to be limited to one or two per episode, instead of like.... five. 7) Still no sight of Simba's pride, even though there was a perfect chance to show some background lionesses. 8) The dry season is already being mentioned in at least two episodes, so I'm glad they seem to be making that a theme. Hopefully it will lead to some awesome situations later in the season. I wasn't expecting the show to suddenly get way darker, but I am hoping as the season goes on, it'll slowly build and get more serious and dark. The dry season theme could help that a lot.
The episodes themselves felt pretty average and predictable to me. Not bad, but I can certainly name quite a few better ones from Season 1. They were a nice start to a second season, but not a super strong one. Didn't really care for any of the songs, either. "Babysitter Bunga" was good, but it felt like the most "childish" and "educational" episode to-date. A bit too much so for me. But it was nice to see Reirei again. I marked out when the season started with a scene of her. She's probably my favourite villain this show has introduced. And the girl jackal puppy was cute, but we didn't see enough of her. They also completely destroyed the credibility of the jackals' threat, by making them such wimps, which I didn't like. The show is pretty bad at that. It doesn't really have too many serious villains that feel like an actual threat (and even the serious ones always get destroyed by the Roar), so I feel they can't afford to do that. "The Savannah Summit", for what it was, is probably my favourite of the three episodes. As said, Makuu's development was nice, but there's not really much else I can say about it. "The Travelling Baboon Show" was the weakest of the episodes, but it was nice to see Janja and his clan again. It was also the funniest episode. I felt like the first two episodes kinda reverted back to early S1 episodes humour and dialogue -wise, which this episode corrected. The funniest moment this season so far for me is when Bunga mocked the thought of different animals working together, and then Ono was like "Hello" and Bunga just replied "Hi". I wasn't expecting that. xD