Anime: Owari no Seraph: Nagoya Kessen Hen 4a7229

Two seasons of fucking nothing with end-season episode both times being "fucking nothing with lots of SFX".
People always interrupting all Yuu's ults should be a meme.
Half of an episode of flashy transformations and posturing can't end with everyone back to same position EVERY. DAMN. TIME for dozens times in a row.
Cornerstone for this anime is "you didn't get this theme first time, so we repeat it 10 times more until you're sick with it". Apply it to "teamwork", "family", "following orders" and whatever else is considered central in this piece of hollow story.

I enjoyed both WIT's Attack on Titan and Attack on Trains and didn't expect Attack on Vampires with Helicopters be that bad.

Graphics and design are generally nice, but animation is very notable worse that two other their shows mentioned above - there are tons of stills with "speed lines" even in middle of heated battle. Yes, "Kabaneri" is more recent (only by one year), but then again, "Kyojin" is older and "Seraph" is still worse than it.

First season OP/EDs and their reprises are cool. Catchy OP is actually the reason I gave it a chance. The rest is forgettable.

Most characters are typical shounen:
"Arrogant powerful hero"
"Superevil army commander" (how did he get that far if he throws his underling away not for strategy, but just for no rhyme or reason? shouln't he simply run out of soldiers by now?)
"Cute girl tsundering over hero"
"Genki girl tsundering over hero"
"Cute but vile monster girl"
"Brooding childhood friend that works for enemy faction and we're supposed to root for him despite him still killing us, humans"
...all that stuff.
Then there are several characters less bland. Keyword is still "bland".

The only reason I watched it to the end is because I hate to drop stuff and feel I have to watch something completely before talking about it good or bad.

Review
Owari no Seraph: Nagoya Kessen Hen (Owari no Seraph 2) had everything ready for a satisfying and intriguing sequel. The first season certainly drowned with some annoying stereotypes and a "shounenfication" that proved to go against what the setting promised, yet it managed to keep on its toes, building a solid base for whatever came after.

Many shows in these past years had this exactly same scenario. Valvrave, Knights of Sidonia, Log Horizon. Many were ready to shine only to jump right into mediocrity and oblivion. Owari no Seraph 2, however, somehow worked around most of its flaws and embraced its simplicity in a positive light. What was fated to be an annoying miserable shounen turned out to be what I typically call "safe shounen", where you can be happy watching it without feeling dumb or tricked.

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1. Let's recall the scenario...
   If you , Owari no Seraph is basicaly Shingeki no Kyojin with vampires. Yuuchirou is the angry boy who was subject to mysterious experiments when younger and now wants to kill all vampires and recover his former best friend Mikaela who turned out to become a vampire himself. Yuuchirou, however, made new friends, got surrounded by nice girls, and gained some crazy demon super powers with his sword. What can he do with all that? Is it right to kil the vampires and take back his old friend? Is Mikaela still his friend?
   
   The political struggle becomes more evident
   that trash talk about humanity's doom? How vampries were invicinble foes, how men could only hide and pray to survive? Well, you saw what happened in the first season: Owari no Seraph turned the despair-inspired setting into a realm of a loli army and people who were more fit to a comedy anime than fighting in a world approaching its doom. This second season barely even re all that trash talk. It fortunately embraces that this is just a mindless shounen with strong foes and secret powers, and from there it wears the hood of Claymore more than that of Shingeki no Kyojin. Now we know humans have large forces, we know about other powerful vampires besides to immortal loli, we know there are things going around that proves this setting is far from a place of hopelessness and despair: this is now a place for struggle between men with "demonic" weapons and vampires.
   
   Non-stop Struggle
   One of the major turns in Owari no Seraph 2 is its lack of school. Instead of wasting episodes trying to relate to a possible audience, this season is all about military operations and fights against the powerful vampires, of course, ed by a bit a protagonist-annnoying-self-discovery-moments. These new fights are interesting, the animation keeps you enticed, and there is rarely a moment to take a breath or get annoyed by the mundane or useless elements the show presents you from time to time.
   
   The cast is the same though...
   Although there is a solid progression story-wise, the cast barely changes. We see less of the girls because they must fight vampires in this season, but the protagonist is annoying as ever, the carefree captain hardly gets interesting, and some utter nonsense in the later half end up feeling as just some ass-pull movement by the author that could easily be done in many other ways that would not destroy some of the few average characters the show has.
   
   And yes, there is a long way to go it seems
   Not an ending. Yup. There is another season to be aired (if the manga allows). However, this second part nicely wraps things up, proving to be a decent ending for a season. It seems even these two first seasons were built and a single entity, only divided by the sake of finances. A pity, because a similar wrapping in the first season could be used there as well.
   

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Comments
Well, this second season sured my expectations. I've mentioned in my first review it could be promising, but I had little hope for it due to the wide array of examples of terrible continuations in the recent years. Owari no Seraph 2 embraced its action parts, managed to build tension by putting heroes against stronger foes (but not invincible foes as once described), and it did a great job to keep you watching episode after episode.

There are still tons of issues, mainly with its casts, some annoying coincidences, and a lack of synch between setting and tale, They are all there, they work together to maintain Owari no Seraph in an average level, but for a safe shounen they are certainly within the limits of what is tolerable. A decent filler for those expecting more of Shingeki no Kyojin, and perhaps a glimpse of what is to come from the other animation by Wit Studio.