Shikabane Hime – 15

Short Synopsis: Makina again gets the chance to meet the ones who killed her.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7.5/10 (Good)
Whoa, there surely have been some changes between the first and second season. Some were expected, others not, and both seasons now have their own advantages and disadvantages. Thankfully this episode was much better than the first episode of the second season, so all hope is thankfully not lost. Anyway, here’s a list of changes between these two seasons:

Season 1 < Season 2 - Characters are fleshed out and some of them are developed by now: they're easier to connect to and more enjoyable to watch. - AWESOME lighting effects: the second season looks even better than the first one due to the increase of lots of CG for lighting. - The monster of the week-theme seems to be gone now (not sure about that one, though). - Faster pacing. Potential for even better fight scenes. Season 2 < Season 1 - The second season now really is a shounen series: group of good guys fights group of supernatural bad guys with large powers. - Too much angst about Keisei's death. - The sense of humour is much worse. In the first season, the humour was there before you knew it, and then gone again, while it feels much more unbalanced in the second season. - As a sacrifice for the lighting effects, the animation quality went down. - What the heck is up with that Idol Shikabane? Very weird and out of place fanservice. I really am not sure whether the second season is going to turn out well or not. It all depends on how well the creators manage to do the rest of the battles of the series. What it absolutely MUST NOT do is end every single battle like they did in this episode: with Makina struggling without any will to fight, only to awaken to her desire to avenge Keisei and release hidden powers. Things like these are good once or twice (like what this series did with this episode), but a very nasty habit of shounen-series is to overplay this cliché way too much. It's been ages since I watched a really good shounen-series like this one, and I really hope that the creators can pull this one off. One big advantage that this series has is that the antagonists are by now means too powerful. They retreat too when cornered, the only advantage they have is that they work together as a team. Compare that to many other shounen-series, where we have a near-impossible to beat enemy, and so the creators have to mess with power-level inconsistencies as large as a black hole in order to make the main characters win in the end. What I’m really hoping for in this series is an all-out war between everyone in the finale. But yeah, the two major factors that are going to decide whether the second season is going to be worthwhile are: 1) the amount of Keisei-angst from Makina and Ouri, and 2) the laziness of the creators during the fights. The fanservice is definitely annoying, but it's not going to make or break this series.