Review of Vinland Saga Season 2

How this season got a better score than season 1 I just don't know.... Must be score bombing or whatever.... The good thiings about this season: The art was amazing... really beautiful animations and sceneries for that matter.. it was good at capturing certain feelings of the characters and/or envieroment.. However... this is where it ends... The bad things about the show: Following a season 1 which captured the Viking culture meeting christianity as well as season 1 being ACTION packed, filled with cool moments, interesting characters, alot of development through the story as well as characters, this season 2 just doesn't deliver AT ALL... I found myself wondering ifthis was even Vinland Saga I was watching..
The pacing was TERRIBLE compared to season 1 ... slooooow story telling and in every single episode you had 3-5 minutes of seing the scenery, weather, peoples eyes, the wind on the grass, birds in the sky... LItterally all this season did was introduce us to a scenery that was reconfirmed at every single episode.. Heck, I know more about the weather occurances throughot the season than I know the characters....
The thing I loved about Vinland Saga season 1 was the pacing and action as well as those "oh damn" moments... In this season we had zero of those moments...
It's like going from Die Hard to 50 First Dates... It's a complete overhaul of the series...

I have to say that i get why they spend so much time on certain scenery and reaction shots on characters as well as the slow pacing.. It was just not anything I expected would be so dominant in season 2 after watching season 1... It wasn't this slow paced story telling filled with regrets and heavy feelings that I watched Vinland Saga for..

If you enjoyed season 1 as much as I did, I definetely wouldn't recommend this season at all.. But if you are into a beautiful artstyle with in-depth feelings getting translated visually, then for sure, go ahead and watch it! Cause it is very well made, like very very well made, especially seen from an artistic point of view.. It just wasn't the follow up on season 1 I wanted it to be...

I will try categorizing some of the areas with scores below here..

Visuals/artstyle/animations: 10
Stunning! Absolutely beautiful visiuals where you really feel the love of animations poured onto this show.. Anyone saying otherwise is mad..

Sound: 8
The intro/outo isn't to my likings compared to season 1.. However I do feel like the intro song is well fitted to the theme of the first half of the season atleast..
The sounds otherwise are good.. Not anything amazing, just standard high quality and what you would expect of Mappa..

Pacing: 2
Absolutely horrible pacing... If you took out all of the scenery shots, reaction shots, watching tears falling down, seeing birds in the sky, watching the wind on the grass, the trees etc.. Then you could maybe remove 5 full episodes of content...
I can only compare it to season 1 pacing since that had a really good pacing imo... This season is waaaaaay too slow paced and half the time you feel like nothing is happening..

Story: 3
Again.. the story is actually well written for what it is the story wants to tell the viewer which is why I raise the score to 3, however... the pacing kills it off completely.. It feels like no real progress is being made half the time.. It really tries to capture the mental states of the main characters and it does do that very well.. however the overall story and continuation of season 1 feels lackluster.. It feels rushed in the end and non-existing at the beginning.. Everything is about the mental states of someone...
Heck, you even get to enjoy a full 3 episodes of a side character to a side character and how he's feeling throughout his life, even though he himself is completely irrelevant to Thorfinn.. It was like focusing on the feelings on someone to show the feelings of another one that then moved the feeling os the friend of Thorfinn who is the MC..
Waaay too much screen time for a subside-side character...

Characters: 3
There are so many side characters in this show who are fairly irrelivant to the story as well as the MC.. Some of them are comlpletely irrelevant as well as pretty boring characters..
There are a few interesting characters at first though any real character development is non-exisiting on these, so they kind of fall off in the long run..
Generally there were mostly just boring characters with no real development... Only Thorfinn had some development, but again he is the MC..

Action: 1
There were A FEW good action scenes in the seson, however I think that if you took every fighting scene, all of the action of the series and combined it, it would probably be 1 full episodes worth of action, maybe 1,5...
This is definetly NOTHING like season 1 and don't watch this season to expect any kind of action...
There were no real "oh damn" moments at all except for maybe 1 or 2 times where it looked like it was about to get good, just to get anti climatized by the story itself...

These are just some of the points i have rated my score from.. I know these combined wouldn't even make it 5 in score, but the show still has some promise after all..
But it kind of depends on season 3.. This season could be a good lead-iup to an amazing season 3.. However if season 3 fails to deliver then this season would have been obsolete and would have been a waste of time watching...
If however season 3 becomes really good and the story and characters really develop after such a long journey of season 2, then this season would be amazing for shifting the pace and building up what's to come....

Now all we can do is wait for season 3 and pray...