With such a childish portrayal of death and war that it could only be tailored for a younger audience, yet such a focus on political intrigue and military drama I find myself asking: Who the hell is this for? I was not a big fan of the first season of this show, and was less than enthusiastic about having to watch more of it. The only thing that brought me back was my completionist mentality leading me to attempt a MAL 100% speedrun (so far my splits leave a lot to be desired.) The show spends a good chunk of it's opening act on this obnoxious"I killed someone, and killing is always bad so I need to feel bad" subplot. I get that he's still basically just a kid, but he's fighting a war, what did he expect? This is why I mentioned the incredibly childish outlook on death and war. It's one of my biggest pet peeves in fiction, the philosophy that killing is never justified. It may ultimately come down to a difference in theology, eastern religions teaching the no killing philosophy far more prominently and it just being so deeply ingrained in the culture while the Christianity that developed most modern western culture is pretty clear on retribution for the unrepentant. When that guy admits that he's going to continue being evil if Amou doesn't kill him, it annoys me so much that the show still treats Amou killing him as a bad thing somehow. It was objectively the right thing to do in that situation, and the amount of time they have him spend feeling sorry for himself doesn't make any sense.

The rest of the season is full of plotting and scheming boring political stuff that just went right through my brain, not bothering to stick around past the end of each episode. Convoluted military double crosses just don't make for good entertainment in my mind. It's only possible to make those sorts of complex stories any fun for me if they're grounded in characters that I care about having real stakes in what's going on. And therein lies the real problem, the fact that I just don't care about any of these characters. The protagonist, as established, is a whiny teenager with no redeeming qualities and his friends Angst and The Girl One aren't any better. The rest feel like side characters but end up getting all the screen time anyway. Again I just have to wonder who this was for.

Hard to get through, 5/10