Review of Vinland Saga Season 2

A huge pacing change from the first season, shifting away from the wars and battles from season 1 and focusing in Thorfinn's everyday life as a slave. Meaningful dialogue is what stands out as this season's biggest strength for me. Just relax and listen to the characters' life-changing lines kind of vibe. Really cool new characters shape each others' life views, letting you see how everyone (slowly) develops through each interaction between them. Not only are the new characters interesting, but even the ones from previous seasons are still there hitting hard, like Askeladd. How everyone has changed from season 1 to season 2 and howthey continue to change throughout season 2 is really well done, with a deep dive into their minds and understanding how they came to be who they are.
My only (small) complaints are that some parts are a bit ~too~ slow, but it's just a couple of episodes and you can still see what the author was going for and it still pays off in the long run; and that sometimes it can feel a bit repetitive. I know that life might have been like that in those times, but seeing what is essentially the same backstory for most characters gets to a point where you feel like "ok, I get it: everyone was a warhead because they didn't really know what war was like". And also (minor spoiler warning!), in the last chapters it felt like the Vinland monologue was spammed a bit too much, as if the author thought "the monologue would fit really cool in here...let's add it" and you end up hearing the same thing like 5 times in 2 episodes.
Still, these complaints are something not necessarily bad and definitely not hinder the anime in a meaningful way. You can clearly see what the author is going for with this work and does so masterfully, even after shifting the focus from the previous season, which is no easy task. Watching Thorfinn's (and everyone around him) development was an absolute joy and I'm really looking forward to see how it goes on from here, as I feel it'll be hard to improve on this.