Review of Noragami Aragoto
*Disclaimer* Just personal Scratch. Advised, possible spoilers. Opinion & Informal Art: 6/10 Same as previous. Standard 2010ish era style. Crisp and clean as usual with this style, but no impressive detail. Animation: 7/10 Action scenes were of the same quality as the previous season. This one didn't use that dumb fancy speech sequence too much this time so that was a plus. This season focused less on slaying the phantoms and more on actual meaningful fights. Even then there wasn't anything too noteworthy about the animation in this. It's about average for an action show. Characters: 5/10 Pretty much the same cast with the addition of a few forgettable names.Character designs weren't memorable. Main girl's in a school uniform. Yato looks like he's homeless. Typical cutely dressed, pink hair'd girl with a perky and aloof external atmosphere but with the typical hidden edgy/serious persona.
Plot: 6/10 Focuses less on the standard monster slaying and more on the development of characters and backstories. Still refuses to develop anything meaningful between Yato and Hiyori which ultimately leaves Hiyori in the same stupid spot as last season as the backseat tough damsel in distress.
Development: 5/10 Fleshes out Bishamon fully which is what was supposed to be done in S1. 2nd half of the show is some stupid arc with Ebisu and a final reveal at another big boss, Yato's dad I guess. 2nd half should have focused on strengthening Yuki's relationship with Yato as well as finalize some sort of feelings or resolution between Yato and Hiyori. The 2nd half of this S2 was spent on some pointless side-quest filler mission with some pointless development on Ebisu and Yato. There was even a reveal at Yato's real name and had potential in some real character dynamics and relationship growth among the 3 main cast, but no, it spent 2 whole episodes on some stupid relationship with Ebisu and trying to make us feel bad for Ebisu. Who cares about that loser even if it pulled some new plot point out of its ass with that whole Yato's dad using Ebisu as a scapegoat thing.
Music: 4/10 Same music as S1 which is so low effort. Might as well have made Noragami into a single release rather than two separate seasons. I understand strategic season timing and scheduling constraints but the music gets old if the situation is 2 separate seasons. I would have been fine with the repetitive music if it was just a single 24 episode release, but if you're gonna make it two separate seasons at least mix it up a bit. No sound design to address.
Conclusion: 6/10 Open-ended with an epilogue with a cliffhanger. This type of open-ended ending was okay for the way the story played out at the end. It was able to pull out a reasonable explanation and resolution at the end to make this open-ended ending "fine." The epilogue was stupid, uninspiring, and didn't hype me up at all. Rather, it made me disgusted at the idea of there being more of this storytelling and plot.
Overall: 5/10 Didn't mix up the standard supernatural monster slaying with my friends setup from S1. Same music, same bland cast. Did a decent job at improving at my gripes from S1 in which I wanted more character and backstory development. Still leaves the main issue unsolved which is any meaningful resolution or foundation between Yato and Hiyori; it's literally the first plot point introduced and LITERALLY stated as the sole thing holding their relationship together. That right there is enough for me to just give this a 4. It's so dumb. This anime does a real good job at making me annoyed and blatantly continues to tease about ACTUALLY making some progress in Yato and Hiyori's relationship. In other words, Yato and Hiyori's relationship is pretty much the same as it was in episode 2 or 3 in S1. Overall this is a standard romance-strip-tease supernatural monster slaying setup that did nothing to branch out, be interesting, be different or unique from the rest. Unmemorable. 5/10 The OP and ED were the only thing this had going for it lol
Revised: 9-5-18 at 13:04 PST