I’d like to think that Arslan Senki: Fuujin Ranbu fits the latter description. And yet, at a mere 8 episodes, I find the sequel of the 25 episode long Arslan Senki to be incredibly underwhelming. I find it so lacking, in fact, that I question its existence and what purpose it served for the franchise as a whole.
#Ever get that feeling of déjà vu?
Things pick up right where Fuujin Ranbu’s predecessor left off. Kind of. If you recall, the first season finished off with Arslan’s forces successfully capturing the Keep of Saint Emmanuel and marching towards the Parsian capital. In other words, shit was about to go down.
Except it never does. The second cour begins with Arslan’s army doubling back to Peshawar to repel yet another foreign invasion. Meanwhile, Silver Mask, Guiscard and Andragoras are all doing their own thing.
This opening sequence of events is indicative of the cour’s biggest problem: nothing happens. Virtually no progress is made throughout the entire season.
Okay that’s a little unfair. Things do happen – pretty important plot developments at that too. Except, all these developments occur outside the scope of Arslan and his party. That is to say, they all concern less important characters. As such, what we’re left with is Arslan and co. dawdling around aimlessly while the show tries to move all the pieces around him in preparation for the next, hopefully more climatic phase.
It’s filler. And it certainly feels like filler.
#Welcome to Copacabana beach
Arslan and his troupe are the central figures of the story. They certainly have the most screen time too. And yet this season they, quite literally, go on vacation while the rest of the cast plays catch up. They find themselves embroiled in a boring and predictable subplot that adds nothing to the show. Nothing is gained in terms of plot devices to influence their journey in any meaningful way. Nothing new is achieved. To make things worse, we get more of the same drab, flat humour. Hell, we don’t even learn anything new regarding Arslan’s true parentage.
None of the core group is really changed by the experience either. They simply continue to fulfil their same old archetypal roles. Daryun continues to be a raid boss, Narsus continues to be an insurmountable tactical genius, Alfreed continues to be uncomfortably horny for Narsus, and Farangis continues to be a stoic pair of tits.
The point is, the season doesn’t build upon any of the central cast’s character tropes that were established the previous cour. Even Arslan remains the insufferably kind hearted but determined kid he was at the end of last season. Sure, he has a slight shift in attitude during the finale, but this was a long time coming and didn’t exactly require eight episodes of lounging around to get to.
The other major players sort of get some development. You can’t really call it development in the case of Guiscard and Andragoras, who simply reaffirm their caricatures as conniving douchebags. There is some long overdue exploration of Silvermask’s past, which reveals a couple of new dimensions to his character. He’s still overly simplistic and a pain to be around whenever he opens his mouth, but at least it’s something.
Which is sad, given it was the only thing the cour had to offer. Once again, very little that happens is of any consequence and so it’s really difficult to remain invested in the show. At least the boredom only lasts eight episodes. And by the season’s end, we’re literally back to square one, albeit with a couple additional elements.
#If Berserk 2016 and Mekaku City Actors Episode 9 had a lovechild
So Fuujin Ranbu doesn’t improve on the first season as far as narrative goes, mainly because it doesn’t have one. But does it improve technically? After all, with only eight episodes, you’d think there’d be more budget allocated to each individual episode.
Nope. It suffers from all the technical difficulties that plagued the first cour. In fact, it’s possibly even worse.
It’s the same shit. Masses of identical CGI soldiers, said CGI soldiers clumsily swinging swords at each other, poor quality art, a drab and uninspiring colour palette that even a more tropical setting can’t save, not to mention the absurdly athletic horses. Thankfully we didn’t have any horses jumping on war elephants. They’ve moved on to houses instead.
Musically, it’s mostly the same tracks from the previous season. I’d argue it’s worse, given the baller Lapis Lazuli OP from last season is replaced by another Eir Aoi song that just lacks the same punch. Kalafina keeps doing Kalafina stuff as far as the ED is concerned.
On a side note, I’m really not a fan of Hiromu Arakawa’s FMA-esque character designs here. I find them unfitting for the setting and tone, and they simply make it harder for me to take the show seriously as a war epic. The character designs from the 90s OVAs are a lot classier, mature and more aesthetically pleasing in my opinion.
Arslan Senki: Fuujin Ranbu makes very little progress. What little progress it does make happens to concern only the side cast, leaving the primary characters neglected and twiddling their thumbs. It fails to improve on the first season. It fails to make any serious plot progression, it fails to develop its characters in any meaningful way and it fails to entertain. You can chalk it up to the source material, but ultimately, as its own independent entity, this season fails at mostly everything really.
Fuujin Ranbu is filler. Filler to set things up for the next assumed instalment, which I am unsure will ever arrive. And it’s filler that could definitely be done without. The few important plot developments surely didn’t need eight episodes to cover. And for every plot point that mattered, we had to endure a countless number that didn’t.
I had little faith in this rendition of the Arslan Senki story prior to Fuujin Ranbu’s release. Now I have even less, if any.
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