After watching the first season like 4 times, I found myself a bit hesitant on starting Chrono Stone because 1. I'm not a big fan of the sci-fi time travel gimmick and 2. I didn't find the cast of Go particularly endearing. But in order to make my way through the whole series I decided to sit down and give it a go. And honestly, if anything, Inazuma Eleven Go: Chrono Stone feels more like a sci-fi anime than a sports anime. It's a step down from the og series, but more enjoyable than Go in my opinion.
The plot is your average time travel sci-fi plot, which different from the previous seasons. However, it really feels like the soccer was put on the back burner even though the plot revolves around saving the future of soccer. It just seems like the writers got lost in the sauce and decided they were more interested in the Raimon-visits-the-past-and-future than the actual soccer. Which, to be fair, was fun for a bit, especially seeing how the cast mingled with different figures (+ some of their outfits were super cute :D). But it just didn't have the flavor I was looking for--no training arcs, no slice of life, no working on new hissatsu, no adrenaline-filled matches. But it definitely is different from the previous seasons so if you're bored of the same old Inazuma Eleven you could give this a whirl.
They introduce a new mechanic, mixi max, which is basically a fusion. I found it pretty neat, but honestly for all the trouble the team went through it felt really underutilized. Essentially what happens for a majority of the first 3/4 of the show is the cast time leaps around and tries to fuse with famous historical and fictional figures in order to make the strongest eleven, but it doesn't even feel like it did much. We barely even got any interesting hissatsu shoots and techniques which I would have loved to see more of, especially since there were so many notable characters. Feels like a waste of potential. Not to mention the newly introduced avatar armed. They have this long ass animation only for it to be blown away in 2 seconds. The most significant example I can think of is when the team is fighting Beta's team and there's just a 23 second sequence of like four characters releasing their avatar armed, and then Beta just blows through all of them in 5 seconds (with one of the best hissatsu shoots of the season). The buff given by mixi max coupled with avatars and a new avatar armed really robbed us of any good hissatsu techniques. It was mostly just long repeated animations.
The power scaling is a bit odd too. While the characters did get power ups through mixi max, there was barely any training to make their improvements believable. Many of the characters are able to use avatar armed in the middle of matches after no prior training at all in the middle of some heated moment in the match. Like I get it's the clutching up during a dire situation thing, but it just happens so many times for no reason at all that it just starts to feel really cheesey at some point.
The characters introduced this season are quite neat. I really liked Zanark, Fei, and Beta a lot; they have really fun and unique personalities and playstyles. As for character development, it is noticeably lacking this season. I don't think we'll ever get anything as good as Fubuki or Kidou again, but it's really just not there. None of the characters from the previous season, save Tenma, got any significant attention. Fei is for sure the focus of the season, and has a decent arc especially near the end. Tenma has a crisis over whether he's fit to be a leader or not again near the end of the season, which is valid, but it's resolved without much trouble. Tenma and Fei's clash of ideals with Saru in the last match is really engaging and interesting, but that is as good as it gets. I think the message they were trying to explore--that of what connects people whether it be power or bonds built through friendship--is a good one to especially for a kids' anime, but the execution was questionable at best because this clash of ideals really only felt relevant in the last few episodes. Otherwise, most of the characters didn't feel like they had much substance at all, which is a shame because on the surface level they did seem interesting. It's like we were edged and never got our release :(
This leads me to my next point. The entire season is chock full of these "mini matches" that barely last an episode. They were terribly unsatisfying and didn't even really build up to the final conflict, which is strange because I did see parallels between El Dorado and the Second Stage Children, especially when it came to how they viewed human relationships and power. The writers just didn't really go out of their way to make that connection. I firmly believe that the soccer matches are where Inazuma Eleven does its best character exploration and development, but since these matches were so insignificant we barely got to learn about the characters at all. This is probably why most of the newly introduced characters didn't feel like anyone of significance. All the matches against Prototype Omega are pretty short and rather dull, not giving the spotlight to the antagonists and hence when they join our side to fight the final boss, it just feels like it came out of left field. I thought the concept of having El Dorado join hands with Raimon was neat and was ready to see how the parties from opposing sides would collaborate, but I guess the writers got lazy because they didn't explore that dynamic at all. Overall, pretty disappointing.
Regarding the more technical things, the music is good as usual. There's a particular track in episode 48 around 13:43 when Saru goes sicko mode during the final match and it's just this beautiful haunting piano melody that really captures the tragic, dire situation everyone is in. The opening and ending themes are bangers as usual; I especially thought the endings where the VAs of the characters sing together are cute.
The animation this season is alright. There are points where it kinda feels like you're watching a powerpoint, but there are also some really well animated scenes, especially the hissatsu techniques that are there. The 3D animation is also a step up, with the Inazuma Caravan variant looking pretty clean. I also really really like the character designs of the mixi max versions of the characters, especially Shindou/Nobunaga, Tsurugi/Okita, and Super Zanark.
Overall, not the most groundbreaking season of Inazuma Eleven. Definitely enjoyable at times, but leaves you wanting more.
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