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Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Shinzo - Season 2 (2000)
The first season ended with a slight sequel hook of the meteorite's powers, the one that fell upon Earth, and was indirectly the cause of the human-Enterran war. The second season is comprised of 10 episodes and is a weird one. It feels like a semi-reboot of the story as once again, it starts with Mushra hanging from the waterfall in chains and is saved by a human girl. This time, however, he is not saved by Yakumo, but rather, a young girl named Binka. Binka was tasked by Yakumo to find the three that forms Mushrambo, aka Mushra, Sago and Kutal. She has to convince them to take the journey to Shinzo, meet up with Yakumo and save the world, which somehow involves the meteorite.
While Mushra already knows Sago and Kutal, they are only acquaintances at best and nowhere near the closeness displayed by them during the first season. The explanation for the reversion of everyone's relationships and memories is that it is taking place in the altered timeline thanks (somehow) to the actions of Yakumo from Season 1. The Enterrans are now living peacefully with the humans but a new race enters the fray, called Kadrians. On many levels, the Kadrians are similar to Enterrans, being able to Hyper form and upon defeat, changing into cards (albeit, hexagonal cards and red in color).
With the rebooted timeline, the group had lost all their familiarity towards each other, which means that they have to build up their bonds and trust again. This gives the series an excuse to reuse a lot of the same plot points to rebuild that bond, which makes this second season extremely repetitive and tedious. It isn't helped that the season constantly reused stock footage, and literally having the same scenes from the first season. The usage of stock footage feels more frequent than even the first season. The trio shows little character development and seems to have regressed when compared to the end of season 1. It takes a while until the trio can form Mushrambo again, at which point he is the most powerful and can easily destroy his enemies.
However, the nature of Mushrambo feels somewhat vague, is he a separate identity and personality? Or just really a combination of the three that forms him? It's confusing since Mushrambo was actually a unique Enterran individual 500 years ago, who then had his power split into three and was eventually absorbed by Mushra, Sago and Kutal. Despite the Kadrians showing immense power, they are quickly dispatched in the most disappointing way once the episode ends. The way the Kadrians are defeated are not satisfying at all and cheapens the preceding events where Mushra and gang were quickly overpowered. Yakumo helps from afar and seems to display some interesting powers thanks to the meteorite, although you can't help but feel that it's very convenient since she was useless for most of the series beforehand.
The final battle against the ruler of the Kadrians is a lot more drawn out. It ends up repeating the same motions of Mushra gaining some sort of power, looking like he will be able to defeat the Big Bad once and for all, only for the Big Bad to find some other sort of trump card to overpower Mushra. Mushra then finds some other power and repeats the cycle twice more. The overlay of scenes, usage of stock footage and repeating the exact same scenes during the fight are obvious and completely ruins the feel. It is supposed to be the final intense battle on which everything hinges upon, instead, it's boring and there's no weight behind those attacks.
One thing to note is that while parts of the soundtrack are good, there are some scenes where it uses new tracks which clash with the rest of the soundtrack and the action onscreen. Overall, like the first season, the second season of Shinzo has plenty of good concepts in the story but poor storytelling forces it to become a bland and disjointed series. There is plenty of background information which builds upon the world's lore, it's just a shame that the English dub omits so much of it to the detriment of pacing.
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