Common Name: Kemono Friends 2
Score: 4/10, 2/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Supernatural, Moe
Summary: Though Japari Park, home of the humanoid animals known as Friends and the mysterious Ceruleans, remains abandoned of human life, some traces of their presence still remain. From vehicles like the Japari Bus and Monorail to the buildings they created for visitors, many areas of the park still function well enough for the Friends to live comfortably. On top of all these modern conveniences, though, some of the park's more mysterious contraptions are humming along. From one such contraption, a human child emerges with no memory of who they are or where their home is. Though there are fragments of their memory that guide their search, it's up to the Friends of Japari Park, both old and new, to help the child named Kyururu find their home. Of course, the journey won't be an easy one though. Something far more dangerous than the Ceruleans has also decided to make Japari Park its home.
Review: For people like myself that have long since latched on to anime as a preferred form of media either because they grew up with it, found a more emotional connection to it, or consider it to be a preferred art form, it's very easy to forget that anime is and always has been a business. Like most forms of media, anime is created to be consumed by the masses in the interest of making money. This obviously isn't necessarily true for all anime, noting the various passion projects that crop up from time to time, but those titles exist as exceptions to the rule rather than evidence against the influence of the almighty yen. After all, most anime are meant to serve as promotional material or a means to further capitalize on an already successful manga or light novel series. Yet, even with that knowledge firmly planted in the back of my mind, I still can't help feeling disappointed that the second season of Kemono Friends turned out to be nothing more than your basic cash grab. Lacking any of the charm or heart that could be seen in TATSUKI's take on a failing mobile game, Kemono Friends 2 simply opts to retread old ground for the sake of making a quick yen, ignoring or outright attacking everything Tatsuki brought to the series along the way.
That's right, boys, girls, and others, we got another DMC: Devil May Cry on our hands.
To make things perfectly clear, though, I did not come into this series ready and waiting to spew hatred for the new series, waving the "No TATSUKI, No Tanoshii~!" banner like many fans of the original series. While I might love the weird, janky series that TATSUKI is known for, I was interested to see what another season and production staff might do to build on the original. I obviously didn't expect anything like a direct sequel or even something that bore any direct relevance to the first season since Kemono Friends, as a whole, has never been consistent with its world and characters. The hope was simply that we'd get a series that could build on and possibly even improve on the successes of the first season. Within a few episodes, though, it became fairly clear that my hopes were for naught and that the hesitation and anger from large portions of the fan base showed wasn't unwarranted. What we got, though, if I'm being perfectly honest, was a slap to the face.
And it all starts with this little somebody.
Harsh as that statement might sound, the fact of the matter is that Kemono Friends 2 did little to improve the series beyond the upgrade in the show's visuals. Rather, it opts to simply imitate the story of the original series while stripping away all the segments that made it really stand out as a series. Gone are the zoo calls. Gone are the attempts to make this series even remotely educational. What we get instead is another story of an amnesiac child being escorted around the park by Serval and the mobile game's other mascot character, Caracal. The only things notably distinct about the opening of Kemono Friends 2 and the first season is that we're given a far more mysterious introduction to the new human character. Rather than simply being found in the Savannah, it's implied that Kyururu (named for the sound their stomach makes when they're hungry) woke up recently from a kind of cryogenic slumber with no real idea of where they are or who they are. The only things Kyururu knows for sure is that they aren't one of Japari Park's Friends and that they have a home they want to get back to. As if to add one more degree of separation between the anime's two human characters, though, Kyururu is defined by their skill for arts and crafts instead of the scientific engineering skills Kaban displays throughout her series. Beyond those little differences and some minor tweaks in their personality, i.e. making Kyururu more standoffish and stubborn than Kaban, there's hardly any difference between the two of them or their role in the story.
The only real difference is that Kyururu's story cuts to the chase since it'd be wholesale plagiarism
for them to be confused about whether or not they're human for more than a couple episodes.
As if the lack of difference between the series' two human characters wasn't bad enough, though, many of the second season's episodic stories are just copies of those seen in the original. For example, the episode featuring Panda and Red Panda bears a number of similarities with the story of Prairie Dog and Beaver. In both episodes, we are introduced to two friends who display flaws that make their lives difficult--one with a flaw natural to their animal nature, the other with one that is much more human in nature. With the arrival of the human and their guide(s), they both come together to build something that makes them both happy. Similarly, the episode featuring the rivalry between Cheetah and Pronghorn is identical to that of Lion and Moose. Both feature a pair of characters who want to show off their similar strengths and can't come to terms about which of them is better. Then, as you'd expect, the human and cat(s) arrive on the scene and invent a game that will not only settle the matter but give the vaguely romantic couple a way to have fun together, rather than staying apart for the sake of their selfish pride. Even the substories of Raccoon and Fennec tripping and stumbling to catch up with the human and their partner(s) are duplicated through the introduction of the detective duo, Armadillo and Pangolin.
Instead of featuring an idiot and her snarky friend, though,
Armadillo and Pangolin are just two plain, old idiots.
Throughout all of the second season, these kinds of one-to-one similarities can be seen and ultimately detract from what few bits of novelty Kemono Friends 2 has to offer. For one, though she might not necessarily be a new face to the franchise as a whole, Caracal's addition to the main party adds an interesting dynamic to the show as a whole. Full of tsundere charm, her cat-like pride frequently has her butt heads with the equally stubborn Kyururu to add a little more character drama to the show's standard "problem of the day" formula. What's more, her almost childish behavior gives Serval's air-headed whimsy a new layer of characterization, giving her the look and air of an older and subtly wiser sister--an understandable and appreciable change since the series establishes early-on that this is a version of Serval that traveled the world with Kaban several years ago. On the whole, the addition of a dramatic layer to the story offers a lot to the second season that simply wasn't present in the first. Kyururu's journey, for example, is given a layer of desperation since there's no real idea where Kyururu might have come from or if humans have ever come back to the park since Kaban's adventure. This desperation of Kyururu's part puts some fairly engaging, if a tad frustrating, strain on their relationship with Serval and Caracal, especially once Caracal starts to warm up to Kyururu in the typical tsundere fashion. So, with that element alone, the character relationships of the main cast feel a little more fleshed out than they were in season one. In fact, the development of those kinds of deeper relationships was more or less the entire point of this second season, considering it's brief but impactful thoughts on how animal domestication would factor into the lives of Japari Park's Friends.
Domestic Dog's story is, hands down, the actual best part of this season. She added a lot to consider
about the nature of the main trio's dynamic and was an all-around good pupper in her own right.
Unfortunately, what little praise I have to offer the more thoughtful and well-designed elements of the second season's drama quickly gets swallowed up by everything it does wrong. As an added factor to the nature of domestication narrative, the series adds a new threat for the main party to deal with in the form of the "Beasts." More specifically, the party has to deal with a single Beast that constantly hounds the main party in the background: Siberian Tiger. Introduced under some bizarre pretense that more ferocious animals have the possibility of turning into savage Beasts, rather than amicable Friends, the general idea seems to state that animals that can't be domesticated turn into Beasts. Yet, given the presence of everything from lions, other tiger species, and various other naturally ferocious friends, this concept feels like one that was added to the franchise without much thought. In much the same way, there's a lot of inconsistency to note regarding the few Ceruleans that pop up throughout the series. Rather than being born from Sandstar interacting with something inanimate, the Ceruleans of season two prefer to mimic inanimate objects and images tied to humans, rather than preying on the park's Friends. In almost every way, this season's iteration of these bizarre monsters contradicts everything established in the first season. From being able to live in water to feeding on human connections to objects, rather than the Sandstar, these Ceruleans lack any connection to any iteration seen previously.
I honestly preferred them to be big, dumb blobs than whatever the hell that's supposed to be.
Like I said before, though, consistency is hardly the franchise's strong suit. On that note, though, I suppose it's high time I addressed the biggest issue with Kemono Friends 2: the desire of this season and its director to drag the first season and its fans through the mud. Rather than being content to just let this be another time leap with little connection to its predecessor, Kemono Friends 2 opts to drag Kaban out from the past and make her as miserable as reasonably possible. While this might just sound like an outraged fan's rant--because it is also that--the fact of the matter is that season two opts to add Kaban to the cast, ages her up a few years, and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing with her. With her addition, you'd expect there to be some explanation as to why she and Serval are no longer partners but no such explanation ever comes. All we get is some hints that Serval might have gotten attacked by the Ceruleans again and lost her memories of Kaban. What's more, the only things Kaban does this season is offer that nonsense explanation for Siberian Tiger's aggression and exist to be a cheap way to get all the season's Freinds rounded up for the big finale. Never mind that she's literally the biggest asset Kyururu has to find her home and/or family. Never mind that the Professor and Assistant from season one, who Kaban now lives and works with now, could have been the ones to offer the explanations and round up all the friends. Never mind that the series tried to win fans over to this series by showing glimmers of Serval remembering Kaban only to crush that little bit of happiness into dust later on. Never you fucking mind that the franchise already had a scientist character they could have pulled from the mobile game and would have been a better means to explain and justify the Beast nonsense since she was there from the very beginning. So, rather than being something worthwhile in its own right, Kemono Friends 2 just had to try to make itself look better by dragging the TATSUKI's major addition to the franchise through the mud, breaking her heart, and turning her into a miserable nothing of a character.
Fuck off, Kemono Friends 2. Fuck right the hell off.
That rant aside, though, there's obviously a number of other reasons I could give for hating this show to the core. From shooting their domestication narrative in the foot later in the series, making Siberian Tiger out to be some misunderstood tsundere who just couldn't be friends with everyone, to the series outright forgetting about the massive Yamato-class Cerulean that lives in the ocean, I've got plenty of reasons to choose from. The abuse of Kaban's character is by far the worst thing this series did in my eyes, though, because it just comes across as a cheap, petty attack on the fans that fell in love with this series because of what TATSUKI had to bring to the table--things we get to see used to their full effect in Kemurikusa. That petty disdain for the original show and its fans is what put the last nail in the coffin for me. So, I'll just come out and say it: Don't watch this show. Nothing that hates its fan base as much as this show seems to deserves your time or attention. No amount of visual improvements or quality character designs can save this show for me or convince me that I should give it another shot. As far as I'm concerned, this franchise as a whole is dead.