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REVIEW: BASTARD!! -Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy- Season 2




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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2559
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 12:38 pm Reply with quote
Hell's Requiem is, in my opinion, the weakest story arc of Bastard!!, and while I haven't seen the Netflix anime yet this review indicates that it's more or less an accurate adaptation of the arc. The lack of D.S. at the start was because the first three chapters of the arc came at the tail end of the manga's original weekly serialization, before it got moved to Jump's Seasonal Specials for the majority of the 90s, so the idea was to hype readers up by teasing the hero's return there, while also establishing the new cast, to some extent.

However, Hell's Requiem's biggest problem is that it's really more of a transitional arc than anything. It acts as the epilogue to the first story arc by having Kall-Su as the main villain, but also acts as the prologue to the third story arc, Crime & Punishment, where (quite simply) everything goes full bore for an entire six volumes & never fully lets up until it reaches its unfortunately unfinished end, which corresponds with Bastard!!'s return to Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. Therefore, it sets up a lot of things but only really follows through on the relationship between D.S. & Kall-Su, while C&P acts as the proper climax of what's been set up here. Overall, Hell's Requiem isn't a bad story arc but it's definitely the most flawed part of Bastard!!, in my opinion.

I do hope that this anime does continue to get more seasons made, though, because Crime & Punishment is my personal favorite part of Bastard!!, far & away. If the anime sticks to being as accurate as possible to the manga, then I'd argue that it's only going to get better & better from here on out.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4385
Location: New York
PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 1:03 pm Reply with quote
While I mostly liked the season, I do agree with the tone being a bit wonky. It actually reminds me a bit of the Deadpool video game, where there is a serious X-Men story occurring in the background, but Deadpool can’t really be bothered to care about it and kind of has to be dragged to help solve the problem by Cable. It’s similar here where DS is being dragged by Yoko to solve the problems, even with the man more interested in getting Yoko to himself.

Soundtrack remains a banger, and the faithfulness and content of the material is a very dramatic juxtaposition with certain other shows on Netflix. But I can get how the tonal stuff throws people off, since it threw me off as well.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2559
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 1:17 pm Reply with quote
The tonal change will be something to expect moving forward, as the overall plot moves more & more serious (complete with examinations into the idea of the meaning of life, theology, pseudo-science, etc.), which makes Dark Schneider's fourth-wall-breaking humor & bravado all the more pronounced, because for the most part he doesn't care about any of that, unless he has no choice but to get involved. Hell's Requiem had a few more bits of referential humor compared to The Dark Rebel Armies, and it's only going to become much more prevalent moving forward.
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5342
PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 1:52 pm Reply with quote
Does this series ever explain Lucien? He's 17 years old yet looks about 10 or12 and seems to have the mental age of a 6 year old. Yet when Dark Schneider sees him, he comes across as a lot more mature.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2559
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 1:56 pm Reply with quote
MarshalBanana wrote:
Does this series ever explain Lucien? He's 17 years old yet looks about 10 or12 and seems to have the mental age of a 6 year old. Yet when Dark Schneider sees him, he comes across as a lot more mature.


Next story arc.
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-Matthew-



Joined: 12 Mar 2022
Posts: 1301
PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 2:28 pm Reply with quote
I hope for the third season to be announced!
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tintor2



Joined: 11 Aug 2010
Posts: 1853
PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 4:57 pm Reply with quote
-Matthew- wrote:
I hope for the third season to be announced!


Maybe another cour? I remember season 1 lasted two cours.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2559
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2023 6:36 pm Reply with quote
tintor2 wrote:
-Matthew- wrote:
I hope for the third season to be announced!


Maybe another cour? I remember season 1 lasted two cours.


Season 2 was an odd number of episodes, 15, because that's how long it needed to properly adapt Hell's Requiem, is 4.25 volumes or so long in the manga. Crime & Punishment, the next story arc, is six whole volumes long, so there's no way it could be done in a standard cour & would need to be its own season. Even more so if they decided to also adapt Volume 27, which returns back to where C&P left off at before the jump forward into the fourth story arc, and maybe even adapt "Unused・Revised Edition", a self-published book by Hagiwara that contains the bits & pieces of C&P that they couldn't properly get to, including the original work that would later become Volume 27.

Trust me, Crime & Punishment would need around 24 episodes on its own to properly adapt.
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