Chained Soldier Season 2

Episodes 1-3

Like I said back when I covered Chained Soldier's Season 2 premiere for the Winter Preview Guide, I ended up digging the first season of this utterly brazen trash, and I'm glad to see it back for a recharged second round. The first episode of the season was decent enough, though the focus was clearly on introducing all of the new girls that the show is adding to the ranks of Yuuki's Master Mistressess, with the top-dog being the Supreme Commander herself, Ren Yamashiro. If anything, I was a little disappointed that all of this emphasis on silly things like “exposition” and “world building” left Chained Soldier with little opportunity to get its perverted little freak on. Yes, obviously we all appreciate that this show actually gives a damn about being a solid action-adventure story in its own right, but come on now. If we wanted that kind of “plot”, we could pay Fate/strange Fake a visit.

Worry not, though, because the next two episodes of the season allowed Studios Passione and Hayabusa Film to flex the muscles in whatever arms on their teams were still free to actually put pen to paper and draw us some smut. In fact, you could even argue that the show slightly overcorrects in its efforts to throw every shape and size of bouncing breast at the camera, because the story doesn't really go anywhere after all of that expositing in Episode 1. Sure, we get plenty of shenanigans with lusty ladies new and old, but said ladies mostly spend their time either training or running interference in the increasingly complicated and absurd Let's All Molest Yuuki In His Sleep! Olympics. If you plucked these most recent two episodes from the current lineup and just randomly dropped them into the middle of Season 1, I genuinely don't think most people would notice.

It would be a bit hypocritical of me to complain about that too much, though, since I was just griping about the lack of juvenile sexcapades in the season premiere. For what they are, Episodes 2 and 3 of Chained Soldier's are good, filthy fun. The second episode, especially, has plenty of fun with bringing back Shokoku of the Eight Gods (the one with the snakes), who uses her powers to nearly incapacitate Tenka and Shushu with poison vapors. It's quite amusing that Shushu's hypnotizing nightmare is getting caught in a raunchy competition to see who can commit the most heinous sex crimes against Yuuki while he's sleeping. Is it in poor taste? Yeah, probably, but it all ends up being a dream, anyway. Shushu's real attempts to get put on a sex-offender list have thus far ended in nothing more than comic pratfalls.

Episode 3 sees the focus shift to one of the new Commanders, Yakumo, who quickly becomes a new Master for Yuuki with a new form to bestow upon him. Now, let me tell you all that so far as pure, unadulterated sleaze is concerned, this might represent the peak of Chained Soldier's shamelessness. I'd wager that a solid fifty-percent of this episode consists of uncensored boobs being thrust toward the screen like this was a cheap, 3-D exploitation flick from the 80s. I'm pretty sure the only female character that doesn't have their gazongas glistening with lusty abandon by the end of the episode is Nei, thank god - her Rewards for Yuuki still consist entirely of innocent, platonic head pats.

Yakumo, however, is far from innocent, which I'm of two minds about. On the one hand, she represents the tired old cliche of the sex-crazed lesbian predator who has to be literally bound, gagged, and shoved into a broom closet to protect the other women in the baths from her handsy schemes. This sucks, no doubt about it, but did any of us really expect Chained Soldier to take the high road, here? The only interest this show has in the word “class” has nothing to do with the letters “c” or “l,” is all I'm saying. It also helps that, aside from the whole “Can't Stop Assaulting Her Coworkers and Also Apparently Her Own Siblings?” thing, Yakumo is a pretty likeable new addition to the cast. She ends up having genuine chemistry with Yuuki, and her Reward sequence earns marks for being so goddamned out of pocket. I know that I willingly volunteered to cover this show, but seeing Yakumo slap her gabagools against Yuuki's naked body while dry-humping his leg had me feeling nervous that my wife was going to walk into the office and give me The Look™

I am going to need my LGBTQ+ readers' help on parsing the optics of this whole scenario, though. Does the fact that Yuuki earns a place in Yakumo's fantasy lesbian harem with his magic Sex Pokémon powers make her storyline more homophobic? Or does Yakumo represented some much needed bisexual representation in anime? I have to admit, the way she mandhandles Yuuki's asscheeks feels like crossing the rubicon into some kind of uncharted territory.

Episode Rating:

Chained Soldier Season 2 is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.