It's not every day that you see an anime experience significant delays between episodes that aren't divided into separate specials, seasons, or series. Sure, it happens sometimes—it happened to One Piece earlier this year, for example—but for the most part, the anime industry has embraced just dividing what would otherwise be one long-running anime into separate seasons, usually that air at least several months apart. So a series like Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World season 2 (henceforth OLC), whose fourth and fifth episodes aired nine months apart from one another, is a pretty rare and unusual phenomenon in this landscape.

To recap: almost five years after the first season aired, the first four episodes of OLC aired in Summer 2024. The series was then delayed indefinitely "to maintain the quality” (you can't maintain what wasn't there, but whatever). And let's be crystal clear about something: this was, without a shred of a doubt, the correct decision. The animation in those first four episodes was atrocious—even laughably bad at times. It's the stuff of legends, and the kind of thing that you really have to see to believe.

Some context: in theory, Alice here is trying to hold Iska's arm close to her. In practice, she looks more like she's trying to amputate him, or at least shatter his bones like a walnut between her massive murder melons. Those first four episodes look pretty sloppy, but this is arguably the worst of the worst. And I say “arguably” only because if you were to ask me, it looks so awful that it loops around and becomes artful, and I love it. I was stopped dead in my tracks the first time I saw it, trying to decipher what manner of titty horror Alice's breasts are doing boobily here. All this time later, and not a day has passed that I haven't thought of this “beautiful” (boobyful?) moment. It's iconic, and I'll be thinking about it for the rest of my days.

This is all to say that it's not difficult to literally see why the series was delayed at all, let alone why it was delayed for so long. So, hearing all this, your first question is probably, “When the series came back, did it look better?” And despite what you might think—although nearly a year had passed by the time it finally resumed—the answer is, “Yeah, but only because that's a low bar to clear.”

It honestly took a while—way longer than it probably should've—for me to think of a fitting grade for OLC's animation for this review, because it gives you a full spectrum of animation quality. In its worst moments, it's an F that's so effed that it loops around and becomes A+ meme material. But taking irony and jokes out of the equation, its best moments (which are few, but still present from time to time) are good, but not great. More often than not, it just looks on the lower end of serviceable (C-). Specifically, this means there are many off-model moments, and more than a few noticeable stylistic inconsistencies between episodes. Still, in OLC's defense, the lower end of serviceable is still a step up from the above example. Plus, later in the series, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flashback to that moment, and they gave it some much-needed polish. So that's nice.

But much as there is to talk about, I can't harp on the visuals forever. Let's pivot instead to another key aspect of production value: audio. The music has its moments, but it's not the type of soundtrack you're likely to reserve some real estate in your brain for. Meanwhile, when it comes to sub versus dub, it's an easy win for the subbed version. Miyuki Sawashiro (Elletear) and Sora Amamiya (Alice), in particular, do a great job in their respective roles. As for the dub, the voice acting itself, broadly speaking, is fine. The biggest highlight is, without question, Anairis Quiñones as the “seductive, big sister baddie” (mild spoiler warning if you want to read the context in which Quiñones said this) Elletear. But I can't help but question the direction in the dub, as several characters have mismatched voices that sound way too mature given their ages and, in many cases, naïvety when they're not on the battlefield.

So, how is this season of OLC? The good news is that the delay didn't do much to kill the momentum the series had been building at that point. The bad news is that's because its central plot can often be hard to follow anyway. This season isn't without its merits. Namely, the love wedge symbol between Iska, Alice, and Sisbell. Now that they're having to navigate constantly being around one another and the new dynamic that comes with Iska acting as something of a bodyguard for Sisbell, there's something adorable about watching the high school-core way that Iska and Alice, especially, are helplessly trying to flirt with one another without making their intentions too obvious (meanwhile it is, of course, extremely obvious to the audience). And it's laid on so thick that I can easily imagine some people finding it too cringy to enjoy. As for me, I found it incredibly charming, and it was by far my favorite aspect of OLC.

The romance between Iska and Alice had the added benefit of making their characters more endearing this time around. Attempts are made at fleshing out some of the other characters in this season as well, and there are mixed results on that front. But the fact that Iska and Alice, our two main characters, feel like they actually have some dimension and likability instantly made OLC feel way easier to get through than the previous season.

Unfortunately, however, the romance—while a key part of the series—is far from being the main attraction. Rather, that's supposed to be the politics of it all, and the conflict not just between opposing factions, but also, without delving too deep into spoilery territory, those within said factions. But like its first season, OLC still has this problem where a lot of your ability to follow the story is going to rely on how well you process lore and worldbuilding that's either poorly explained or way more dense than it needs to be. And even when you're not lost, there's not exactly anything too terribly exciting going on in here.

If I were asked whether I liked this season better than the first, I'd say I did, but not because I thought it was great. In a word, I'd call it just okay, but that's still a step up from season one. After all, at least season two has the adorkable romance between Iska and Alice, which I think made me like not just them, but the series overall more. Still, OLC continues to be overambitious about how much worldbuilding and political machinations it can stuff into 12, 24-minute episodes. It's a step in the right direction, but its shortcomings are still very plain to see—literally.