Anime: Ajin (2016 Dai 2 Cour) 2i6122

Note: This review covers only the second half of Ajin
Review
Ajin was an enjoyable shounen experience. Its idea was amazing and it initially tackled immortality while raising some issues on prejudice, inhumane experiments, weapons development, and some more. Yet, it was about an immortal teenager with the power to summon a invisible ghost-like creature and a terrorist with more cunning than the rest of Japan combined. To worsen things it ended up with a new character that was just a out-of-place teenager with no awareness at all, just mumbling about how awesome or terrible things were even when dealing with the fate of his nation.

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1. A not-so-good restart
   Let us get something straight: Nakano is a fucking disaster. Our protagonist, Kei, has points of use, but Nakano does not. He is a stupid teen acting like a baby no matter what is thrown at him. There's no indication of him maturing during the show whatsoever and his only role is annoying the shit out of us with how stupid and out-of-place he is. In any real-world similar setting this guy would be either dead or thrown away from the group.
   
   Sadly though, the first half of this second season is a lot about Nakano. The guy is in every gathering, his actions take out vast amounts of screen time because they always demand intervention, and his voice-acting is simply utterly annoying. It becomes worse when the rest of the heroes are all dicks with cliche'd behavior in an attempt to create an "anti-hero" team. Tosaki Yuu turns up to be the asshole that you cannot empathize in any ways, Kei is the same piece of cold bastard/crying baby as the randomness of the first season gave us, Izumi simply lacks screen time, and the crazy doctor is far too eccentric to be taken seriously.
   
   And it is about that terrorist
   Sato was his name. The old japanese guy capable of kicking the ass of any amount of trained soldiers thrown at him. "Oh, but he is immortal and had SEAL training!", ah, great. Fuck him too. It gets annoying to see as his team of dumb ajins, aided by a single hacker boy is capable of fighting against hordes of army soldiers, police force, and so on without any hassle. Even when some of the dumb guys fails it only takes Sato himself to interact and BANG! Problem solved. Well, at least you can find solace in knowing that the hero team has Nakano to work with, so Sato certainly got the better hand here.
   
   It's still thrilling
   Fortunately, after wasting half the season with Nakano getting too much screen time and then showing the certain victories of Sato and his rag tag team of terrorists, Ajin finally gets to a thrilling confrontation between heroes and villains. Well, you have that random breaking moment with Kei, but the action parts are fun, you get some deaths, and the outcomes can be a bit more complex than "Sato wins.". Animation doesn't get much in the way later, as you see less and less close-up shots and need for emotion and expressions, so like Sidonia this ends up being a decent shounen experience where the weak and boring protagonist can magically stand up against the guy no government or special forces could take on.
   

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Comments
Well, it started as an awesome premise about immortal creatures in our modern world but it ended up as a fighting shounen with a teenager gifted with a special power facing a villain no one else could stop. So much for ideas, huh? Anyway, it is an enjoyable experience regardless of all flaws and it certainly deviated less from its starting idea than Sidonia no Kishi, which ended up as a harem romance with alien gals.

Polygon Pictures still has a long way to make emotional dramas with their CG, but hey, at least they are much better than what Linden Films is doing with the beloved Berserk.