Tag: Shūhei Yabuta

Vinland Saga Season Two Review: From Epic Viking Tale to Epic Farming Simulator.

Vinland Saga is an all-time great manga and the first season of its adaptation, made by Wit Studio, was amazing.
After finally watching it, I was too interested to wait for Season Two and read the manga.
I was quite surprised by the direction Makoto Yukimura took the story, with the setting changing from the brutal viking battlefields to a farm.
This was far from a bad thing though as Yukimura crafted a beautiful arc centering around the horrors of slavery and pointlessness of war.
It also serves as the beginning of Thorfinn’s (Yūto Uemura) redemption, and now Studio Mappa has adapted this storyline flawlessly.

Thorfinn’s story of redemption is brilliantly adapted by Mappa.

Season One ended with a tease of various characters important to the future of the story.
One of these characters was Einar (Shunsuke Takeuchi), a man who was enslaved after his family was murdered.
Season Two’s first episode sees Einar being bought to work on a farm by land owner Ketil (Hideaki Tezuka).
It is here that he meets Thorfinn, who was also sold into slavery after Season One and is now aimless in his life and suffering from the guilt of what he did while working for Askeladd.
From there, the season follows the two as they work to gain their freedom and grow closer as brothers, while Thorfinn slowly changes for the better in realizing what he needs to do to become a true warrior. 

Thorfinn’s journey in Season Two puts on the path to becoming a true warrior.

At the farm,Thorfinn, Einar, and the audience are introduced to various interesting new characters like Snake (Fuminori Komatsu), Arnheid (Mayumi Sako), Sverkel (Mugihito), and Olmar (Yū Hayashi), all of whom have their own parts to play in commentating on the themes of the story.
All the while, Canute (Kensho Ono) is slowly consolidating his power, becoming more and more like his cruel father as each year follows, eventually building to a tense confrontation with Thorfinn.

While Thorfinn rises, Canute falls into darkness, until their fateful meeting.

Season Two’s story may be of lesser scope and have lesser stakes than the first season but this does not make it any less impactful, with Thorfinn’s growth being especially moving.
Accompanying the excellent arcs of many of the characters is the animation, which Mappa excels at as expected.
The score is also beautiful, with the piano notes composed by Yutaka Yamade being tear inducing during certain tragic scenes.
Speaking of the music, the openings for Season Two are also fantastic.
The first one is “River” by Anonymouz, which seems to highlight Thorfinn’s growth in the first half of the season, and the second OP is “Paradox” by Survive Said the Prophet, which appears to represent the challenges to Thorfinn’s new mindsets, including the consequences of the escaped slave Gardar, and the now ruthless Canute.  

Both OPs perfectly reflect the tone and events of each half of the season.

By the end of the season, it was clear that Mappa had done a masterful job of adapting the Farm Arc, both in their faithful recreation of scenes from the manga, and in new, interesting anime original moments like Einar’s past in the first episode.
I hope that Vinland Saga continues to get the brilliant adaptation it has been getting so far, with hopefully a Season Three and fingers crossed an eventual Season Four.

Vinland Saga Anime Review: A Brutal, Viking Epic.

So, I’d been wanting to watch Vinland Saga for a long time but had a hard time finding it online.
Then, when I got Amazon Prime to watch the adaptation for Wheel of Time, I was delighted to see that the anime was there, so I could finally watch it.
And it did not disappoint.
Adapted from the manga by Makoto Yukimura, directed by Shūhei Yabuta, and developed by the great Wit Studio, Vinland Saga tells the tale of Thorfinn (Yūto Uemura), a young man from Iceland, looking to avenge the murder of his father, the former Jomsvikings warrior, Thors (Kenichiro Matsuda).

The first season of Vinland Saga follows Thorfinn’s journey to avenge his father.

However, this is not your typical revenge story because, while most stories of this nature would have the main character tracking down the antagonist to get their revenge, Thorfinn does not do this.
No, instead Vinland Saga goes in a completley different direction from any revenge story I have seen, with Thorfinn actually accompanying the man who killed his father, Askeladd (Naoya Uchida), in the hopes of dueling him to the death one day.
This makes none of our central characters good people, as they’re all the type to do the raiding and murdering commonly associated with the Vikings of history.
Speaking of that history, it’s interesting to note how many of these characters are interpretations of real people, with creative liberties taken.
The best example of this is Askeladd, who is based off a folk tale character, and is also by far the best character in the show.    

Askeladd is fascinating from the beginning of the season to the end.

He is whitty and charming, despite being an absolutley terrible person, and how his backstory is woven in and expanded upon is excellent, especially with how it ties into his actions at the beginning of the story.
Even the conclusion of his character for this season is amazing, making his overall character seem like both an antagonist and an anti-hero, while being neither at the same time.
Make no mistake, though, Askeladd still regularly commits atrocities, despite him being the best character in the show.
Thankfully, his horrific actions and those of the other characters are never glorified.
This leads to some pretty bleak episodes, like Episode 14, “The Light of Dawn.”

Episode 14 is a real gut punch, reminding us just how cruel our main characters can be.

I am going to remember many scenes from Vinland Saga, both the uplifting and the bleak, with many of the stories’ characters developing from these scenes, not just Thorfinn and Askeladd.
Most notably we have Canute (Kensho Ono) and Thorkell (Akio Ōtsuka), both historical figures who have great importance to the story, especially Canute, who goes on to serve as a fantastic parallel to Thorfinn in the manga.

Caunute is my favourite character of the season, next to Askeladd.

Speaking of the manga, the section that the anime adapts is actually a prologue to the true story of Vinland Saga, with the final episode literally being titled “End of the Prologue.”
The manga then goes in a direction that I honestly was not expecting, yet still quite enjoyed.
I do perfer the story telling of the first season, though, primarily because of Askeladd’s excellent development as a character.
The entire story of Season One is also aided with some fantastic animation and music from Wit Studio and composer Yutaka Yamada, tying everything together into an excellent adaptation of the manga.
Vinland Saga is an amazing anime, and I will soon be reviewing the manga and then Season Two, whenever that releases.