Gundam Build Divers Re:Rise 2nd Season

By far one of my favorite mecha anime. I mean like the main protagonist is written well in my opinion simply because he’s not like your average Shonen protagonists who is a crybaby and annoy us. This was also better than gundam build divers the very first one. Also the animation was clean on god on god like it was way better than something like berserk 2916 like it’s smooth and sometimes fast paced so yeah 10/10 because of the nostalgia and if you are someone who wants to start with the gundam series then watch the build fighters first, then watch this.

Although its still a pretty standard and uninspiring plot, this second series has done enough to rescue Re:Rise from being an absolute write-off for me. We actually see some background and context to the protagonists. It isn't amazing but at least gave them some relatability. The plot surrounding GBN and Eldora became interesting enough to keep me watching until the end, and some of the call backs to the original Divers series later in the series were nice. I still think it took way too long to get there after the awful first season of Re:Rise, and think there are plenty of other better Gundam ... series to watch... But its an improvement from the first season.

Positive comments to say about Re:Rise usually start by saying it’s not the predecessor. Better animation, less annoying shounen tropes with bare minimum execution. More interesting characters and a better story. After Diver’s obvious bomb, it’s not hard for people to adjust to thinking that anything that lightly tries to be better, to be better. There is not much to expect from the sequel of a blatant low-effort advert. Though go back eight years and there is the progenitor of the “Build Gundam” series line, where claiming Re:Rise a superior show would be a hard sell.

Episodes 13 and half of 14 are recaps, 19 & ... 20 are flashback episodes and 24 is mainly fanservice cameos, which leaves seven episodes to work on the present. Half of those seven episodes are spent in exposition mode; characters talking about the current situation, their alleged strategy, how they got to where they are, and what exactly is the world/the people in it. While intriguing to the people interested, there ends up being a distinct lack of character development outside of the four main characters. Retcons to the previous show are made to shove in this one with seemingly no other reason than to tie them more closer together. Everything has to be revealed in these twelve episodes after the twist, but the room for the actual build up is missing. If there was more clarity and proper characterization in season one, perhaps they’d be able to go without explaining everything. Unfortunately, you can see poor execution plainly in how the final episode has no gravity, no real consequences or stakes. While the climax an episode before is a fun fight to watch, there was such bare-bones build up that you’d expect that they would’ve pushed this back to a third season. Then they could’ve bumped the incident before with more than minimal build-up, though most lack of build-up/characterization could be attributed to brainwashing. For the grandiose ideas it has, Re:Rise tends to only talk about them and only give a glance into its depth. Leading to shallow heel-face turns that are forecasted only an episode or two before, and much of the tension coming off superficial

Characters have their life’s history constantly info-dumped upon because their personality wasn’t built on enough. One of the main characters barely develops outside of season one’s plot twist. And despite the two episodes of flashbacks, there is still sparse characterization of the protagonist's fridge to warrant much care about his grief; a bit too late more than three quarters into the show too. Which leaves a standard cliche and the comic relief to provide most of the personality. One’s fine, the other’s almost as grating as Riku in how low effort the personality is. With how they bottle-necked themselves, there’s three separate settings in which only the main four can freely interact in all, and it lies on those four to carry most of the screen-time. There’s a saturation in unnecessary side characters that can’t contribute to the main story, yet still take up screen-time anyway, to the point where that leaves more important side characters few minutes to actually develop them through show, rather than tell. This failure leads to a disconnect to the conflict. The major incident in the first season is a big example of that.

What both Re:Rise and Build Divers seem to understand from the original is the crazy backdrop of Reiji and his home-world, the zany gunpla mafia backdrop. Ignoring the fact that it wasn’t the main story. They both introduce “serious” ideas/analogies like AI sentience, drugs, moving on, aliens,-leaning more towards an isekai plot than Build Fighters, much less Gundam. It personally bothers me more that Re:Rise decided to double down on having “deep” themes to distance itself from the dumb shounen core of Divers. And there’s no side characters that do much to liven up the scenery either, the Eldoran’s more irritating it by mimicking the kids in 0079 and Zeta. I’d prefer another proxy battle shounen about learning to love paying Bandai money and fan-service, but these seem to focus on pandering to the mainstream audiences, Isekai being/was in vogue.

The music is pretty alright: the composer seems to be new, but talented. With Masami Obari supposedly helping with the animation it’s a vast improvement over Build Divers. The gunpla has a neat gimmick and there’s usually a fight every episode. Perhaps excusable as brain-dead entertainment, it would then seem that brain-dead entertainment has downgraded in quality. Though gunpla sales are probably going to make this series a success in the eyes of Bandai. Watch the original Build Fighters, or some other toys to life anime(I’ve heard Medabots is good). Buy the kits if you like their looks and skip the series. If this is the type of script the scriptwriter for Hathaway’s Flash makes, it kills my excitement for it.