English Dub Season Review: Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid S Season 2

Let’s first address the elephant in the room… For those of you who don’t know, the reason Season 2 took so long to make was that the animation team involved, Kyoto Animation Studio-1 (aka KyoAni) fell victim to an arson incident on July 18th, 2019 where 36 people actually died due to a petty dispute with a disgruntled individual named Shinji Aoba who accused the studio of plagiarism. While the guilty individual was later apprehended, Kyo-Ani needed time to recover with a brand new studio and animation team which also didn’t help when the Pandemic later came along that consequently plagued the studio with the delays and cancellations of later projects, but all of it was worth the long wait with it’s colorful & fluid quality, in combination with visual background easter eggs that reward upon repeat viewings.

On the technical side, the season itself seemed to be far more self-reflective than the first. With most of the “fish out of water” jokes slowly disappearing and more of a focus on the past. Maybe the fact it was produced during a time of great tragedy for the production studio could’ve contributed to influencing this to some degree, or perhaps not. I do think it was an admirable effort, and a fun season when it wasn’t giving off creepy pedo vibes with certain characters. Next to Jojo: Stone Ocean, this is one of the most visually-pleasing anime so far of 2021. Almost no frame feels half-assed like even in the background they weren’t cutting corners. Also, the soundtrack still stays as calm and charming as ever, but the opening and ending still have their wholesome vibes hiding what to expect in this season. The original singer for the first episode returns, and not only does it sound cute, but it can be bittersweet given the aforementioned tragedy…

Despite some of the episodes giving off some random “Slice of Life” vibes with no actual stakes, the character development for everyone throughout this season has been fantastic, and getting to explore how the dragons lived in their world was really nice. Ilulu was a welcoming addition to the cast, as I knew she would be. We also get decent character moments with Elma, lots of good Kanna and Saikawa adventures, Tohru and Kobayashi also had their share of nice moments. Of course, I can’t forget Fafnir and Takiya, they were gaming it up and Shouta and Lucoa were also hilarious.

While the first season was just good, this season was definitely better, probably because of the better balance of character development, lore, and action. No disrespect for the earlier crew, but what keeps me from giving this a higher rating is that it fell victim a few times of having dull scenes here and there but nothing too aggravating. At the very least, KyoAni rose from the ashes and delivered in spades with such fluid animation in this different art style than what they’re typically known for and ended the season on a high note, as it also celebrated the anime’s fun atmosphere while giving everyone equal screentime. And we can all look forward to the new studio giving us more great projects in the future.