Vinland Saga Season 2 is about more than just violence and revenge

After the vastness of the first season of Vinland sagaWith dramatizations of historical figures crossing paths across continents, it’s tempting to say that the anime’s second season is on a much smaller scale. But Vinland saga Season 2 feels epic in a different sense, as director Shūhei Yabuta and writer Hiroshi Seko deliver some of the series’ most breathtaking drama within the (rather sprawling) confines of a farm.

Since the first season, Thorfinn has been enslaved by a wealthy man who poses as a benevolent slave owner and has his farmhands work what he paid for them in order to regain their freedom. The farm is a place that protects Thorfinn from his past as a berserker. But his friendship with Einar, another slave who works the same piece of land, reminds Thorfinn of what he destroyed as a warrior and prompts him to consider how to prevent it from happening again.

This arc of Vinland saga is affectionately dubbed the “Farmland Saga” by some fans, in part due to its narrative decompression, smaller scale, and departure from warfare in favor of a gradual change in Thorfinn. It emphasizes the long periods of time involved in clearing forest areas and their meditative character – cultivating something instead of plundering it.

The first season was compelling because it drew Thorfinn deep, eroded by his experiences and commitment to being a mercenary for his father’s killers, and tragically self-destructed while seeking relentless revenge on his enemy and fatherfather Askeladd practiced. It’s fun to watch the shows Preference for historical dramas

, its small background details and the freedom it takes in terms of character motivations in the adaptation of Makoto Yukimura’s manga series. But many of the most compelling moments come from an ongoing engagement with the guiding principles of feudalism and Viking culture (“might makes right,” as one participant in a losing battle puts it). Season 2 is compelling because of how it rebuilds him and how long it takes him to pull through.

When Einar pulls him out of his shell, Thorfinn opens up several escape routes from the ruins of Viking culture. There is Christianity, which gradually plays into Thorfinn’s path to pacifism, overhearing passages and recognizing his father Thor’s vision of a “true warrior”, one who fights for peace and not for the conquest of people or land . And then there’s Einar, who grew up on a farm that’s been raided several times by the likes of Thorfinn and the mercenaries he rode with. Einar inspires in him a rebellious and earnest spirit – willful and perhaps naïve, but together with all the other voices, it’s the beginning of a real future for Thorfinn, one that goes beyond mere survival.

The cruelty of the culture Thorfinn grew up in was always at the forefront of the series, as the first season dealt with the ugliness of battle and conquest. While there was some thrill in that moment, there was a compelling contradiction in both marveling at the young fighter who was pulling off cool fighting stuff, even if it eroded his soul.

Most fight scenes in Vinland saga are often laborious, with visuals and muddy sound design often emphasizing the plot twist that caused them. Sweeping, scenic vistas of the landscape become extreme close-ups of injured characters, drawn in raw, realistic detail. It’s still fun to see wayward brutes strutting about, but the banter always remains foreboding. The animation of the fights is flashy and often satisfying to watch, but the consequences are punitively spelled out on screen, both in the gory physical aftermath and the emotional aftermath – Thorfinn carries both galore in the form of ghostly dreams, gnarled scars, etc Fill in some missing ear cartilage.

In the new season, with the character’s new perspective, such violence feels even more meaningless than before, especially when war is treated as a sport. It’s now easier to pay attention to the series’ purely more thrilling, bombastic action sequences, which it reserves for special cases. Thorfinn’s greatest heroic moment is taking a beating just to find a way to talk – his passive approach seems downright revolutionary in a culture where people are measured by how much harm they can cause. It’s also the clearest example of where Thorfinn stands now compared to season one, where his sole focus was to harm those who wronged him. However, part of the reason for his success is that he stops burying his past and instead embraces what he knows about fighting. To take less damage from incoming punches, he rolls the punches: turning the other cheek, but strategically.

In this way, his father’s idealism begins to merge with the pragmatism of Askeladd and Einar, and it’s an indication of Thorfinn’s newfound agency. He now clearly knows his long-term goals and has some idea of ​​what methods he might use; He’s a far cry from the easily manipulated, violent young man of yore.

Thorfinn is hardly the first anime pacifist born into warrior culture; Wrestling with the fact that violence is the default solution to conflict, many soft-hearted Shonen protagonists have desperately sought alternatives (take the most popular example of feudal warfare resolved with empathy and a good conversation: Naruto). and be “Talk No Jutsu“). Even the hollowness and existential tedium of a career shaped by physical power is the subject of parodic series One punch man.

Maybe what sets Vinland saga Other than that, the leisurely length in which Yabuta and Seko agonize over Thorfinn’s questions about how to unlearn cultural violence; The second season is more patient than the first and explores how Thorfinn inflicted violence on himself by committing violence in the world. The farm feels like purgatory for a while: isolated from the outside world, with the promise of salvation just out of reach, and the ghosts of those Thorfinn killed constantly threatening to drag him into his own personal hell.

Other characters are trapped too: let’s take Arnheid, another slave on the farm with Einar and Thorfinn, but with no apparent way out simply because she is one of the owner’s favourites. Arnheid’s story illustrates one of the better features of Vinland saga: a keen interest in the inner workings of the people of Thorfinn’s orbit. There’s an intriguing character study that can grow even more through the more patient structure, as even the play’s wannabe villains feel human, adding a little more realism to the martial-pacifist story.

To both escape his personal hell and make amends, Thorfinn wants to live up to his father’s dream of building a peaceful nation “out of reach of slavers and the flames of war”. Whether that’s possible or not remains to be seen, but the season’s long journey of Thorfinn believing in something, regaining his agency and making violence his last resort rather than his first feels driving. “I have no enemies” may not sound as profound to others, but the journey to get there is Vinland sagais the most exciting trip so far.