The Summer 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari Season 2

Filled with rage against spirits known as tsukumogami, Kunato Hyoma is sent to live with Nagatsuki Botan to help him see a different side. Though both are part of a clan that return the spirits back to their world with divine powers, their experiences with the otherworldly vessels are vastly different. Kunato, robbed of a loved one, and Nagatsuki, saved by them.

Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari Season 2 is based on Onigunsō's Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari manga. It streams on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

Say what you will about Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari, but at least it isn't bad. Before you go accusing me of damning it with faint praise, think back on how the season has been so far and realize that automatically makes it better than most of the series that have come out thus far. If anything, watching AYAKA made me downright nostalgic for Malevolent Spirits' middling-to-pretty good storytelling.

If you've been following the series, this episode of the continuation offers a solid sampling of everything the series has to offer: a bit of ensemble slice-of-life comedy, a bit of romance, a bit of action. I was pleasantly surprised by how much the characters grew on me by episode twelve, with the tsukumogami's protective and affectionate relationship with Botan, so it was nice to see them all again, with a bit of comedy about the mistress of the house trying to clean a room that has been untouched for almost two decades. I found Hyouma about as interesting as a bag of gravel at the start of the series, but his slow opening up to Botan has been a real treat.

But boy, do I continue to find it hard to take much interest in his revenge quest. In honor of starting a new cour, the episode ups the ante a bit, revealing a good amount of backstory about how they ended up killed by the paper umbrella tsukumogami. I don't think Malevolent Spirits would work as a slice-of-life ensemble comedy/romance the whole way through or anything, but I truly wish the action were more interesting here. It's solidly animated, but so much of it is just characters jumping through the air or running at each other, rather than wielding actual interesting powers. This extends to the general visual design as well: the character design work is solid overall, but they could do so much more with the tsukumogami designs… or at least give them something more interesting to wear than suits.

Malevolent Spirits season two offers more of the same: a perfectly solid, if forgettable, supernatural action series. It's entertaining enough not to feel like a waste of time. If you're craving a shinto-tinged action series, you could do a lot worse… like AYAKA. AYAKA is so much worse