The Winter 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Vinland Saga Season 2

Thorfinn's quest for revenge is finally over, but not at his own hand. With Askeladd dying to secure Canute's claim to the throne, the rage which fueled him since childhood has been snuffed out without closure. After his failed attempt on the new king's life, he was stripped of his weapons and sold into slavery on the distant Ketil farm. Now, he must work endlessly to survive, enduring the brutality of slavery, if he ever hopes to dream of Vinland again.

Vinland Saga is based on Makoto Yukimura's manga and streams on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

James Beckett
Rating:

Many aspects of art and animation are easy enough to qualify, analyze, and evaluate— the animation quality, sound design, direction, and vocal performances—but then there are the more abstract elements that can be much harder to nail down. What theoretical and aesthetical calculus do you perform, for instance, to measure the confidence of a production? What variables of artistic achievement, composition, direction, and performance does one have to balance and scale against each other to determine the degree to which an anime can waltz in and totally rule the goddamned school? I'm sure I can't tell you; all I know is that this first episode of Vinland Saga's second season didn't even have the good grace to let me finish its gorgeous opening credits sequence before it had me eating out of its hands and begging for more.

The first season of Vinland Saga is a pulse-pounding epic that I've only come to appreciate more with time, and when it had the guts to conclude its 24-episode run with an episode titled “END OF PROLOGUE,” I knew we were in for something special when it finally returned. I can't say that I feel anything but vindicated after this. We may have a brand new studio at the helm, but there are plenty of familiar faces working behind the scenes, and that seems like a perfect place for Vinland Saga to be, given the circumstances. In Einar, we have a brand new protagonist to follow, at least for the time being, and for a while, it seems like Thorfinn and the other characters we followed for the last twenty-four episodes are nowhere to be found. That's all perfectly fine, though, since the show's gobsmackingly confidence in its storytelling makes watching Einar's side of the saga…well, it's not exactly fun since what we're watching is the almost total annihilation of a man's life, body, and soul. Still, I'll be damned if it isn't genuinely gripping television.

The sound design on display deserves mention, as does the dreamy and impressionistic editing. Watching Einar lose his family and get sold off into slavery genuinely feels like a nightmare come to life, and it immediately endears you to the man and his struggle. Seeing him meet Thorfinn in the very final moments of the premiere doesn't just come across as a convenient stroke of narrative convergence. It's a potent reminder that, as the title of last season's finale made very clear, this is only the beginning of these two men's journey together, one that is fated to become a saga that will be etched into the stone of history. I absolutely cannot wait to see that saga come to life.

If this episode of Vinland Saga has one message, it's that “life is suffering.” However, as with most excellent fiction, this is just the start, not the end, of the story it tries to tell. In the meta sense, the purpose of this episode is to introduce us to our new main character Einar. And while his life has been far different from Thorfinn's, they share one major thing in common: they have lost everything.

Einar was a simple farmer living with his sister and widowed mother. It was a normal existence stripped away from him by Viking raiders much like those Thorfinn used to be a part of. Each step on his journey things got worse. He lost his family, his freedom, and even his will to resist. Now he is little more than a shell of who he used to be.

However, his real problem is that he is a coward. He wasn't able to make himself fight to save (or avenge) his mother and sister. He didn't fight back against the slavers that threw a sick, yet still living, woman overboard. He only ran away from slavery once—and gave up trying after the beating he got. He has used his mother's last command—to “live”—as an excuse for his cowardice.

But as much as this episode is a story about how life beats you down, it's also about finding a reason to live on despite that. Even as a broken shell, Einar finds moments of beauty in his world. The fields of his new master remind him of his old home and give him the faintest hope that what was lost, may be found again. And perhaps it will be through his friendship with a young man who has nothing to live for but lives on still.

Caitlin Moore
Rating:

Man, has it really been three and a half years since Vinland Saga first aired? I mean that in both “only three and a half years” and “already three and a half years” because time has felt weird since 2020. I gave its premiere glowing praise for its pacifistic heart and taking the bold stance that slavery is wrong, but then cooled on it as its run went on. While the characters and their journeys were compelling, I felt like it leaned too hard into saying, “Wow, cool action!” with flying limbs and spinning axes in a way that betrayed the thesis that it started the series with: violence is futile and ultimately impoverishes the souls of those who partake in it.

Well, the second season is finally here, and it brings me hope for what is to come. The episode follows Einar, a young man captured and taken as a slave when his village is attacked, with Thorfinn reentering the narrative only at the very end. This is the Makoto Yukimura content I've been hoping for: historical fiction that brings the setting to life with an obsessive focus not just on the time and place as it existed but on the people that lived in it. They had culture, families, and worked and talked and loved. History is beautiful and terrible, not just for the major players but the mundane. I'm not a historian, so I can't actually comment on how accurate things like clothing, hairstyles, and weapons are, but they look like something I could find in a museum easily.

No amount of historical accuracy would matter without a sense for the humans that lived, though. We learn enough details about Einar's life to give the sense that he existed before the narrative turned its eyes toward him, living with his mother and sister. They're both killed when pirates raid his village and take him captive. He fights at first, but over and over, events force him to submit to his fate of living the rest of his life in bondage. It's heartbreaking to see, but history is full of stories like his. It's painfully matter-of-fact without delving into suffering porn.

The prologue of Vinland Saga offered up plenty of gory fights between borderline superhumans. I'm hoping now that we're reaching the story proper, we'll get something quieter and more reflective. Just remember, kids: slavery is wrong!

It will be hard for me to cover this one without just balking at the fact that it's real. I loved the first season of Vinland Saga a ton. It was a rip-roaring good time that gradually evolved into a strikingly mature, weighty historical drama. But as somebody who had read most of the manga, I knew that the real Vinland Saga experience only starts after that lengthy prologue. I also knew that said material is such a drastic swerve from everything before it that it was possible producers wouldn't bother to animate it. Yet here it is. Farmland Saga is real, and it will be appointment viewing for the next six months.

Though be warned, this premiere makes it clear immediately that we are in for a very different experience from the previous Viking violence. For nearly the whole episode, there is no hint of any of season one's cast, even in passing. Instead, we follow the story of Einar, a farmer from northern England, as his life is destroyed. It speaks to Vinland Saga's storytelling that, after years away and a cliffhanger as brutal as season one's, it has the guts to start with a new character and make it immediately compelling. Einar himself is a likable man, and following him as his village is looted, and he's sold into slavery manages to be just as striking as any of the battles from Thorfinn's story. There's an attention to detail and a matter-of-fact depiction of the cruelty of slavery that grounds the whole journey while leaving room for Einar's deeply human emotional journey. After watching premieres this season that softball the topics of slavery and medieval living, it was like walking out into a blizzard with how harsh and immense Vinland Saga's world feels.

A big part of that goes to the production. While the switch to studio MAPPA was worrying – especially after they wrecked Attack on Titan's entire visual aesthetic when they took over – thankfully, much of the staff behind season one has returned. They've not missed a single step. The scenery our characters inhabit is lushly realized, ranging from the idyllic wheat fields in Einar's home to the merciless, raging sea that carries him away from them. The character designs are much the same as before: blocky, fleshy, and always looking just a little dirty, but no less expressive and appealing in their own way. There's no real action to speak of in this episode, but the setting and characters are so well-realized, and the music is so perfect at emphasizing the emotions at play that it's just as gripping as any fight could be.

If you're a fan of Vinland Saga, anime or manga, you don't need me to tell you to watch this. But if you were uncertain about the studio change or just wondering how this material would be adapted, this premiere does more than enough to quell those doubts. With a start this strong, and a very promising road ahead, this is going to be the show to follow this season,