The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Ishura Season 2

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Following Taren the Guarded's defeat, Lithia's New Principality has fallen to the Kingdom of Aureatia and is now back under its control. With the strength of their enemies diminishing, Aureatia is nearly ready to host a tournament of warriors known as Shuras to choose who will stand as the next hero in the wake of the True Demon King's defeat. Shuras from various races and even other worlds are all vying to enter, whether it be for fame or a chance to test their skills against powerful opponents, but which one will emerge as the True Hero?

Ishura is based on a light novel series by Keiso and Kureta. The anime series is streaming on Hulu and Disney+ on Wednesdays.

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Jairus Taylor
Rating:

It seems like it's probably gonna be a little while before we get more Fate/strange Fake, but if anyone's in the mood for some diet Fate in the meantime, then Ishura's back and here for you. I came into the first season of this series expecting it to be some kind of isekai involving a bunch of overpowered anime OCs smashing into each other. Instead, I got a surprisingly complex fantasy setting that also happens to involve smashing a bunch of overpowered OCs into each other like action figures, each having their goals and agendas and serving the whims of various factions, all vying for power. So yeah, it's diet Fate, but that's certainly not a bad thing to be, and this season seems to be continuing in the same trend of mixing cool character intros with fantasy politics that made the first season such a fun ride.

After spending the whole first season in a proxy war between the nations of Lithia and Aureatia, and having it end in Aureatia's favor, we're finally inching closer to the promised tournament of heroes that's bound to see all the surviving cast members duking it out. Before we can get to that, though, we have a couple of new character introductions in the form of Mele the Horizon's Roar, a giant who specializes in archery, and Kuuro the Cautious, a spy with the power of clairvoyance that allows him to perceive everything happening around him. Between the two, I was a lot more invested in the introduction of Mele, as it's hard not to be a sucker for a guy with a gruff exterior who spends his time looking after kids. Plus, when one of them dies, he spends every night trying to shoot stars out of the sky to put on her grave, and it's hard to get more endearing than that. Kuuro, on the other hand, doesn't have too much going on besides being mysterious, and the fact that he's allied with Elea the Red Tag, who spent the better part of the first season manipulating a kid into being her weapon, means that he's probably not a shining paragon of morality either. Given the nature of this show, it's hard to tell how long it'll be before these characters cross paths, or if they even will, but since it seems like we might be getting the tournament this show was advertised around, I'm hoping that all these character intros will finally pay off in more direct confrontations between our ever-expanding roster. We've also got a same-day simuldub to go alongside the new season, and it sounds as consistent as what we got with the first one.

While the only returning characters we see in this episode are Elea, Soujiro the Willow-Sword, Mara Junot, and Griffin Burns, both performances are still pretty solid, with Mara Junot, in particular, doing a fine job of balancing all of Elea's scheming with her outward civility, while new additions like Talon Warburton as Mele and Casey Mongillo as Kuuro do good at selling the audience on what makes their characters tick within their brief introductions. With how many moving parts this show has, it's hard to tell exactly what's going to end up going down this season, and how many different faces it will involve, but if the show can maintain the same balance of action and worldbuilding that made the first season so surprisingly fun, I'm pretty confident the second season will deliver on the same kind of entertainment.

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Jeremy Tauber
Rating:

Although it took an entire cour to set up its world and characters properly, I was excited to see which direction Ishura was heading down. The first season set up its world and characters like a good prologue to a story should. With a war being waged and the prospect of a battle royale up ahead, it seemed like this build-up would lead to an action-packed and exciting tournament arc. Now that we're at the second season premiere, are things heading toward the good old-fashioned battle royale we've been patiently waiting for? Maybe eventually. But for now, there doesn't seem to be any indication of when that “eventually” will be.

Instead, most of Ishura season 2's first episode feels like it could have been jammed somewhere in the first half of season 1. True to the anime's formula, we get more new characters introduced: a giant wielding a bow, a spy infiltrating enemy territory, and a family of farmers living in the desert. While it's great that we're introduced to more interesting characters and seeing how their personality and abilities might work out on the battlefield, it's at the cost of further kicking the main premise down the road. The battle royale advertised to us in almost every episode, including this one, constantly escapes the anime's grasp. I feel that everything is being brought to a slow simmer to make the tournament arc much more intense. Still, it is a smidge frustrating to see new characters rise out of the woodwork instead of focusing on the characters from last season, especially when things ended so dramatically. Still, you can never judge an anime by its first episode, and a large part of me is still curious to see where things go from here.

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Kevin Cormack
Rating:
Last year's first season of Ishura was an acquired taste—a beautifully animated, violent tale with a huge cast, many of whom failed to survive all twelve episodes. It took its time to build a complex world, with the first six episodes each functioning to introduce one or two characters, establishing their very particular (usually lethal) skill sets and ideologies.

Based on a series of very hefty light novels, Ishura's first season covered only the first volume. For a story about a supposed battle royale between “True Hero” candidates, it sure took a long time to get there, the entire season functioning as little but prologue. Surely, season two gets right into the action with the start of the true story, right? Uh… no.

We're back in character introduction mode again, presumably to fill the gaps left by last season's numerous casualties. This opening episode is split into three separate stories. The first is an odd vignette about an injured little girl torn apart by an apparently sentient dust storm, which her people revere as a god. We get little context for why this happens; perhaps it becomes important later.

Next, we're introduced to the enormous giant Mele the Horizon's Roar, an indolent chap who prefers to spend most of his time sleeping. He protects the nearby village of average-sized people, or “Minians,” from various threats, using his powerful bow that launches huge metal rods as large as trees with the kinetic energy of a tactical nuke. He seems like a decent guy who loves children. The village citizens have entered him into the “True Hero” battle seemingly against his will. I worry he's probably going to be killed.

Next, we meet Kuuro the Cautious and his cute tiny winged female companion, Cuneigh the Wanderer, who helps him with his ninja-like assassination skills. They meet up with a couple of familiar faces from last season – the duplicitous Elea the Red Tag and her hired bodyguard Soujirou the Willow-Sword. Yes, everyone is named like Dark Souls characters. Elea wants Kuuro to work for her on the side of Auretia, the Golden City. Each Ishura episode feels like a tiny piece of an enormous tapestry, of which the viewer is granted only the most infinitesimal glimpse. If this season is structured anything like the first, then viewers will need patience and, most of all, attention. As a story, it has many moving pieces and is the kind of show probably best watched accompanied by a character wiki. Generally, it looks pretty great, especially in its excellent action scenes (this episode features a particularly large volume of both human and monster blood.) Some stiff CGI use for crowd characters looks a bit awkward, but overall, it's a handsome show. I intend to keep watching if only to see if all this build-up becomes worth it.