The Winter 2018 Anime Preview Guide

The Silver Guardian 2

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Secretly in love with Riku Rei, the most popular girl of his school, Riku Suigin is forced to dive into "Grave Buster," the new virtual game in which Riku Rei has been kept captive. To save her, he will have the support of the beautiful Twin Star, and in addition to that, he has inherited a device charged with ten billion yen from his grandfather Ruki Yuuki. Suigin will have to become the last Guardian who protects the Tomb from the Raiders in order to save Riku Rei and solve the mysteries of Grave Buster. The Silver Guardian 2 is a sequel series to the original and currently airs on Crunchyroll.

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Kim Morrissy

Rating: 2

The Silver Guardian has finally made the jump into being a full-length anime. This has its upsides and downsides. The good thing is that the story finally has time to breathe instead of simply jumping from one plot point to another. The introduction to the world of Grave Buster in the first season was simply rushed and confusing, and it's only now in the second season that it's starting to feel like a coherent setting.

The bad news is that, production-wise, I have my doubts that The Silver Guardian will be able to maintain any level of quality as a full-length show. The first episode already has some warning signs: There is no new OP, for one thing, and the animation quality already feels like a step below the first season. Some of the battle animation looks as if it lacks in-between frames, resulting in choppy movements that lack any semblance of choreography. Studio Emon is receiving assistance from Studio BLADE this season, but all signs point to a troubled production that took on more than it could chew.

Of course, if you've watched the first season, you'll know that's par the course for this show. The Silver Guardian isn't going to wow anyone with its script or animation. Nevertheless, it has its amusing and even touching moments, some of which were on display in this episode. The portrayal of Riku's classmate, an earnest rich boy named Shaa, was endearing. He retires from the game in melodramatic fashion, shouting about how much he wants to become Line Friends with a girl, but he's not just a pervert. The first thing he does after getting out of the game is talk about how much fun he had making friends with Riku, who had previously never noticed him before. This short, incidental scene is touching in an understated way, especially considering how few friends Riku has made in the real world.

The same cannot be said for the rest of the episode, however, which was generally both corny and predictable. Nevertheless, the concept of raiding graves in an MMORPG setting still remains interesting, and the anime is poised to delve deeper into the mechanics of it. The first episode of The Silver Guardian’s second season isn't going to win over new fans, but it is finally getting into the meat of the story.