OP2 Sequence

OP2: 「Bursty Greedy Spider」by Suzuki Konomi

「やったー、外だー 私は自由……だ?」 (Yattaa, Soto dā Watashi wa Jiyuu …… da?)
“Yay, The Outside, I’m Free?”

With the second cour of Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? underway, it’s time for Kumoko to explore the outside world and see how she can enmesh herself in human civilization while she ignores the calls that her spider mother sent to her. However, the beginning of the second half also catches us up on the human side of the story with Shun being pressured to take part in decisive battles as Hugo builds up his forces to strike his former adversary.

It was a breath of fresh air to see Kumoko interacting with an environment that isn’t a dank cavern. Yes, instead of the labyrinths and caves we’re familiar with, Kumoko finds herself having to overcome two new sets of obstacles; if she’ll be able to integrate with the human world and if she’ll be able to last long by rejecting her spider mother’s command to return to the labyrinth.

With this in mind, it gives Kumoko some nice overarching goals that go beyond survival for her to seek out a human form by leveling up more. Knowing how she’d be received in her regular spider form in the human sphere helps lend to her cunning self-awareness as she’s conscious enough to not jump immediately into danger without a plan. Similarly, the spider mother is looking to be an interesting antagonist for Kumoko since her body’s bond with the mother’s body might prove to give her plenty of obstacles aside from her ability to summon her other children to take Kumoko out.

On Shun’s end of the story, it’s actually starting to heat up a bit as he’s being pushed to take Julius’ place with barely the experience to handle his responsibilities. The elf council particularly had left an impression on Shun that he’ll have to whip himself in shape if he has any hope of making it out of situations that only Julius could have taken on by his own accord.

But the urgency that’s placed on Shun to get on the battlefield is also looking more like a transparent trap with the connections that some of the council has with Hugo. The middle and ending sections with Hugo have a very ominous feel to them with how he seems to have trapped Katia, Sue, and Cylis into a contract with him to do his bidding and lure Shun into a confrontation with him. Whether this ends up backfiring on him or not is still up in the air, anime-wise, but it made for an otherwise daunting twist at the end that Cylis has been working side-by-side with Hugo as he’s also giving Shun advice from the sidelines. At the very least, it means that the human side will have its fair share of drama in store for the second cour.

ED2 Sequence

ED2: Genjitsu Tostugeki Hierarchy 「現実凸撃ヒエラルキー」 by Yuuki Aoi

14 Comments

  1. OFF TOPIC, You guys will post everything but the Slime huh? even Diaries came out, no episode 1 impression like you swear to do for every show. No season 2 part 1 either, stop the slime hate, you’re going out of your way to avoid it!! I bet you hate word slime so much you won’t even post other series “Slime Taoshite 300-nen”.

    KYLE
    1. I dont blame them. Slime lost it charm when he turned from a slime into a girl when his original base form was a manly man. It doesn’t fit and the author try to hand wave that fact away but failed. I can see why Random C lost interest. On the other hand Spider will get nice but will suffer from slime syndrom of poor writing and pacing once this season end. I doubt Season 2 spider will be blog when they find out what is exactly in store.

      Duzz
      1. I’m sorry, what? Lost it’s charm? author what now? are you mental? look at Slime Diaries, that’s how he suppose to look like originally in LN, he’s suppose to be this small shota who is basically height of Gobzo, that’s was the intent, if you want your manly men go watch some gay porn.

        KYLE
      2. A second 2-cour season of Spider would likely cover Volumes 6-9 or 6-10. There are 11 English language volumes out and there is stuff that’d be covered that we might get hints at this season, but will blow away people’s expectations.

      3. There were understaffed, that’s why. I don’t know about Slime Diaries, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t take a closer look at the 2nd cour of the main series when it starts airing in July. The 1st cour of Slime 2 was a pretty strong one IMO apart from a few pacing issues.

        boingman
  2. The stuff with Araba and the stuff with Mother largely overlapped and happened in parallel in the novels while for the adaptation they made it sequential. Considering I’m still seeing people not able to wrap round the “two timelines”, it was probably a good move on their part.

    I think that a lot of the problem that some people have with how the story is told is that this isn’t being presented as a chronologically linear story with a side story here or there.

    In a way, it is a combination of the narrative style used in “Rashomon” and that used in “Pulp Fiction”.

    Like with “Rashomon”, we are seeing different perspectives, both of the same events and of separate events. This helps build up a better understanding of what is going on in the story and helps break down the complexity.

    But it is more like “Pulp Fiction” where we have separate interrelated stories that tie in together to give a whole that is separate than its parts. While (so far) in “So I’m a Spider, So What?” each perspective has been chronologically linear for the most part, the way each narrative is spliced into each other is done to maximize narrative impact.

    Overall, this is an important part of the overall narrative and not about a main story and a skippable side-story like some are treating it.

    1. People will be mad when they find out there will be no main storyline resolution in season 2 as the LN had yet to even catch up to the major cliff hanger at the end of “Wakaba.” Playing people for w bit maybe a few episode is okay but don’t go full retard like Tenjo Tenge did cause thats narrative style killed a second season. Took too long to get back to the point.

      Duzz
      1. Well, that is kind of the problem as after volume 5 where we expect season 1 to stop, the story kind of changes. The first 5 volumes are pretty much “Adventures of spider girl in the dungeon”, but from volume 6 and onward it goes more into world politics and how to fix the world. Those that come to see spider girl fight the monster of the week will be disappointed. That said as a LN reader I love volume 6 and onward but given that the anime has generally skipped world building and politics in favor of fight scenes I am not sure how they will adapt the novels to please the anime fans.

        Desty
  3. The opening probably rules out the demon lord as future Kumoko. But the ending of this episode also opens up the possibility that we haven’t seen Kumoko in Shun’s timeline. I always thought that it was “White”, but “White” just doesn’t act like Kumoko. Still think she’s connected to Kumoko somehow, just not sure on exactly how. If I’m not mistaken, her personas has control of some of her powers, so I still think she has a hand in Julius’ demise somehow. She can eat her own brethren, so she probably can consciously erase her friends brother for the greater good.

    Our most up-to-date look on Kumoko was probably from that Mages flashback.

    theirs
    1. One of the pitfalls that stories like this including slime fall into is they forgot what make the character interesting. It the humanity aspect that allow us the viewer to relate. When they startt to slaughter people indiscriminately they are no longer human but instead monsters and serial killers by today standard. Worse if they view human lives as cheap, that makes it very hard for audiences to sympathize and empathize with the main character.

      Duzz

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