At one point in time, Netflix didn’t really care to have much anime on its platform. They instead focused on more “crowd-pleasing” cartoons and animated feature films to draw people in alongside their assortment of great live-action films and TV shows from all walks of life. Then, they started to realize that anime was becoming more and more popular, so they did all they could to get as much of it onto the platform as possible. This included nabbing Pokemon, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, and others in part or in whole, or making their own anime adaptations, including Record Of Ragnarok.
Based on the hit manga, Record Of Ragnarok features a repeating cycle of life, where every 1000 years the gods of the various pantheons come together in order to decide if humanity should live or be wiped out. One such vote lead to the decision to wipe them out, but the Valkyries intervened and said that a challenge should be had instead. Put the best of the gods against the best mortals throughout history, and whoever wins a set of matches between them gets to choose their fate.
As you can imagine, this opens up a lot of opportunities for exciting matches and uses of characters throughout history both real and mythical. Season 1 did indeed have some unique matches, and Season 2 has just dropped its first trailer which highlights even more.
Key among them in this trailer is the very odd couple matchup that is Hercules, the god of strength, versus the notorious serial killer known as Jack The Ripper. We also get a look at other characters, like Buddha, as well as past matches and characters like Zeus, Adam, and more. You can watch the teaser trailer for Season 2 below.
Now, if you’re sensing a “but…” coming, you’re very smart. While Record Of Ragnarok is a show that has a very easy premise to go and do and then enact in the best of ways, that’s not exactly what Netflix did. While the manga beautifully rendered the battles between gods and men in its pages, the battles that we got on the Netflix show were subpar in the eyes of its viewers. This included a heavily talked about matchup between Zeus and Adam which went for multiple issues in the manga and yet was reduced at times to still frames in the show.
There was also the fact that the show heavily focused on some of the more “tropey” elements of things, such as the chest size of Aphrodite.
How this will continue, or not continue, in Season 2 is a mystery. Hopefully, the second outing is better than the first.
Source: YouTube
